Tap & Gown (24 page)

Jamie headed toward the men’s room and Josh took my place next to Lydia in the booth, scooting in so there would be room for me and Jamie. Odile and Clarissa had wandered off somewhere. The waiter returned and we all ordered another round, including Jamie’s gimlet, which turned out to be a subtly green-tinged vodka drink. I took a discreet sip before he got back. Lime. Interesting.

“So what’s this news Lydia’s been hinting at?” Josh asked, and I launched into my full report.

“… And the best thing about it is that it’s this summer. It doesn’t cut into anything I might want to do next year,” I finished.

“Which is?” Jenny asked.

“Not sure yet,” I admitted. Jamie put his arm around my shoulders.

“You really need to get on that,” said Ben.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do it in all that spare time I’ve got.”

He held his hands up. “Fine. I’m just saying, what happened to the girl who had her summer internship all lined up the January beforehand last year?”

“I’ve been a bit busy with other stuff.”

“We’ve all been busy, Amy,” said Josh, clearly feeling he owed me no charity after I’d caused a rift between him and Lydia.

And it wasn’t fair, either. Those of us who knew what they were doing next year had been more prepared to actually achieve their goals. My grad school applications had been more of a last-minute effort. No wonder they hadn’t performed as well. And if I hadn’t put as much effort into follow-ups or additional applications since returning from Spring Break, well …

“I’ve been
really
busy,” I said, slightly more forcefully than necessary. “On top of all your stuff, I had that fun extracurricular activity. Remember? The one where I was stalked, harassed, drugged, and kidnapped?”

Everyone got very quiet. Jamie’s arm tightened around me.

“Uh, Amy …” Jenny began. “You okay?”

Lydia got a cunning look in her eye. “Wait, don’t you all know?”

“Lydia, not tonight,” I said, but she was not to be deterred. After all, I’d screwed her over in front of her boyfriend.

“Darren Gehry called last week. He’s totally out on the streets.”

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I gave my roommate the evil eye, but she ignored me and went on. “What was it he said when he called, Josh? Something about ‘boys will be boys’? Sounds like the whole family is taking this ‘rehabilitation’

thing very seriously indeed.”

Jamie dropped his arm and turned to me. “When did this happen?”

“Last Thursday,” Lydia informed him. “You must have just left the suite when he called.”

I was going to kill her.

“Amy!” Demetria said, on cue. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because, like I said, I’ve been busy.” I kept glaring at Lydia, who was about to gold medal in ignoring.

“We all have, with—stuff.” Society stuff. Now I understood why knights didn’t bring barbarians to their events.

“We could have made time to talk about this,” Jenny said.

“This is not what we agreed upon, back in Florida.” Demetria was seething. “You need to—”

I cut her off. “I know what I need to do. I need to graduate. I need to fulfill my commitments to my …

activities on campus. I do not need to dwell on what happened in Florida right now. I do not need to go down there and what—what? Start giving statements? Get in a protracted fight with the extensive Gehry legal team? Just forget it. I don’t have the time or energy for it. It’s over. I’m never going to see that kid again. I just want to move on and concentrate on the stuff that’s really important.” I cast a glance around the suddenly dead-sober table. “Come on, guys. This is supposed to be my night to celebrate.”

Jamie hadn’t spoken again. I tried to put my hand over his but he snatched it away and threw back the rest of his drink. “You know,” he said after swallowing, “I have some reading I have to do for tomorrow.

Sorry to cut this short but I have to run.” He grabbed his bag, gave me a quick peck on the cheek, and
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scrammed.

If anyone else at the table spoke, I didn’t hear it. I was too busy chasing after my boyfriend.

“Hey.” At the top of the stairs.

“Hey!” By the downstairs bar.

“
Hey!
” As he slipped through the front door into the New Haven twilight.

He took a few steps down the sidewalk then stopped and turned around. “What do you want me to do, Amy? I have two choices. I could sit there with your friends and explode, thereby justifying their negative opinion of me, or I could leave.”

“And what do you think their opinion is when you split in the middle of that particular conversation?”

He hissed a breath of air through his teeth. “Okay, you got me. But what do you want me to do? Darren called you again, and
again
your friends knew before me.”

“They were standing in the room with me!” I argued. “Josh practically ripped the phone out of my hands.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “None of this signifies. Your friends and me—it’s not the point at all.

The real question is, what are you going to do about this?”

“How about nothing?”

“How about that doesn’t sound remotely like you?”

How about I don’t have time! If I get obsessed with punishing Darren, then everything else will slide.

What was I going to do about him? Screw that! What was I going to do about Jamie after graduation?

What was I going to do about my future? What in the world was I going to do about tap now that I’d lost Michelle? Why couldn’t I just have one evening to rest and relax and be happy about the colloquium?

