“How bad are we talking?”
Fi sighed. “My grades suck. Mom and Dad harass me daily. The lacrosse team hates me.”
“Why do they hate you?” he asked.
She groaned, looking up at the sky. “They are terrible.”
Trent was silent a moment. “And my role here is?” he eventually said.
“I don’t know. I just drove down. I needed to . . . get some fresh air or something.”
“The hermit has left its—what do hermits live in anyway? Tree trunks? Shells?”
“That’s a crab. And I’m not a hermit.”
He looked sideways at her, smirked, and then slid off the car. “Time to find out,” he said, holding out a hand.
She studied his hand a minute before taking it. He gave a quick tug, pulling her across the hood to land just in front of him. “There’s an ice cream social in the dorm lobby.”
“An ice cream social? Have we time-warped back to 1923?”
“Every second Thursday. It’s some crazy old tradition—maybe since 1923, I don’t know. Anyway, they don’t skimp on the sprinkles, so what do I care?”
Fi walked beside Trent, her hand still in his. She felt like a fourth grader, holding hands while crossing the street—on the way to an ice cream social, no less.
Trent scanned his card, and they left the cold of the parking lot for the overheated warmth of the dorm. They turned the corner and walked into a packed lobby—there had to be at least a hundred people.
She’d forgotten what her mom had told her about Ole Miss, how the girls went to football games in dresses and heels, the boys in coats and ties. People dressed here, and everything—even an ice cream social, apparently—was an event. There were maybe forty girls, all with updos and makeup and designer tops over skinny jeans. The place looked more like a club in Manhattan than a dorm lobby in Oxford, Mississippi.
Fi still had on her sweats.
Glaring at Trent, she snapped her hand out of his. “I can’t go in there.”
He grimaced, looking down at her and back to the room. The girl he’d been walking with, Lindsey, looked back at them. She’d shucked her coat to reveal a cute, off-the-shoulder tunic over leggings. She flashed Fi an unfriendly look.
Trent frowned. “You can’t be mad at me! I would have told you to shower at least.”
“Never mind.” Fi turned back to the door. “I’ll call you later.”
He stepped in front of her. “Stop being melodramatic. We’ll go to my room.”
“What about the sprinkles?”
“Hey, Lindsey,” he called. “Bring me some later, okay?”
Lindsey gave a fake smile and a quick nod. As they climbed the stairs, Fi asked, “What’s up with the girl?”
“Nothing. We’re just hanging out,” he said, unlocking the door.
Trent’s dorm room smelled like a larger, less-ventilated version of his car—old food, dried sweat, and boy. Dirty clothes sat in messy clumps on the floor, and take-out containers overflowed from the trash can. Fi picked her way through the mess, looking for a semi-sanitary place to sit. “You are a pig.”
“It’s my roommate.” Trent kicked a few clothes piles toward one wall, making a path, and pointed between the two desks, one fairly organized and the other lost in the mess of papers, convenience store cups, books, and Fi couldn’t even tell what else. “He’s disgusting. And hardly ever here, only long enough to deposit more crap.”
“Open a window at least.”
Trent cracked a window. Cold air blew in, but at least it took the smell back out with it. He pointed to the neater of the two beds, and Fi sat, scooting across to rest her back against the wall. Trent joined her, the two of them side by side against cold, painted, concrete blocks. “It’s a Doyle kind of day,” he said. “Ryan called this morning.”
“Yeah? What’d he have to say?”
“He quit the lacrosse team,” Trent said.
She jerked straight up. “What?”
“Can’t say I’m shocked. All Christmas break, he wouldn’t shut up about that intramural soccer team over fall semester. He’d never talked about lacrosse like that.”
“When did he talk about soccer?”
“Uh, the entire break.”
“Not with me. I only got the here’s-all-the-ways-you’re-screwing-up-your-life lecture.”
“He’s just worried about you”—Trent nudged her shoulder—“because you crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” she mumbled. Just pitiful.
“Anyway, he said lacrosse was a ton of work and a pain with his schedule, and since he wasn’t getting a ride either way, he’d rather play soccer.”
