Long May She Reign (52 page)

“—get caught up in that,” he said. “Because, um, well, I don't like to say it, but because of who you are, and you know, your situation, you'd seem like a, uh—well—”

Meg decided to rescue the poor guy. “An excellent trophy.”

Dirk looked relieved. “Yeah, kind of.”

“It's okay,” Meg said. “Luckily, I stopped falling for that one a couple of years ago.” She'd had to learn it the hard way, more than once, but she'd ultimately figured it out.

“Not that I don't think he wouldn't also like you for
yourself
,” Dirk said quickly. “I just—that is, the guys—” He grinned self-consciously. “We thought it would be better if I talked to you about it.”

Meg nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate your looking out for me.”

He nodded, and straightened up from the windowsill.

She'd always envied people who had big brothers, because she figured they were privy to certain types of information which, for her, remained a mystery. “Is talking to a JA similar to attorney–client privilege?”

“If you mean, do we keep things confidential, yeah,” he said. “Of course.”

He probably found it insulting that she'd even asked. “I'm sorry,” Meg said. “In my world, you have to be kind of formal about it, if you want to go off-the-record.”

He nodded, and she had a feeling he was very glad not to be living in her world.

“I have to be extra-careful about—” Could she think of a good euphemism? No. She would have to use her mother's favorite. “The choices I make.”

Dirk seemed to be lost, but he nodded gamely.

Okay, she was going to have to be more direct. Meg let out her breath. “I can't necessarily say yes, even when I
want
to say yes.”

This time, she could tell from his nod that he understood where she was going.

“Do you think—” She stopped. This was too god-damned personal to ask a guy she didn't know all that well.

“I think everyone on the whole campus worries about stuff like that, one way or another,” he said, when she didn't continue. “Because it's complicated as hell, even when people act like it isn't. Although, you know, about something like this, you should really probably talk to—well—”

Susan.

“But,” he said, “if a guy's a good guy, he'd be okay with whatever
you're
okay with. You know?”

She sure hoped so.

*   *   *

SINCE SHE WAS
supposed to keep her knee immobilized, she wasn't allowed to do any physical therapy the next day, but she still had to drag down to the hospital to have it checked. She had already blown through more of her pain prescription than she wanted to admit, but she was almost positive that they weren't going to give her more, and it would look bad if she asked. Far better to pretend that mere ibuprofen was doing the trick.

The doctors were upset that her knee was still more swollen than they thought it should be—and that she was running yet another pain-induced fever, and they decided to repeat several of the tests they had done on Friday—which she assumed was just a grotesque overreaction. Still, it made her tired, and short-tempered, and although she made an effort not to be rude, she also went out of her way to do as little talking as possible.

Vicky came by to see how she was doing, and while the orthopedists and radiologists were busy consulting with one another, she had an excruciating twenty-minute hand therapy session with Cheryl, during which she was polite, but essentially monosyllabic.

When she got back to the dorm, she wasn't in the mood to do much more than turn out the lights and lie down on her bed. It wasn't until nine o'clock that she could bring herself to check her messages, which included a “
Goodrich? As soon as possible?
” email from Jack.

With the proviso that they would, in fact, study, she decided to take him up on it—and, to her surprise, studying was almost exclusively what they did. They had a psychology unit quiz coming up on Friday, but since it was cumulative and expected to take up the entire class period, it was really a midterm, despite her professor's semantic choice to make it sound less daunting. They also had to hand in their lab reports on Wednesday, and she was severely behind in that aspect of the course.

On top of that, she had a philosophy paper to finish, her political science paper to
start
—about the damn Presidency; she had decided to focus upon the limits of executive powers—and more studying to do for her Shakespeare midterm. Jack had economics and Spanish midterms, and also had to hand in a fairly large portfolio of work for his art studio drawing course.

None of which seemed to be causing him the slightest bit of anxiety.

“Aren't you worried about
any
of this?” she asked, finally.

Jack looked up from a Spanish translation. “I do the reading, I go to class, I study. So, no big deal.”

She was possibly a little weak in all three areas. “I slug down coffee, watch CNN, and look up at my ceiling a lot,” Meg said.

He shrugged. “Not everyone needs to study all that much. But, I kind of do, so I have to make time for it.”

She had always been inclined to coast. To do
just
well enough to keep her parents from noticing, but not so well that it would attract undue attention from any of her teachers—or the press, for that matter—but, despite the fact that she generally got A's, and had almost never, up until her Astronomy course, ended up with anything lower than an A-, as far back as she could remember, she had regularly received lectures, from all and sundry, about her flagrantly intentional propensity to underachieve.

“What?” Jack asked.

Poor old Josh had always spent a lot of time asking her what she was thinking, or why she had drifted off in the middle of a conversation—and she had rarely given him anything close to an accurate answer. She shook her head. “I'm sorry. I guess I was thinking for a minute.”

It would be wrong to compare them, so she wouldn't—but, Josh would have been disheartened by that, and this guy just shrugged.

“Okay,” he said, glanced at his textbook, and then amended something in his notebook.

“It doesn't bother you?” she asked.

He looked up. “What? That you
think
?”

Which made it sound all the more ridiculous, but she nodded.

“You're unbelievably fucking private,” he said, “and, as far as I can tell, you've got—I don't know—” he grinned— “an active inner life.”

That, she did.

“So, whatever,” he said, and went back to his reading.

It was unusual, but kind of a relief, to have someone
not
captivated—or, more typically, alarmed—by her every exhalation.

They didn't leave until about two in the morning, and he must have been tired, too, because after only a knee-jerk “Are you
sure
you don't want me to come up and help you release some—tension?” suggestion near the first-floor command post, he kissed her good-night, politely, and headed off to his own dorm.

