Amends: A Love Story (16 page)

"Yeah, there are some Greeks here, but we
have a little of everything," I say quietly. I count slowly to
twenty, waiting to see if Maggie will tell me herself why she's
really here, or if I'll have to ask. It's a ninety-minute train
ride from the city to Adams, and I hardly know anyone here. If she
just wanted to hang out, she would have invited me to the city,
where she has a ton of friends and there's a lot more to do.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Maggie, it's great to see you. But why did you come here instead
of inviting me to the city, or just texting?"

Maggie's face eyes scrunch up so they crinkle
around the corners. It's her worried expression. I brace myself for
something bad.

"It's Ethan," she says. "His fiancée dumped
him a couple of weeks ago and threw him out of their house. She
broke into his phone and found his text messages to you—all of
them. He was crashing with my ex Damon—remember him?—but he
disappeared the other day. Damon says he's been taking about coming
after you. I came here to tell you in person to be careful. I know
how you can shut your phone off for hours or even days at a
time."

"Oh God," I gasp. "Ethan was here last night.
He kept saying that I owe him big time. I had no idea what he was
talking about. You were so right when you told me to stay away from
him. I am such a pathetic loser."

Maggie smiles ruefully. "You were still in
high school. You'd just lost your parents. It was human."

I'm thinking that it's going to be pretty
hard for me to avoid Ethan now that knows where I work and probably
where I live, when I see a tall, dark-haired man charging for our
table, fists clenched and eyes flashing. His hair is as wild as his
eyes, and his neck is freshly inked with a ring of angry-looking
thorns.

Oh shit.
It's Ethan.

/////////////////////////

Ethan is flat on his back, cursing and
struggling against two beefy fraternity pledges from Kappa Alpha
Delta. About fifteen other pledges are standing around looking
awfully pleased with themselves.

Maggie and I are both gawking at the scene
when one of the pledges stands before us with his head bowed. I
remember the weird, ritualistic scene from the party and command
the pledge—a reedy guy with acne and glasses, obviously a
freshman—to speak.

"Thank you for recognizing this humble
pledge, Mistress. His Greatness Laird Conroy, President of the
Adams Chapter of Kappa Alpha Delta, may he reign forever, asked
this year's pledge class to protect you from that creepy stalker
dude." The pledge holds out his phone. On it is picture of Ethan
standing outside the Adams Apple with an angry expression on his
face. Laird must have taken it last night. "Is that him?" he asks.
"Did we get the right guy?"

"Yes," I reply.

The pledge smiles and whoops. "We got him,
guys!" he yells and the other pledges begin chanting Kappa Alpha
Delta over and over again. Maggie's eyes grow wide, and her subtly
plucked eyebrows creep up her forehead in an unmistakable
expression of surprise and wonder.

After a few moments, the chanting dies down
and the pledges—except for the ones restraining Ethan—seem to stand
at attention. The tall, skinny guy—I think he's their
spokesperson—turns back to me.

"Mistress, what should we do with him?"

I look at Maggie, and she looks back at me,
equally confused. "Leave him with campus security?" I half ask,
half suggest just as five uniformed officers rush into the
café.

Chapter 18: Laird

I'm on the train to New York City bound for
Dad's townhouse of iniquity, because Caspar is driving my car—one
of the Maseratis from Dad's garage in Manhattan. It's my way of
saying thank you for making the pledges guard Amity. He has them
doing shifts. They rotate between keeping an eye on Amity and
scrubbing our sister sorority's toilets with their toothbrushes. I
keep telling her to get a restraining order so she can have Poser
thrown in jail the next time he shows up. I send her a Facebook
message.

Have you gotten that restraining order yet?
Other acceptable alternatives are: a fierce bodyguard (eunuch), a
trained attack dog, a Super Soaker filled with mace.

She mails me back within seconds.

He's gone home to Florida, 1,100 miles away.
He won't be back, trust me. He's back together with his fiancée.
She's got him under some kind of house arrest. No need to involve
(ew!) lawyers.

I sigh. Amity is so goddamned nice, even
after losing both her parents and working at a strip club. I figure
it must be genetic. I message her back, trying not to push too
hard.

