Love Story

by Jennifer Echols

  Manohar’s mouth dropped open. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. All the guys in the class moaned, “Oooooooooooh!”

  Except Brian, who raised his hand and said, “Um, no, that would be me.”

  And except Hunter. I was fairly certain Hunter hadn’t joined the moaning. I dared not turn my head to look at him. My face burned with anger at Manohar, and shame that he’d made me lose my cool and attack him with a joke worthy of my grandmother’s stables, and worry about what Hunter would say.

  I read Gabe’s lips rather than heard him. “We never discussed what kind of writing was acceptable for this class.”

  The students hushed themselves as if he’d stood up and banged his fist on the table, even though he’d spoken in his usual soft voice, like he was out having coffee with one of us and telling us about catching a wave in the Pacific. Now there was a little murmur of question: What had Gabe said? Had he said something about Erin’s kind of writing? But nobody wanted to be the one to admit they hadn’t been paying attention. After all, it was only our second class.

  “To Erin’s point,” Gabe said, “there is no genre specified. I hope each of you will feel free to explore the kinds of stories that move you, and to hone your craft for your own purposes. To that end,” he turned to Manohar, “our critiques of each other’s work need to be constructive.” He turned to me, and I tried not to shrink back. “And we need to respond to those critiques in a manner that leaves the floor open to honest communication.”

  The air was thick with tension, all eyes on me. If this had been high school, I would have sat there in silence and mortification.

  But you know what? One year of age—I won’t say maturity, considering how I’d just lost my temper, but at least age—had changed me. And the publishing internship was a carrot held just beyond my lips, motivating me. Gabe had been taking notes the whole time Manohar and I argued. I should have been more careful about what I said in front of him. I had written a story about Hunter and I didn’t know whether he was going to blow my cover.

  So I forced a smile and said, “Gabe, I’m truly sorry. I see now how I sounded, and I promise I’ll do better next time. It’s hard to be one of the first!”

  He nodded, and Summer and some of the other girls laughed nervously. Manohar sneered down at my story.

  I wrote INTERNSHIP in block letters in my notebook, as a reminder.

  “Brian?” Gabe prompted. “What did you think of Erin’s story?”

  “I enjoyed it,” Brian said. “That was some stable boy.”

  I swallowed and did not look at Hunter and doodled curlicues around INTERNSHIP.

  The girl next to Brian said the first line of my story was the funniest thing she’d ever read. Beside her sat Kyle, the guy who’d written about the wolf. He said my first line ruined my whole story for him. The next two people made similarly contradictory and therefore useless comments, and then came Hunter.

  But Gabe skipped right over Hunter to give him more time to read, and asked for commentary from Isabelle.

  The remaining girls said they liked my story. The remaining guys did not. I didn’t care anymore. My debut as a New York author was ruined already. Now I was only concerned with whether they’d noticed that the stable boy I’d written about was actually the stable boy sitting at the end of this very table. An uncanny likeness, they would say! An amazingly accurate description! Obviously written by someone infatuated with Hunter Allen!

  But slowly I realized that nobody would figure out this story was about him. Nobody would suspect me of putting a character in my story who, one class period later, randomly showed up in the class. They wouldn’t even know we knew each other.

  Unless he told them.

  Summer took her turn, rushing to my defense with such enthusiasm that it was clear she was speaking as my roommate, not as a fellow writer. “Oh, and one more thing.” She looked straight at Manohar. “Nipple!”

  The class laughed. I grinned at Summer and she beamed back at me. At that moment I loved her very much and almost forgave her for the brouhaha over my clothes earlier.

  “Hunter, what did you think?” Gabe asked.

  Everyone in the room looked at Hunter expectantly.

  I looked down.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t comment,” Hunter said, one side of his mouth curved up in a charming smile and one dimple showing.

  I did not actually see this because I was staring down at David thumbing Rebecca’s nipple. I did not have to see Hunter’s charming smile to know it was there.