The next night, they studied together again, but they didn't even get started until past ten, because he had gone straight from an Ultimate Frisbee scrimmage to the studio to work on his portfolio for several hours. Which gave her plenty of time to go over to the library, do some research for her political science paper, and—well—take a nap.

In contrast to his normal sangfroid, he seemed restless, switching from one notebook to another, discarding a highlighter for a pen, and then a pencil, and going up to the coffee bar repeatedly to get various snacks, bringing her back fresh coffee each time.

“You're, um, not in the mood for this tonight?” she asked finally.

He looked up from a lengthy, neatly-printed Spanish vocabulary list. “No, it's not that, I—” He stopped. “Well, yeah, it kind of
is
that.”

Great. “Well,” she said, “my feelings aren't going to be hurt—” like hell—“if you want to take off, or whatever.”

He grinned at her. “I bet a million dollars they
would
be hurt.”

Very much so, but she shrugged in lieu of answering.

“I'm just—I don't know.” He picked up one of the chocolate chip cookies he'd bought earlier and ate it in two bites. “I'm pretty sure my portfolio is, you know, stinkin'
lousy
, and—” He gulped down the last bit of his mocha freeze, then finished off another cookie. “Doesn't matter.”

Yeah, it clearly wasn't bothering him at all. “You want to go back to the studio?” she asked.

He thought about that, then shook his head. “No. I'll start overworking everything, and—” He thought again. “No.”

Which sounded more like a “Yes, I'm dying to,” but, okay.

They sat there, not speaking—or studying.

“Can I draw your hands?” he asked suddenly.

She had been distracted enough to forget and let her splint rest on the table, while she took notes with her good hand, but now she moved them both to her lap.

He frowned. “I can't?”

“God, no.” Hell, she didn't ever want him even to
see
her bad hand out of its splint, forget letting him stare at it with artistic intensity.

“How about just your left hand?” he asked.

It still felt—invasive. She shook her head.

He looked disappointed, but ate another cookie and returned to his Spanish list.

Then, a nervous thought crossed her mind. “You know, you can't
ever
draw me,” she said. “Especially not—” Except, wait, there was still a very good chance that she would never even
be
fully unclothed in front of him. “Well, anyway, you really can't.”

“Oh. Sorry. Didn't know that,” he said, and pulled a sketch pad out of his knapsack, flipping it open about halfway through.

She looked across the table—and saw herself. Several small drawings, all on the same page. A profile. A three-quarters view of her sitting somewhere, holding a cup of coffee. A third of her looking watchful, even behind a pair of sunglasses. They were quick sketches—a few bold strokes; some shading—but clearly
her
.

The concept of someone drawing her, over and over, was kind of creepy, but it was also hard to overlook the fact that the sketches were damned
good.
Unusually so, and also disturbingly revealing. She looked—not imperious, exactly, but not friendly, either. Extremely self-contained. A little intimidating.

“I'm not like,
fixated
,” he said. “I draw everyone.”

She checked a few more pages, and saw that it was true. People in the dining hall, various scenes from what must be inside his dorm. Indistinct figures crossing the campus, bundled up against the snow and wind.

Some of the sketches were of people in their psychology class, immediately recognizable—Frances, of course; the skinny guy who sat up front, participated too much, and thought
everything
was Freudian; two flirtatious-looking girls who had obviously been trying to get Jack's attention, little realizing that they very much had it; a few rather eviscerating ones of their professor, Dr. Wilkins, with her typically pained expression; and then, a couple more of her, gripping a pen as though she might take a note or two, but appearing quite disengaged from whatever was being discussed that day.

“I don't look sexy,” she said. Whereas the ones of
Frances
had a powerful come-hither quality.

Jack leaned over, looked at them, and nodded in agreement.

Swell. The person in the drawings had a very familiar untouchable quality. Meg frowned. “Do I really look that much like her?”

He nodded. “Especially when you're trying to make people back off.”

How disquieting.

The next few pages were all couples. They weren't blatantly erotic—but they were clearly the creation of an artist who was very attuned to sexual tension and attraction. Lust. Desire. Disappointment.
Yearning
. Some, he must have drawn either during, or right after, a drunken party, because the couples all looked sort of sloppy—and predatory. Others seemed to be brief encounters he'd witnessed around the campus. A guy and a girl nestled together in a corner, maybe at the end of a hallway. A blank-faced pair at a table in the Snack Bar, possibly in the wake of some major argument. A girl leaning against a tree, while a guy faced her, one hand resting on the bark right next to her head, the other on her waist. A bearded male professor and a female student, on the steps outside Chapin, not touching, but also unmistakably involved in a non-academic relationship.

The most overtly sexual line drawing was two guys who were doing nothing more than playing pick-up basketball, but—whether they were aware of it or not—
definitely
had interests which went far beyond the game. The image was intriguing enough for her to spend some extra time studying it.

“Think they know?” she asked.

Jack checked to see which sketch she meant, then sat back. “No. The way I saw it, they just thought they were in athletic sync.”

As opposed to sublimation. She pushed the sketchbook over to him. “You're very good. I mean, seriously good.”

He shrugged, but also looked extremely pleased.

“Don't be a putz and major in Economics,” she said.

He tucked the sketch pad away. “I could double-major, maybe.”

As long as he didn't let the art go. “Do your parents know how good you are?” she asked.

“I don't know. I mean, I guess my mother does, because she always used to take me to museums, and sign me up for Saturday classes and everything. Although it started getting in the way of football, and Dad was—” He grinned. “Well, she ended up finding me a night class, instead.”