Be careful, anyway! See you at the
Governor's Tavern, 7:30 pm, tonight.

The brothers laughed their asses off when
they heard me make a reservation at the Governor's Tavern, and they
laughed even harder when I told them Amity is just a friend. Caspar
said he was going to make the pledges clean my room.

"C'mon," I protested. "You don't need to do
that. She's not that kind of girl."

"You mean she doesn't have a pulse?" asked
Teo. "Dude, you've never struck out. Not once. It's kind of
sickening."

"It's a weird situation. One that I don't
want to talk about," I said, which finally shut them up. It didn't,
however, stop their knowing smirks.

I stare out the window as the train lurches
through a 3D portrait of post-industrial despair. It makes me think
of Triple Marsh, Amity's home town. It's right next door to Jasper
Heights, but it might as well be on another planet. She's worked so
hard to escape. Seeing her on campus weighed down with books, it's
hard to believe she's the same girl who swung around the stripper
pole with such bold, athletic grace. She doesn't even walk like a
dancer. In fact, it seems like she has a bit of a limp.

My phone vibrates. It's Ember again. I read
her message.

Hey, hero. I hear you're playing
knight-in-shining-armor to that poor girl from the accident. You
know how sick that is, right? She's going to find out who you are,
and then what?

I immediately respond.

Who told you that?

She waits almost five full minutes to
respond, teasing me. Goading me. I know better than to play. She
finally writes again.

Your brothers, of course. Boys are easy.

I bet it was Hoover. Or one of the pledges. I
didn't tell them that my friendship with Amity was some kind of big
secret. None of this is their fault. I look down at my phone and
take the bait, posing the question I know Ember really wants me to
ask:

How is Amity going to find out who I am?

This time Ember takes a full ten minutes to
reply. Her response makes me simultaneously angry and afraid.

The Internet, silly. Or, just maybe, someone
will tell her.

It's blackmail, pure and simple, but I don't
know what, if anything, I can do about it. Instead, I take the
coward's way out.

You don't have to make threats just so I'll
see you. Belated birthday festivities with Daddy Dearest this
weekend. Let's get together next week.

/////////////////////////

Amity is sitting alone at a corner table,
sipping a glass of water and gnawing on a breadstick. I'd like to
simply watch her for a while, but I don't have that luxury. I'm
already late. Lunch with Dad, Darla, and several of Darla's film
school friends took forever. Dad and Darla were fighting—I think
Darla's making a play to be my stepmother—while her friends watched
old movies and got smashed on wine from Dad's seemingly bottomless
cellar. I blew out the candles on an exquisite cake and fended off
sloppy passes from a pair of Japanese twins.

Once I drop into the seat across from Amity,
the wait staff comes to life. The waitress, who belongs to our
sister sorority Theta double Delta, immediately brings me a bottle
of champagne, even though Amity isn't quite twenty-one yet. The
basket of plain, stale breadsticks are whisked away and replaced
with freshly baked bread.

"I guess they know you here, huh?" asks
Amity.

"A little bit," I say, and we both laugh. I
hold up my glass of champagne. "To a fun night!"

She repeats my toast and clinks my glass with
hers. I let the fizzy liquid send warmth throughout my body and
remind myself that this is not a date. I'm just trying to learn
enough about Amity so that I can help her achieve her life
goals—and then get out of her life before she figures out who I am.
Or Ember tells her.

/////////////////////////

Amity has drunk more than half the bottle at
my insistence. She's pulling apart a lobster like a cavewoman and
telling me about her grandmother.

"She is a strong, tough woman. Totally hard
core. She worked as a truck driver to help put my mother through
nursing school. She hasn't been feeling well for the past couple of
years—heart stuff, I think, that she never wants to talk about—but
she's still smart and stubborn. She keeps sending me checks for
school expenses, and I keep tearing them up. She has no money
except for Social Security and a little money left over from when
she sold her house in Michigan."

Amity dabs at her eyes with a napkin and
adds, "I miss her. I really should call her more often. We text
every day, but it's not the same."

A grin slowly creeps across my face. I think
I have an idea. "What do you think your grandmother would do if she
won the lottery?"