  He went on, “I haven’t had a chance to read it closely enough.”

  “You commented on the first two stories,” Brian pointed out.

  “They were shorter,” Hunter said.

  “This was a long story,” Isabelle affirmed. “I nearly had a heart attack when I saw it in the library. It’s thirteen pages long. For me, writing five is like pulling teeth.”

  Through the general murmur of approval that ensued about the wondrous length of “Almost a Lady,” Manohar spoke to me across the table. “Congratulations. You have written a very long story.”

  I shot him the bird.

  Gabe grabbed my hand, lowered it gently to the table, and patted it twice without looking at me. He cleared his throat. The class quieted, and he prompted again, “Hunter?”

  Hunter had been talking to Isabelle. Now he glanced up at Gabe, then turned his shoulders deliberately to me and met my gaze. He smiled.

  I had known Hunter for a long time. This wasn’t his charming devil-may-care smile. It was tight and false.

  He would never deliberately show it, but I suspected he was furious with me.

  “Erin,” he said, “I am from Long Island, but I’ve spent some time around Churchill Downs, in Louisville, and I’ve been to parties with horse people. You’ve captured that experience perfectly.”

  Isabelle said, “Her story’s set in the eighteen hundreds.”

  Hunter nodded, eyes still on me. “The parties haven’t changed.”

  “All right, Erin,” Gabe murmured. “It’s finally your turn to talk.”

  I opened my lips. I’d had so much to say in defense of my story thirty seconds before. But I could not think of a single retort with Hunter watching me through those clear blue eyes, wearing that tight smile. He had never been to a race party as far as I knew. The closest he’d come was the night of the Derby last May, when he whistled to me from the yard and handed me my music player and earbuds, which I’d left on the shelf in the stable office. Now he was reminding me that my horse farm was his now. My horses, my house, my parties. Over the summer he’d probably thrown the parties himself.

  I looked down and drew fireworks exploding out of internship. “I said everything I wanted to say when I spoke out of turn.”

  “You’re sure?” Gabe asked me. “Going once, going twice …”

  I bit my lip and nodded.

  “It’s a big deal to go first,” Gabe addressed the whole table, “and I think all these authors deserve a round of applause.”

  There was applause, and cheering, and somebody shouted, “Nipple!”

  “Write hard,” Gabe said, “and I’ll see you Thursday.”

  Chair legs raked back on the hardwood floor. Everyone burst into the conversations they’d been too repressed to have with each other on their way into class—before Hunter had arrived to loosen them up. Amid this bustle of leaving, Gabe inhaled deeply through his nose, portly chest expanding. He fished a tie-dyed bandanna out of his pocket and touched it to his forehead.

  “Aw”—I was about to say “Gabe” but stopped myself since I still wasn’t sure what to call him—“is that because of me? I’m very sorry to make you mop your brow.”

  He chuckled. “The first critique session is always the hardest. And some semesters are harder than others. I’ll make it. Don’t worry about me.” He was still smiling as he slid me his copy of “Almost a Lady,” rolled out of his chair, and left the room. But I wondered: did he mean I shou
ld be worried instead about myself, my writing, my grade, my career?

  As people passed behind me to escape the room, they dropped their copies of my story in front of me. Normally I would have paged through them immediately to read the comments, even though I’d be late for work. But I needed to speak with Hunter. And he was flirting with Isabelle. I strained to hear them over the babble of other voices.

  “Calculus is kicking my ass,” he told her.

  “Going too fast for you?” she teased him.

  “No, it looks vaguely familiar from high school. This TA, I don’t know where he’s from, but …”

  “He has a very interesting accent in English?”

  “Was he speaking English? I honestly do not know.”

  Isabelle laughed. “Complain. He shouldn’t have been put in front of a class if his students can’t understand him.”

  “I don’t want to be the one who strips this guy of his fellowship.”

  Yeah, right, play the empathy card. Hunter was good at making people think he cared, until he stabbed them in the back.

