Long May She Reign (83 page)

Jack shook his head. “No, he didn't. I covered you up.”

Barely.

“Besides, you have really, really
nice
breasts,” he said. “I bet it made his day.”

Yes, that was her overriding goal in life—to make Leo's day.

“Anyway,” he kissed her, “let's just pick up where we left off.”

Yeah, it wasn't as though the mood had been at all interrupted. “It's almost time for Ultimate,” she said.

He glanced at his clock radio, and shrugged. “I can be late.”

“With the Yale Cup coming up?” she asked. A crucial tournament, which meant that he was going to be down in New Haven all weekend.

“Yeah, you're right, I guess,” he said, sighed, and zipped his jeans—which he had originally told her he was opening “just to get the air.” Then, he frowned. “Wait, that's not right at all.” He unzipped them again, took the jeans off, stood up, and stepped out of his briefs, too.

And, yeah, she
watched
.

He had gone over to his dresser to take out a jock and a pair of shorts, but then noticed that he had an attentive audience, which led to an unsurprising physical response.

“Well, gosh,” he said, grinned at her, and then was across the room in about a step and a half, pushing her down on the bed, cushioning the back of her head with one hand to make sure she landed gently.

He was even more excited than usual, which
she
found very exciting, and there was a frantic freight-train quality to it all, but then—much sooner than she would have liked—everything came to an abrupt halt.

“I'm sorry,” he said, after a minute, turning his head enough to give her a clumsy, out-of-breath kiss. “That was really all about me, wasn't it?”

She nodded.

“Yeah.” He looked at her, wiped his discarded t-shirt across his face, and then moved down, starting to ease her sweatpants and underwear over her hips.

Christ, what was he going to do? “Um, Jack?” she said.

He glanced up. “What?”

Given what had just happened, he couldn't have the notion of heretofore-unattempted intercourse in mind—at least, not in the very immediate future, but— “Well, I'm not sure if we—” She tried to push his hands away. “That is, I don't, uh—”

He frowned. “You don't think it should be all about
you
, for a while?”

It was an argument she could present on her own behalf, convincingly, but—this was all going too fast. And while she should be comfortable with leaping from zero to sixty—most other people seemed to be—she wasn't.

Which probably meant that there was something very wrong with her, but—she just wasn't.

An unspoken message he wasn't receiving at all.

“Jack.” She lowered her hand again, touching his hair. “Please don't. Okay?”

“Oh.” He looked confused, and then his eyes widened. “You mean—oh, wow. Really?”

Yes, really.

“
Never?
” he asked.

The fact had already been established. Was it necessary to belabor the point?

“Hunh.” He sat up, blinking as though he had just woken up from a very deep, drugged sleep. He gave her another long, perplexed look, and then shifted his position so that he was sitting next to her, up near the top of the bed. “Not for nothing, Meg, but that guy Josh wasn't exactly a go-getter, was he?”

She was damned if she was going to trash Josh—or allow him to do so. “We never really got a chance to be
alone
. It—limited our options.”

“Yeah, but—” He closed his eyes, maybe suppressing some critical remark or other, then opened them and nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

She had a feeling that he had a great deal more to say, but was glad that he decided to keep it to himself, since she was flustered enough already.

And yet, sitting next to a very naked guy seemed like the most natural thing in the world, somehow.

“They're all already down there, throwing around their silly little plastic discs without you,” she said.

“Yeah.” He kissed her, more gently than passionately. “Guess I've kind of spent the last ten minutes being an asshole. You mad at me?”

She shook her head.

“Good.” He kissed her again, harder, then stood up.

While he was putting his jock and shorts on, she got ready to leave herself—and then saw the very large wet spot spread across the front of her sweatpants.

Great. “Do you have anything I could borrow to wear outside? There's, uh—” Was she evolved enough to say “semen” aloud in this context? Probably not. “A lot of—DNA—here.”

