by Penny Wylder
“Oh really?” I prop myself up on one elbow. “Thinking about what? How our worlds are so completely different? I warned you about that at the start, Keanen, and you said—”
He presses a fingertip to my mouth. “Not that.” His eyes search mine. “I’ve been thinking about all the work you do. You shouldn’t have to.”
I roll my eyes. “Alas, here in the real world, not everyone is born with a trust fund, so—”
“Let me take care of your bills,” he says.
I stop dead, frozen with shock. My eyes go wide. No one has ever offered anything like that before. But… “No, no way.” I can’t accept that kind of charity. “This is my life to deal with, not yours.”
“What, so I can’t help you bear it? Whatever you carry, Missy, I’ll help you with.”
I shake my head. “I can’t accept that kind of money from you. From your family.”
“My father is giving me access to my trust fund after my birthday in November,” Keanen’s saying. “He won’t even notice or care that there’s money missing by then.”
“I said no, Keanen.” I narrow my eyes. Then, after a moment, I let out a huffy little laugh. “Besides, your sister already thinks I’m just dating you so I can use you for your money; could you imagine what she’d say if she heard this conversation?”
“I don’t care what Bette thinks.” Keanen scowls.
I sigh, studying him. “Keanen… regardless of how she treats me, Bette is your sister.” I think about Jake. About how devastated I would be if anyone ever came between us. Not that I’d dream of treating any of his girlfriends the way Bette’s treating me right now, but still. I bite my lower lip. “I don’t want to come between you and your family.”
“You’re not, Missy, I promise you.” Keanen reaches up to cup my cheek.
But I roll over, my backside toward him now. “Look, I’m sorry I’ll miss your game tomorrow,” I tell him, my throat tight with unformed emotion. “But this is just how it has to be. Okay?”
I wait a long, long time for his answer. But finally, he settles in beside me again, his hand slipping around my bare waist to flatten against my stomach. “Okay,” he answers quietly.
The next night, I dress alone in my dorm room, listening to the excited hum downstairs as everyone else gets ready for the big Friday night game. My chest tightens every time I think of Keanen on the field, scanning the stands for my face, and not finding me there.
But it can’t be helped. It’s either this or let him go against his whole family just to give me charity money—money I didn’t want to come between us in the first place.
As I’m leaving, I peek through the common room door and spot Yvette, Sara and Leah all ringed around Bette laughing, their hair in cute braids and their cheeks painted in the Tanglewood University colors.
Bette catches me watching, and her smirk widens. As I duck out the door, though, I notice her expression shift subtly, into an almost frown.
Maybe she’s finally starting to feel guilty for alienating her brother’s… well, I don’t know if I’m Keanen’s girlfriend, exactly. We haven’t set definitions for whatever it is we’re doing. But it’s probably becoming clear to Bette by now that I’m not going anywhere, and that must rankle.
I just hope she doesn’t take it out on her brother. I’m fine with her hating me, but I meant what I said. I don’t want to drive a wedge between Bette and Keanen. Family should always come first.
As if the universe wants to rub in extra hard exactly what a fun night I’m missing, that night at the bar is a nightmare. I don’t see any of our regular customers, just a bunch of businessmen who must be in town for some kind of conference. As usual, the more money people have, the worse they tip, and the worse they treat the staff.
Henry and I trade scowls as we pull pint after pint of Guinness for customers who complain how long it takes (because they don’t understand the art of pouring a perfect Guinness, I assume), and who tip pennies on the dollar. By the end of the night, I’m bone-deep tired, and I’ve barely made a dent in what I’ll need to make to pay off next week’s expenses.
I’ve got the whole semester plotted down to dollar amounts, so I know exactly how much to save up each week in order to stay afloat. To keep on top of all my short term bills and set enough aside that my college loans won’t swamp me the second I graduate.
I was making decent headway, but…
“Don’t sweat it,” Henry tells me, watching me recount my measly tips. “There are good nights and bad ones. We’ll have another good one soon, make up for it.” Then he claps me on the shoulder, and I flash him a grateful smile before I duck under the bar, tuck in my apron, and head out.