  “Get one of those computer programs that teaches you a foreign language,” Isabelle suggested.

  “That would be a really good idea if I knew what language he was speaking.”

  Hunter was funny. This was a funny conversation I should have been having with him instead of this bitch, and who did she think she was?

  Standing, I forced the copies of “Almost a Lady” into my book bag along with my thirty-pound calculus book and my fifty-pound book for early American literature survey (not my favorite period, lots of puritanical preaching about virtue, bleh!) and my laptop. Manohar was standing next to his chair, too, watching me and still smirking at me.

  I dropped my book bag in my chair and leaned across the table so swiftly that he stepped back. I managed not to laugh that I’d spooked him. I extended my hand. “No hard feelings,” I told him. “I don’t agree with your critique, but I do appreciate it.”

  I think he took my hand only because he was so surprised. “No problem,” he said. Then he seemed to recover, and he grasped my hand hard enough to hurt. “I’m sorry if I was out of line.”

  I pulled my hand out of his grip. “Don’t be. I carry a grudge. If you write some macho ultraviolent action-adventure crap for your first story, your ass is mine.”

  I had thought Summer was deep in discussion with the guy next to her, but when I said this she shrieked with laughter, then giggled a quiet “Sorry” and turned back to the other guy.

  “Game on, Kentucky,” Manohar told me. Grinning as if he really did look forward to the game (that made one of us), he shrugged one strap of his backpack over his shoulder and walked out.

  Isabelle had finally left Hunter’s side. I hefted my bulging book bag and walked the length of the table. Hunter sat in his mighty chair like the head of the table rather than the foot, writing on his copy of my story. As I approached, he looked up and offered it to me. He didn’t smile as he said, “Hullo, Miss Blackwell.”

  Taking the story from him, I noticed for the first time that his five-o’clock stubble glinted golden on his hard chin. I croaked, “Hullo, Hunter.”

  He smiled then, the charismatic smile I recognized from school. “Thanks for not blowing my cover about being from Louisville. I told my roommates I’m from Long Island.”

  “Why?” I asked. ’Cause that is kind of strange, considering that you have stolen my Louisville horse farm, I wanted to add. I traced the S from INTERNSHIP with my fingertip on the thigh of my jeans and kept my mouth shut.

  “Because people here think that the South is stupid,” he said. “Besides, I really am from Long Island.”

  I frowned at him and turned around to make sure everyone else in the room had left. Only Summer waited for me outside the door, leaning against the frame and talking to Brian. I faced Hunter again and said softly, “You moved from Long Island to Kentucky before the seventh grade.”

  “I never felt like I belonged there.”

  Until now. There was so much irony in the unspoken words between us. Somehow I had to step past it and connect with him.

  “I overheard you complaining about your calculus instructor,” I said. “As long as you’re rearranging your schedule, maybe you could transfer into my class. I have to go to work now, so I can’t stay and tell you about it—”

  This was a flimsy excuse. It would have taken me an additional thirty seconds to give him my instructor’s name and class time.

  “—but I take a break at nine. If you want to come by, I’d be glad to talk with you. I’m at the coffee shop on the corner of—”

  He nodded. “I know the one. I’ve seen you there. I’ll come by at nine.”

  He’d seen me there? I hadn’t seen him since graduation night, when he and my grandmother delivered the blow.

  I wanted so badly to slap him. Or kiss him. But there was no physical show of the emotion passing between us, layer upon layer, the upper strata putting the lower ones under enormous pressure. I simply turned and left the classroom, “Almost a Lady” flopping about in front of me.

  But I would need to mine those layers when I met him alone. I had to shut him up before he said anything about me and my stable boy to Gabe. I could not let Hunter Allen ruin my life.

  Again.

  3

  “I can’t believe you!” Summer exclaimed.