He looked over. “Oh. Shit. Sorry about that.” Then, he grinned. “
DNA?
”

It was technically an accurate description. Albeit very uptight.

He dug around inside a drawer, then tossed a pair of SAMOHI—Santa Monica High School—sweatpants on the bed. “These are kind of small for me, anyway, so you can keep them, if you want.”

She unfastened her surgical brace, then took off her sweatpants, Jack lounging back against his desk to watch.

“Hey, you stared at
me
stripping,” he said, when she frowned at him. “There's no way you can tell me I can't do it to you, too.”

That was valid, so she continued without a pause, pulling on his sweatpants—which absolutely hung off her—and then going through the cumbersome task of refitting her brace to her leg, which always took a while to adjust properly.

“You need help?” he asked.

Since it was something she needed to be able to do by herself, she shook her head—even though it was so much easier when someone with two hands assisted her.

“You want me to wash the other pair for you?” he asked.

She shook her head, since she needed to do some laundry, anyway. Laundry, being another exhausting aspect of college life, since the machines were all the way down in the damn basement—and she'd maybe been spoiled by the degree to which everyday chores like that were magically completed in the White House before she even noticed that they needed to be done.

Back in February, Susan had arranged it so that she and Andy usually did their laundry together. That way, he could carry her bag and detergent for her, and—not that she was an expert—she could help keep him from using cups of bleach and washing and drying everything at the highest temperatures. According to Juliana, during first semester, he had shrunk so many of his clothes, and the colors had run so often, that he had had to take the shuttle over to the Berkshire Mall and buy a bunch of new stuff to replace them. Twice.

Jack walked her up to the Frosh Quad, and since there was no evidence of photographers nearby, there was no compelling reason not to kiss him good-bye with indecorous enthusiasm.

“So,” he said, when they moved apart. “Going to over to the bio lab to do forensic analysis on the evidentiary sample?”

Meg nodded. “Yeah. Might as well find out where you've been.”

He grinned at her. “Can't recommend that, actually, Meg.”

Which was more than she wanted to know.

Juliana had decided that the two of them should have dinner with Mary Elizabeth and Debbie that night, and see what life as suitemates might be like. It was immediately obvious that Debbie was not only laid-back and cheerful, but also, innately diplomatic—which was probably going to come in handy.

On a regular basis.

The rest of the week felt fairly routine—which was a treat. An unexpected luxury, well worth savoring. It was also great to have the Red Sox up and running again—albeit, often right into double plays, although Jack had already made a couple of “wait, you don't
always
watch them, do you?” comments.

A question she couldn't quite bring herself to answer truthfully.

On Thursday morning, she waited until the very last minute to decide whether she was going to go to her political science class. In the end, she limped on over there, and slouched in the back row. But she was somewhat gratified when—after someone said, in the middle of yammering away, “Well, liberals
always
” do thus and so—Dr. Richardson asked, mildly, whether he had any empirical evidence to back that up, and the guy's high sense of smug dudgeon seemed to wither a little.

Along with something
else
, she was guessing—but that might just mean she was spending too much time with Jack these days.

After he left for New Haven on Friday, she was surprised to find herself feeling kind of bereft about the idea of not seeing him again until late Sunday afternoon, when the Ultimate team would be returning to the campus.

He had assured her, at lunch, that he had no intention of being his usual WUFO—Williams Ultimate Frisbee Organization—road trip self, getting trashed at whatever parties they went to, and trolling insatiably for likely female partners. He would, he said with great assurance, confine himself to quaffing many malt beverages.

Of course, until he brought it up, she hadn't thought to worry that he might take advantage of being away by looking for a one-night stand, but as soon as he promised he
wouldn't
, it became a small, but nagging, concern.

Her mood was not improved by the fact that when she got home from physical therapy, there were emails from both Maureen and Anthony, letting her know that one of the upcoming week's tabloids was going to be running an unusually unflattering photo of her on its cover, with the headline “The President's Daughter's Secret Anorexia Nightmare.”

