Again (17 page)

Carter

Kate
was already there when I got to Civics class.

At
least I wouldn’t have to wait and see if she would sit next to me. I couldn’t
believe I was worried like some teenage girl or something, but that was what
Kate had done to me, especially after this weekend.

I
took a deep breath and walked to her row, hoping no one had already poisoned
her toward me in the day we spent apart.

I
tried to give her space yesterday, but I needed my own too. I was falling for
her and eventually my truth would have to come out.

I
guess that was why this weekend had been so wonderful. I’d been able to be with
her without thinking about that. Without wondering if someone would walk up and
say something about me, a constant skipped beat of my heart when I was on
campus.

When
I was in the place we both lived.

My
pulse throbbed in my throat as I took the seat next to her, wondering whether
she would greet me with a smile, or a
get the fuck away from me
.

Now her
finding out the truth meant I had something to lose.

“I
waited for you to walk over,” she said, her blond hair wild under her hat.

I
remembered the words I’d said to her,
your
hair is too beautiful to
hide,
heard them again. Heard what she’d replied,
I feel the same way
about you.
The moment when I knew completely she was someone I needed to
kiss again and again.

I
wished we were still alone on that small bed, with nothing but chance between
us, with nothing but
nothing
between us. Instead of in class with
everyone around, with that skipped beat of my heart right under the surface of every
interaction.

“Sorry,
I didn’t know,” I said, trying to bring myself back into class with her. Trying
to remember we weren’t alone. There were other people around. I could talk to
her, but not touch her. Unfortunately, with her so close it was hard to focus
on anything else.

“Well,
you’re not a mind reader, last time I checked,” she paused, “at least I hope
you’re not.”

I
hoped she wasn’t either, because I could have been arrested for what I wanted
to do to her right then.

I
settled into my seat. “Nope, I can, however, predict there will be a pop quiz
today.”

I
figured it anyway. There had been the last time I took this class at the start
of the third week. It was the way Professor Parker had said he separated the students
from the truants. Only he would have put it that way. Only he could make you
seem more of a failure when your paper had a big fat F on it.

She
glanced at her phone. “Thanks for the ten minute heads up,” she laughed, but
there was nervousness behind it.

“Hey,
at least I gave you one,” I said.

“You’re
a bastard.” She hit me playfully. “Did you just want to do better than I did?”

“It
wouldn’t be a pop quiz without the surprise,” I said, cracking my knuckles.
Honestly, I wanted to avoid talking about school when we were together this
weekend, about anything here.

She
picked up her book, slapped it on her desk, flipping through pages. “You’re a
lot more calculating than I thought, Carter.”

She
was joking, but those words hit right in my gut.

“I’m
sure you’ll do fine. You already did the reading, right?”

“Yeah,
but I didn’t
study
it.” Her eyes were worried, dancing around as she
read.

Professor
Parker was all business as he walked in and made his way down to the lectern.
He told us to put our books and laptops away and repeated his infamous line.

People
were so predictable, especially professors. I didn’t know if I would become a
lawyer, but I would never be a professor. Knowing exactly what to expect from
each day was not what I hoped for my future.

Especially
considering it was so much of how I’d spent my present. It was part of what I
liked about Kate. She’d made my compartmentalized life, unpredictable. She was
like a daily pop quiz.

“Crap,”
Kate said, biting her lip.

I
forced myself to stare straight ahead instead of getting lost in her gorgeous
mouth. Professor Parker handed out the tests and I settled in, writing my name
at the top.

The
first question was different than it had been my freshman year. I read on down
the page, they were
all
different. Chosen from topics we wouldn’t be
discussing in class until week eight or nine, if he kept to his usual schedule.

He
was testing us on a chapter we weren’t supposed to have even read yet.

I
mean, it was a chapter I had read, but that was three years ago. The same time I
was trying to keep my head above water when everything happening with Jeanie
had been pulling me down.

I
glanced at Kate. She was already writing. My knowledge of Parker’s penchant for
being an uptight prick who never veered from what was on the syllabus might
just come back and bite me in the ass.

I
tried my best to pull the answers from my brain of three years ago, but that
brain had long since been buried.

Fifteen
minutes later, Professor Parker instructed us to trade papers with the person
sitting next to us. Kate took mine, and I took hers. Parker smirked. He had
never had us grade each other’s papers before, either. It was almost like he
was taunting me.

“Now,
this
is awkward,” she said.

I
laughed it off, but it was. Especially considering I was pretty sure I’d bombed
it.

“How
do you think you did?” I asked before Parker could give us the first answer. I scanned
her test. Her answer to number one was different than mine, which meant one or
both of us were completely wrong.

“I
guess we’ll find out,” she replied.

I fixated
on my pen and Kate’s test as Professor Parker took us through grading them.

Question
1 Kate: Correct, Me: Very Incorrect

Question
2 Kate: Correct, Me: Blank

Question
3 Kate: Incorrect, Me: Correct—
fucking finally
.

Question
4 Kate: Correct, Me: Correct

Question
5 Kate: Correct, Me: Incorrect

Verdict:
Kate was the student and I was the truant. Three years older than her and
supposedly ready for law school and I’d gotten my ass handed to me by a freshman
who’d just transferred here.

I
may have been calculating like Kate had said, but when it came to facts would I
really make a good lawyer?