  “Really?” I gave her a wary glance as I passed her in the hallway outside the classroom. I hoped she would follow me down the stairs. Brian had disappeared, but Hunter, sitting at the foot of the table, could still hear us.

  “Yes, really!” She followed me down the stairs. “You are an attack dog. I’ve seen you in action. I’ll never forget how you barked at that cabdriver the other day.”

  “You have to bark at cabdrivers or they’ll take advantage of you.” Actually, I had never talked to a cabdriver before, because I’d never had the money to take a cab. But right after I’d met Summer four days ago, I’d agreed to splurge and share a cab to MoMA with her, and ended up arguing with the cabbie about the expensive fare. Ever since, I had wished for that money back.

  “But we start discussing your story and you melt down?” Summer asked. We’d reached the bottom of the staircase, and she pushed through the door ahead of me, onto the street. The twilight surprised me—as always. In Kentucky at this time, an hour of daylight would have remained, gently retreating across the grassy hills, into the trees at the edge of the western pasture. Here the five-story buildings created an artificial canyon, walls blocking out the sun. Night came early.

  Summer didn’t seem to notice. She was on me. “I had to come to your defense. Gabe finally gave you a chance to talk and you didn’t say a thing. If I didn’t know you, I’d say that at one point, that ass Manohar made you cry! You must have had something in your eye.”

  “Must have.” I glanced back at the entrance to the building to make sure Hunter hadn’t followed us. Then I pointed her down the sidewalk in the direction of the coffee shop. My five minutes of damage control with Hunter had already made me late. There was no leeway in my schedule.

  “I don’t want you to get discouraged because of somebody like him,” she insisted. I was walking fast, and she had to skip to keep up with me. People hurrying home from work sidestepped us and watched the commotion out of the corners of their eyes as they passed us. “You’re going to finish writing the whole novel, right?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” she insisted. “I loved that story! All the girls in the class did, not that you listened to their comments. After Manohar was so harsh, you were in outer space. You only heard the negative comments. I was watching you. Your ears pricked up when Wolf-boy Kyle said he hated your first line. But a lot of us enjoyed your story. Why don’t you finish the novel and try to get it published? Forget Manohar.”

  “The market for historical romances is tighter than it used to be.”

  She shrugged. “I’m sure they still publish brand-new
authors.”

  “Right, if those authors play by the rules. For a new writer trying to break in, that’s very important. ‘Almost a Lady’ doesn’t follow the rules.”

  “What’s the matter with it?” She sounded genuinely curious, but as she asked, she twisted her neck to look up at the tops of the buildings. Nothing said Southern like her awe, and I hoped she got over it before she made me look like a hick by association.

  “A historical heroine needs to be all innocent and virtuous and shit,” I told her. “She can’t just want some like Rebecca. And my hero, David, is completely wrong. A historical hero can’t be the same age as the heroine. He’s a lot older. He is respected in the community—or he would be respected, if only he had not been unjustly suspected of murder.”

  “What?” Summer was listening now.

  “That’s how these stories go,” I said. “But the historical hero will be cleared of the murder in the course of the story. Maybe the heroine will help him with that—at her peril! And the historical hero has tons of money. He might have inherited a title, too, because historicals are generally set in England in the eighteen hundreds. Setting it in America is asking for a rejection. So is making the hero a stable boy.”

  “Then why’d you write it that way? I thought you were trying to get a novel published.”

  “I wrote the story that’s been in my head.” I took a deep breath and finished with, “Hunter is the stable boy.”

  “Hold that thought. I saw a rat.” She darted into the side street we were passing, toward a Dumpster. “My first New York rat!” she called to me over her shoulder. “He’s so cute!”

  “Watch out,” I called back. “They jump.”

  The adorable varmint must have jumped at her by then because she came screaming out of the street. She reached up and shook me by both shoulders. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “Because you were chasing a rat, telling me how cute it was.”

  She let my shoulders go but continued to scowl up at me. “Hunter is the stable boy? I thought David was the stable boy.”