Which meant that all of the other tabloids and blogs, and maybe some of the mainstream media outlets, were likely to hit the theory hard for a while. Especially since Hannah Goldman—whose article was scheduled for the next Sunday edition—also emailed her with a “do you want to address it, or just let it go?” query.

Swell. Just fucking swell.

She forwarded the emails to Beth, with nothing more than a “
God-damn it!
” comment, then went over to take some ibuprofen and lie down on her bed with an ice pack—which she put on her forehead, for a change of pace.

It would be productive to think about, say, the sociopolitical and historical ramifications of the nature of threat, or why, in fact, she
was
in college, but instead, she alternated between being generally disgruntled about her life and worrying about being thin. It wasn't like it was her fault—or her intent. And the President was pretty damn thin herself—wasn't there a decent chance that they were both just
built
that way?

She lifted the bottom of her shirt—an old yellow Oxford of her mother's—to look at her stomach.

Okay. There was a concavity, and her hips looked—not pretty. Sharp. Bony. As though they might crack under the slightest strain.

Which, judging from recent energetic, intimate activities, was not the case, but still.

“Is this a bad time?” Susan asked from the hallway.

When one planned to stare, critically, at oneself, it was probably a good idea to close the door first. “I
am
almost as thin as everyone keeps telling me I am,” Meg said grimly.

Susan nodded. “Glad you finally noticed.”

Meg frowned at her. “You know, you are, too, and I don't see anyone getting on your case.”

“It's a different kind of thin.” Susan raised her own shirt—a blue Lacoste—just high enough to expose her abdomen, which was slim, but also very muscular. “It's
fit
thin.”

Running several miles and working out daily—or playing sports—wasn't a damn option for everyone, though, was it?

Mary Elizabeth, walking by on her way to her room, paused. “What the hell kind of distracting psychosis is
this
?”

“We have officially determined that Meg is too thin,” Susan said.

Mary Elizabeth's expression indicated nothing, if not extreme distaste. “God, yes.” Then, she checked out Susan's stomach. Extensively. “On the other hand, if
you
ever decide to switch teams, I'll be first in line to try and woo you.”

Susan laughed, but also blushed and quickly lowered her shirt, tucking it into her jeans.

“Show's over, then?” Mary Elizabeth asked, and went on her way.

Meg smoothed her own shirt down, deciding that it would be foolish to be offended about having been deemed unattractive. Not that she didn't like her current team just fine—but, still.

“So, why the sudden realization?” Susan asked.

“There's a big story coming out about my secret anorexia nightmare,” Meg said. “And that means there'll be a lot of coverage about my weight for a while.”

Susan shrugged. “Start getting photographed with food.”

What, some kind of women's magazine layout? Her standing happily in front of a State Dining Room table, gesturing towards a bounteous Easter feast? Meg looked at her blankly.

“They get you sometimes carrying huge cups of coffee around, but that's it,” Susan said. “So, let them see you holding a piece of pizza or a doughnut or something.”

Oh. Well, okay, maybe that was a decent idea.

“And you could always
eat
the food, too, if you wanted,” Susan said.

Words spoken by someone a bit less experienced with being a paparazzi target. Meg shook her head. “You ever seen pictures of people chewing?
Not
a good look.”

Which made her think of a carefully planned campaign stop in Philadelphia, where her mother had made short work of a cheesesteak—Whiz wit, naturally—holding it out in front of herself and leaning forward in the traditionally accepted manner, while a bunch of locals stood around grinning and doing the same.

She had actually been standing off to the side at the time, out of camera range, with a sandwich of her own—part of which she spilled on herself—and been appalled when Rob, one of the advance guys, watched her mother's deft gustatory attack and said appreciatively to Glen, “That was perfect. A little carnal, and a
lot
carnivorous.” Glen had nodded, obviously well-pleased with the nominee's performance.