“The Amy I know would never let him get away with this. You made a deal—a stupid deal, but a deal.

You’d let the Gehrys handle their son privately, and you wouldn’t press charges. But they aren’t holding up their end. You don’t owe them anything. Again, Kurt Gehry is breaking trust with us, just like he did last year.”

“And should we expect any different?” I asked. “A scorpion is a scorpion. And even if he weren’t, don’t you think your own son comes before anything you might owe your old college secret society?”

“This isn’t about the society,” Jamie said. “This is about his son hurting you. Really hurting you, beyond any comparison to a society prank or whatever idiotic justification you’ve created for what Darren did. I don’t believe we are to blame for this in any way, no matter what you think Darren learned by spying on us. But now I wonder: Is that what is holding you back from pressing charges? Do you think that going after a patriarch’s son would be against your vows to the society?”

“No. I just—I can’t deal with anything else right now With tap, and graduation, and everything else, my plate is way too full.” It was true. And it would be true even if I hadn’t made sure there was no free time
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left to spend contemplating what had happened to me.

He folded me into his arms. “But don’t you know, there’s a dozen people in that bar who will help you?

I’ll help you. That’s what we’ve been trying to do all along.
That’s
where the society vows come in. You made a decision, we submitted to it, no matter how bad of an idea we thought it was. But if you choose to take action, we’ll find giving you that kind of help far easier to stomach.”

“I just want to put it behind me,” I said.

“But you’re not,” he replied. “You’re having nightmares. You know who has put it behind him? Darren.”

Darren, who went to Disney World while my life filled up with stress and responsibilities. I buried my face in Jamie’s chest.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled into his shirt. “I have to … think about it.”

“Then promise me you’ll think about it. Really think.”

And then, no doubt, come to the decision he and the rest of my friends advocated. “Think” didn’t mean
think
. It meant
realize that our way is best
. But I wasn’t the multitasker that some of them were. I’d think about it, all right. After I had my life in order.

I tilted up my chin and met his eyes. “I promise.”

He breathed deeply and wound his fingers through my hair to cup my face. “I love you, Amy.”

Every cell in my body spun in place. A thousand thousand seconds seemed to pass before I could find my voice.

Jamie leaned his forehead against mine, squeezed his eyes shut. “That was the gimlet talking.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed. “And now I
do
have to go.”

To run away? After that bombshell? Fat chance. “Can I come with you?” My hands went inside his jacket to rest on his hips.

The sound he made was halfway between a laugh and a groan. “No, because I have work. And I—”

“Don’t think you could work if I came with you.”

“Exactly.” He met my eyes again. “But soon.” And then he kissed me until my cells started spinning again.

After he was gone, I staggered back toward the bar, wondering if my face was the color of a 312. He
loved
me?
He loved me
.

“Kinda intense, isn’t he?” said Odile. She and Clarissa stood by the wall, smoking.

Oh, God. Now my cheeks did burn. I got as near as my lungs and sense of humility would allow.

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Odile flicked some ash off the end of her cigarette. “How does that, you know,
translate?
In bed.”

“Odile,” Clarissa said with a roll of her eyes and a drag on her cigarette.

“Oh, please,” said Odile. “We know all the dirty stuff about every single one of us. Amy doesn’t get out of sharing time just because her C.B. was early on.” She dropped her cigarette on the ground and stamped it out with the pointy toe of her designer boots. “And I have to admit, I’ve always been kind of curious. Does he like it kinky?”

“Odile!” I said, and looked at Clarissa for support.

But Clarissa’s expression had turned thoughtful. “Yeah,” she said. “Come to think of it, he kind of screams bondage fetish, doesn’t he?”

“Exactly,” said Odile.

“Guys!” I cried. “I just had an incredibly romantic moment and you’re ruining it. And, for your information, I wouldn’t know what kind of fetishes Jamie has, because we haven’t slept together.”

They blinked at me.

“What are you waiting for?” Clarissa asked.

Odile’s mouth formed a perfect little O. “He’s not, like, one of those abstinence people, is he?”

“Or gay,” Clarissa suggested. “He could be gay.”

“He’s not gay, and he’s not abstinent,” I said wearily. “It just hasn’t happened yet.”

“Huh.” Clarissa lifted her cigarette to her lips. “So what was the romantic moment?”

He said he loved me. He said he
loved
me.
He said he loved me
. “That,” I replied coyly, “is a secret.”

Back inside, the crew had wisely decided to move on to other topics than Darren, and even more wisely had chosen to order food. The nachos and cheese fries had arrived, but Demetria was still waiting on her goat cheese and spinach pizza when George approached the table with his sophomore squeeze in tow.

“Oh,” he said, looking around at the group. “I thought this was a barbarian thing—”

“It is,” I replied, pointing at Lydia with a cheese fry. “There just aren’t many.”