Before I leave, I make sure to dig around in my purse and pull out the canister of pepper spray Keanen insisted on buying me, after that first night in the alley when he rescued me. So far I haven’t needed it again—the man he chased off seemed to have taken Keanen at his word, when Keanen promised he’d ruin his life if he ever laid eyes on him again.
But it never hurts to be careful.
I walk back to my dorm, my feet throbbing with every step. To judge by the lights on all over campus and the celebratory cheers and deafening music I hear from more than a few apartment blocks I pass on the way back, we must have won the football game. It makes me smile. I wonder how Keanen did.
Maybe once I get back and I’m lying down in bed—oh God, bed sounds incredible right about now—I can look for clips of the game online, see if anyone recorded it.
That’s the main thought going through my head as I step up to my doorway and slot my key into the lock. Then I freeze, because the lock doesn’t turn, which means it’s already unlocked.
My stomach twists uneasily, and I grab the knob, pushing my dorm room door inward. The second it swings open, I gasp, my jaw falling.
The entire room is trashed.
Crushed beer cans litter my carpet. Half-empty beer bottles are strewn across my bed, soaking through the sheets. My closet has been flung open, all my clothes tossed around, and it looks like there’s beer staining them, too. There’s even a whole bottle of Jack in the corner, which looks like it’s been opened and emptied across my laundry basket, then tossed into the wall so hard it cracked in half.
Tears sting at the backs of my eyes.
“Oh, my God,” someone exclaims behind me, in the hallway. And if possible, my mood plummets even lower. “What a disaster!”
I turn to find Bette wearing the phoniest shocked expression I’ve ever seen, her mouth a perfect, lipsticked O.
“Missy, did you throw a rager in here? You know this kind of behavior is unfitting of a Tanglewood student!” She leans around me, and that’s when I realize she has her phone in her hand, the camera extended.
She’s filming this.
This is the final straw. I reach up and make a grab for the phone, but Bette dances backward, out of reach. “Ah, ah, ah. No touching of other students’ personal property is allowed here at Tanglewood.” She actually has the nerve to wink at me.
“Oh really?” I yell. Dorm room doors are starting to open up and down the hallway, but I don’t care who witnesses this. I’m too furious to care. “Then what the hell do you call this, Bette?” I give up trying to grab her phone, and slap my palm against my open dorm room door instead. “You destroyed my entire room.”
“Please. As if I would ever be caught dead touching anything in your room,” Bette replies, still in that faux voice that grates on me like nails on a chalkboard.
“That’s bullshit and every single person here knows it.”
“Do they?” Bette cocks her head to the side, her eyes flashing with a triumph I don’t understand. “Does everyone know that you weren’t here tonight to do this yourself?” She taps at her chin with a forefinger. “Well, I suppose if you could tell everyone—and prove—where you actually were tonight, then maybe you’d have a case to prove you didn’t…” She waves a hand toward my room. “Have an illegal party in your b
oudoir, instead.”
My stomach sinks all the way through the floor now.
She knows.
It’s the only explanation for her expression right now, the kind of grin you see on a cat right before it devours the canary. Bette tosses her head and glances up and down the hallway at her audience. I spot Yvette looking at me, wide-eyed and worried. Behind her, Sara and Leah are shifting on their feet, uneasy. Neither of them will meet my gaze, which only makes me ball my fists, furious.
“Well, Missy?” Bette says, head cocked, eyes alight with bemusement. “What’s it going to be? Are you going to tell us all where you were tonight, if this isn’t your doing?”
My choices are either to confirm what everyone here must suspect about me by now—that I’m not one of them, and I never will be—or to cave in. To let Bette win. To possibly even get suspended for it. I feel nauseous, like I’m going to be sick.
But I can’t lose my place here. Even if it means my current social pariah status will become permanent. I refuse to let Bette win.