All
I’d focused on for years was getting the hell out of here; not having to put
into practice what I’d learned when I left.

I
started out studying the law because of my father. Not that I necessarily
wanted to be a lawyer like he said I had to be, but maybe I wasn’t good enough
to even make the choice.

“Pass
them forward,” Professor Parker said, gesturing toward himself.

“So,”
Kate said sitting back and cracking her knuckles, an echo to my cockiness
earlier, “maybe you want to study with
me
.” Her smile was devious,
beautiful.

“Please,”
I replied.

Kate

I
headed to Professor Parker’s office for my weekly advisory meeting. At least he
wouldn’t give me crap about my quiz score, but for some weird reason it did
seem like he would give me crap about Carter. There was something about the way
he looked at us when we were sitting next to each other in class.

Or
maybe it had been about me, seeing me next to someone who was clearly supposed
to be so much older than I was and realizing something wasn’t right.

I
was doing my best to ignore the gnawing anxiety, but it was only a matter of
time before someone realized something was very wrong.

Professor
Parker took off his glasses as I walked in and gave me his full attention, his
brown eyes suctioned to me. “Ah, Kate, how’s the week been?”

“Great,”
I lied, settling in the seat across from him, laying my bag at my side.
Yes,
just great. I’m falling for a guy I could have babysat for who has no idea I’m
totally lying to him, and I have two crazy sorority girls, who were too crazy
to even be in a sorority, gunning for me
.

Even
if I had made it more than a full week sober, this was not an ideal place to be
sitting three weeks into college-take-two.

“Your
quiz was impressive,” he said.

“Thanks,”
I replied, feeling positive at first, but I gritted my teeth, willing him to
not ask me how I’d done it.

I’d only
had the answers because of my time at Franklin Law. I couldn’t help filling in
the blanks before I even finished reading the question. I hoped I hadn’t done
better than everyone in class. That my pride wouldn’t come back to screw me
when Professor Parker realized no one knew the answers but me. Not even someone
who had taken the class before.

Hopefully
he was the kind of conceited egomaniac who would think I had read ahead to show
off for him.

“It
was so remarkable I checked into your background a bit.”

“Excuse
me?” I asked abruptly, on the verge of fainting, my heartbeat stinging. Our
routine meeting was switching into something very different. Maybe this was it.
I was busted.

“Your
transcripts and SATs,” he said, his gaze seemingly frozen in place from the
cold chill I was giving off.

“Yes?”
My mind erupted with anxiety.

“Calm
down, you’re a student, Kate, not a defendant.”

Yet,
I thought.

“Anyway,”
he continued, sitting back in his chair, “I’m not sure why you left Syracuse
University, but if you keep getting grades like your quiz, I don’t see the same
happening here.”

My
fingers started to twitch so much I shoved one of them in my mouth and started
biting my nail.

“You
seemed concerned that I looked at your file.”

My
file, a manila folder of lies—photoshopped lies anyone on the faculty could
casually peruse. I only hoped he didn’t know anyone who taught at Syracuse.

It
was where I had really gone my first semester. Of course, my transcripts read
as last year, not eleven years ago, and my grades had been altered to A’s.

 “No,”
I said, trying to gather myself. For now I was safe. He’d seen my doctored
transcripts, my real recent SAT scores, my application filled with lies, but he
still believed me. Even with me shaking like there was a seismic fault down the
center of my body that had ruptured he still believed I was just any other
student.

“I’m
sorry if you feel like I overstepped, but you were one of the highest scores in
the class,” he said. “I guess I couldn’t help myself.”

I
knew all about that. Regardless of my rules, I couldn’t help sampling every
temptation put in front of me in college-take-two.

 “Your
RA Carter wasn’t so lucky,” he said, leaning forward, his hands clasped on top
of his desk.

“I
know,” I replied, exhaling, relieved for the moment the subject had been
changed.

“I
guess even he learned there are just things you can’t anticipate.”

He
said it in such a way I couldn’t help but wonder if the chapter he chose to
quiz us on had an awful lot to do with Carter.

Did
Professor Parker hate failure that much? Or
was
it something about
Carter? Why did it seem like everyone had something against him?

“We’re
going to start studying together,” I said, though I’m not sure why. Maybe I
wanted him to tell me it was a bad idea.

It
was.
Everything
concerning Carter was. Even if it felt like I was
exactly who I should be when I was with him, he had no idea who I really was. He
never could if I stayed at Hudson. Even if I finally decided to tell him when
he graduated, I would have been lying to him for months.

How
did you come back from that?

“Study
partners are great,” Professor Parker said, sitting back in his chair, “but you
want to make sure you know what you’re getting into.”

What the hell did that mean?
I
guess it meant Professor Parker also knew about Carter’s past. The thing was,
no matter what Professor Parker thought of Carter, it wouldn’t have made him
nearly as bad as I actually was. I knew exactly what I was getting into. It was
Carter who didn’t.

Carter
was harmless, like one of the kittens from the SPCA. I was the Lion.

“The
one thing you should have learned from my class is you can’t predict anything,”
Professor Parker said.

Considering
what had happened since I’d been here, I’d more than learned this maxim.

I’d
also learned that as wrong as being with Carter should have been, it was the
only thing that made sense anymore.