"Pay my off my student loans to Adams and
then pay for me to go to medical school. Then maybe move out of
that crappy senior apartment she's living in. I'd have to lean on
her pretty hard to make sure she did enough for herself."

"Doesn't she have other family members she'd
want to help?" I ask.

"Not really," she says, draining her glass.
"She was an only child who had an only child. Her husband died
years ago. It's just us now."

/////////////////////////

Amity is holding my arm as we take a
leisurely tour of the campus. I enjoy the gentle pressure of her
touch and try not to think about how she'd probably hate me if she
had all the facts. We come to an uneven stone staircase that leads
to the Row—a narrow street that includes the Kappa Alpha Delta frat
house as well as a collection of co-ops, cafés, and clubhouses.
Amity stumbles, and I catch her before she can fall. She feels so
good in my arms.

"Are you OK?" I ask, still holding her.

"I'm fine," she says with a surprisingly
bitter edge to her voice. "I just hate my limp."

"Did you sprain your ankle?"

"No, I was just strangled by my umbilical
cord for about a minute or so when I was born."

When I look at her blankly, she adds, "I have
a touch of cerebral palsy. Nothing very noticeable unless you're a
sadistic child—just a limp and a stammer. People used to call me
the Amityville Horror, though."

I pull her closer to me, and she rests her
head against my chest. "You know what's weird, though?" she
whispers.

"What?"

"I don't limp at all when I dance."

Then she pulls me in for a kiss. I'm so
surprised that, by the time I realize that I'm doing something
terribly wrong, it's too late. I'm hers.

/////////////////////////

We're sitting on a stone bench in the darkest
part of the Row, holding, touching, and tasting each other. I
remove the clip from her hair and feel its silky softness and heft.
She kisses me with a fierceness I did not expect.

I hear a cacophony of voices getting louder
and closer. It sounds like a rowdy group of freshmen boys looking
for someplace to settle in and get properly fucked up. Amity seems
oblivious. The frat is practically across the street. We could
sneak in the back and go up to my room. It would much more
private—and much more comfortable. The Theta double Deltas—the only
sorority with a house on campus—are holding a midnight mixer. The
frat house will be deserted.

I gently disengage from Amity. Her lips are
swollen, and her eyes are bright. I stroke her cheek and whisper
what I hope is temptation in her ear. "I know where we can go." I
take her hand, and she follows. Wordlessly. Eagerly.

We sneak up the rear staircase and duck into
a supply closet when we hear footsteps. We giggle like naughty
children. I let my hand graze her small, delicate breast. She sighs
and leans into my touch.

We hurry, heedless, to my room. While Amity
puts her coat in the closet, I tie a sock around my doorknob so we
won't be disturbed.

/////////////////////////

I know what I am doing is bad. Wrong.
Immoral. Hurtful. Terrible. Horrible. Morally reprehensible. I'm
going to hate myself in the morning when I wake up to her innocent
pale blue eyes.

But I can't stop. I don't want to stop.

And I don't think she wants me to stop,
either.

/////////////////////////

When I wake up, Amity is gone. I check my
phone. There are no texts or Facebook messages. I also check the
tiny bathroom attached to my room. Nothing. She really is gone. My
first reaction is irrational disappointment. Even though I know
nothing real can come of this, I realize that I'd wanted her to be
here, smiling at me, when I woke up.

I sink back into bed. What happened between
us already has the sweet unreality of a dream. All that's left are
sore muscles and the faintly fruity scent of Amity's perfume. Well,
that and the condom wrappers sitting on my night stand. I pick up
my phone and think about texting her. I stare at the screen for a
few long moments and then shut it off. Anything I say under these
circumstances will be leading her on. Better to wait for her to
contact me. Then I can set an appropriately friendly—but not too
friendly—tone.

I tell myself that her leaving without a word
makes things a whole lot easier for me. For both of us. Clearly,
she doesn't expect anything after last night. She probably assumed
it was a typically fleeting college hook up. I turn my phone back
on—there are no text messages—and then off again. I decide that
last night fundamentally changes nothing. I'm going to follow
through with my plan. I may fade from her life more slowly and
reluctantly than I'd originally anticipated, but the basic idea is
still sound.