“Tick tock,” Bette’s saying. “Come on, Missy, you only have two choices here.”
But then another voice speaks up, from behind me, up the other direction of the hallway. A familiar, deep baritone. A couple of the other girls gasp at the sound. “No,” Keanen says. “She doesn’t.”
10
I turn slowly to find Keanen standing just behind me. But his eyes are fixed tightly on his sister.
“I can handle this,” I tell him, my voice low and calming. Because this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen—for family to fight family.
But he’s glaring past me at his sister, totally oblivious. “I can’t believe you. I knew you were childish and petty, but this is a new low even for you.”
Bette’s jaw drops. All her earlier vicious excitement is gone, evaporating into tightly coiled anger. “Me? Keanen, I’m trying to help you. You don’t understand how girls like her operate. All she’s doing is using you for your money—”
“You don’t know the first thing about me,” I snarl, unable to contain myself.
“Oh, please.” Bette waves a hand, her eyes narrowing. “You’re all the same. First there’s his ex, now you—”
“She’s nothing like Anamaria,” Keanen barks.
Bette rolls her eyes. “Just another broke girl who wants to rely on Prince Charming to buy her nice things and raise her up from the ashes. After watching you last time, big brother, I couldn’t stand by and let it happen again.”
I glance from Bette to Keanen and back again, thrown. Keanen’s ex used him?
“We all know you’re just on the rebound,” Bette continues. “Vulnerable. It’s my job to make sure you don’t get hurt again.”
I wince. But her words make a certain amount of sense. After all, how hard would I defend Jake in a similar situation? If he had a girl who was taking advantage of him.
But Keanen just shakes his head, stepping forward to place one hand on my shoulder. Even through the fabric of my shirt, his skin feels so warm it borders on hot. “Missy’s not a rebound,” he says. He finally tears his gaze from Bette and looks at me—really looks at me, dead-on in the eyes. “I’m falling for her,” he adds, softer. In a voice just for me.
My stomach does a backflip, my eyes going wide. I could listen to him say that all day, every day. My eyes well with tears. “You mean it?” I whisper, my voice tight with emotion.
Behind me, Bette scoffs, but I don’t care. Right now, Keanen and I feel like the only two people standing in this hallway.
“I mean it,” he replies, softly.
“Good.” I manage a slight, half-smile. “Because I think I’m starting to fall for you too,” I admit.
Just as he’s about to bend to kiss me, a door slams at the far end of the hallway, and the familiar voice of Morgan, our hall RA, barks out, “What the hell is going on out here?”
Keanen and I jump apart, and my stomach leaps into my throat. Uh oh.
The RA isn’t sure how to handle the huge, dramatic mess we’ve made of things. So she just bundles me, Keanen and Bette all together and decides to frog-march us across campus for an emergency meeting with the chancellor, who they’ve summoned from bed at this hour.
The chancellor, as in, Bette and Keanen’s father.
I could puke I’m so nervous at the thought of meeting him for the first time. Especially like this. But as we’re being marched down the hallway, Sara and Leah step out from the group of girls all gawking at the scene.
“Missy, I’m so sorry,” Sara says.
“We had no idea things would be like this,” Leah adds.
I grimace and shake my heads at them. I’m sure they didn’t… but their betrayal still stings. The last thing I see before we’re led out onto the green lawns across campus are their deep frowns. Then cool air hits us, and the three of us fall silent, trudging after Morgan in single-file.
We’re halfway to the offices of the deans when Bette speaks up. “You shouldn’t blame your friends,” she says. “For ditching you, I mean. I might’ve… told them. Some things. About you.”
“Lies, you mean?” I snap.
Bette clears her throat, but doesn’t reply beyond that. She doesn’t have to. Her silence says it all.
We keep walking for a few paces, and then Keanen reaches over to grab my hand and weave his fingers through mine. He squeezes tightly, just once, and I squeeze back, shooting him a small smile.
For a moment, my nerves dissipate.
Then we reach the main office building, and my nerves ramp up again, because there’s Keanen and Bette’s father, Chancellor Kross, standing on the steps in his suit, his glasses on and his hair neatly combed. Does the man sleep in his suit? How does he look this prim, pressed and ready for action after being woken in the middle of the night?
There’s no time to wonder at it. He pushes open the door and gestures at Morgan, the RA. “I can take it from here,” he says.
He leads us through the main offices and into his office. It’s a beautiful room, all oak paneled and lined with thick academic tomes. The moment we enter, he shuts the door behind us, and waves us toward a trio of seats arrayed opposite his desk.
I take a seat on the furthest one, perched on the very edge of the chair, nervous and fidgety.
Chancellor Kross doesn’t sit. He leans against his desk, crosses his arms, and glares down his nose at his children, all but ignoring me entirely. “Speak,” he says.
“Keanen is—”
“Bette was—”
The chancellor holds up a finger. “One. Of. You. At a time.” He glares between his kids, as if he can’t decide who he’s more disappointed in. Then he gestures at Keanen. “Explain.”
Keanen bows his head. “It’s my fault.”
Bette and I both whip around in unison to gape at him. What?
“I threw the party,” he’s saying. “It got out of hand. The blame falls squarely on my shoulders, sir.” He straightens in his seat.
My stomach twists. It’s noble, what he’s trying to do, but Keanen is just a semester away from graduating. He can’t get a black stain on his record now, not one as bad as this. Drinking on campus, giving alcohol to minors, whatever else they could charge him with…
But to my surprise, Chancellor Kross just sighs, looking aggravated. “Keanen, what do I value above all else?” he says.
“Hard work,” Keanen replies.
His father’s eyes narrow.
Keanen bows his head. “And honesty.”
“Honesty. Yes.” The chancellor glances around the room, and for the first time since we entered, his gaze lands on me. He looks so much like his son. He tilts his head, holding my gaze. “Tell me, Miss…?”
“Missy,” I reply, and his lips tighten with amusement.
“Missy. Tell me, does that sound like the honest truth to you?” He raises an eyebrow. I remain silent, my mind racing. I don’t know how to get out of this one. I either wind up calling Keanen a liar—ba
d—or I condemn him to taking the fall for Bette’s actions—also bad. I bite the inside of my lip, and the chancellor shakes his head, heaving another sigh. “No, I don’t think so either.”
He leans forward, shifting his gaze to his younger child now. “So why don’t you tell me what in God’s name was going through that head of yours this time, hmm, Bette?”
I wince at hearing him talk this way. So does Keanen. As for Bette, though, she only seems to bristle at the challenge, straightening in her seat.
“I didn’t do anything. She’s the one you should be talking to.” Bette gestures at me.
“Keanen, is that true?” Chancellor Kross asks, without taking his gaze off his youngest daughter.
“No, sir,” Keanen answers after a moment’s pause.
Bette scowls.
“So it is, as I suspected, another of your temper tantrums,” the chancellor continues. He leans back against his desk with a loud sigh. “It’s as much as I deserve, I suppose, for letting your mother talk me into a second child.” He shakes his head.
For a moment I just sit there, stunned into silence by what I just heard. Jesus. I know he’s angry, but I can’t imagine what it must feel like to hear your own parent say something like that. I shoot another glance at Bette, and all the fight’s gone out of her now. Her eyes glisten with tears instead.
Before their father looks over again, Keanen reaches over to squeeze her knee, gently. And slowly, more and more about Bette’s attitude begins to make sense.
I grimace. I don’t forgive her for what she did to me, but… I can’t imagine what her life has been like. Here I was assuming that Keanen and Bette’s world was so much easier because of their money, but… Money can’t fix every problem.
“Missy.” The chancellor’s gaze is on me again, and I force myself to sit straighter, meet his gaze. “I offer my sincerest apologies for my youngest daughter’s behavior. I hope that you will decline to press charges.”
My lips part. Press charges? I never even dreamed of suing the girl over this. It was childish, infuriating, yes, but…