“How could he just give it up like that?” she asked.
Trent looked at her with a single raised eyebrow.
“Shut up,” she said.
Someone knocked on the door. “Trent? Are you in there?” a girl’s voice called from the other side.
Trent slid off the bed and opened the door to Lindsey. She held a cup of ice cream out to him with a perfectly manicured hand.
“Thanks, Lindsey,” he said, taking it. “Hey, we’re still, uh, talking and stuff. Catch you later?”
Lindsey forced a smile across her face. “Sure. I was on my way to Chris’s anyway.” She waved bright-pink fingers toward Fi and drawled, “It was nice to meet you.”
The Chris comment—a pretty blatant attempt to get him jealous, Fi thought—didn’t hit its mark. “Great. Thanks again for this,” he said, over the spoonful of ice cream in his mouth. He closed the door on Lindsey’s pageant queen smile.
“She’s so going to dump you.”
He offered her the spoon. “She can’t dump me if we never dated.”
“Well, she wanted to.”
Trent shook his head, looking dramatically forlorn. “Wanting does not a relationship make.”
“So profound.” She took the spoon from him, scraping another bite. “You weren’t lying about the sprinkles.”
“I know, right?”
“She’s cute, though. Why aren’t you interested?”
He spooned the last bit directly into Fi’s mouth. “Not my type.”
Fi took the cup from him, running her finger along the inside rim and sucking off the captured sprinkles. “Have you figured it out yet?”
“Getting there.” He stretched out, so that Fi nestled between the wall and the nook created by his hips. She draped her legs over his—which hung over the edge, just like she’d imagined. “A girl who’s naturally pretty, without tons of makeup and hair spray but not all hippie either. Funny. Sophisticated but not stuck-up. She has to be an impossible mixture of high and low maintenance—easy but not too easy, so as to keep me on my toes.”
“Sounds complicated.” She tossed the empty cup toward the trash can. It clattered to the ground, since there was no room.
“I’m a complicated man, Fiona Grace Doyle.”
“You didn’t used to be, Trenton Alexander McKinnon the Third. There was a time when you thought fart jokes were the height of comedy.”
He wagged a finger at her. “Never underestimate the timelessness of the fart joke.”
“Remember when we played in the backyard, and Ryan and I would trash-talk each other, and you’d try to keep up with those sad yo’ mamas?”
Trent smiled with that single raised eyebrow. “What do you mean, you and Ryan trash-talked each other? The only one I remember doing the trash-talking was you.”
Fi shoved him with her foot. “Figured you’d take his side.”
He rolled his eyes before looking at his watch and holding it out to Fi. “Not that this impromptu playdate isn’t the highlight of my day, but shouldn’t you be getting back home? It’s at least an hour drive.”
Fi frowned at the pitch-black winter sky. “Ugh. That’s going to suck.”
“You could sleep here.” He frowned at his roommate’s bed. “Though I couldn’t swear how clean those sheets are.”
“That’s nasty.” Fi pus
hed herself up, stumbling over Trent’s legs as she got off the bed. “I have an early class tomorrow anyway.”
Trent stood and opened the door. “I’ll walk you out.”
“Maybe I should ruffle up your hair. In case Lindsey’s lurking.”
Trent paused to look at her. “You’re awfully concerned about Lindsey.”
“I’m not concerned,” she mumbled.
He studied her another moment or so before taking her hand and dragging her down the stairs behind him. Once outside, both hunched over, drawing their thin sweatshirts further up their necks. Trent pulled her a little closer, wrapping an arm around her as people do when they’re cold. At the car, Fi fumbled with her keys, her fingers stiff and shaky. She popped the door and slid in, cranking the heat. Trent squatted just in front of the open door, his face nearly the same level as hers. “If I make the slob wash his sheets and throw his crap away, will you visit one weekend? I could show you around.”
“Um, maybe.” Fi looked away from Trent to the steering wheel, her hands sliding up, down, and around it. It surprised her that the idea sounded good, suddenly. “Yeah. Okay.”
“You’d have to shower. It’s not required—I know you have an aversion—but I recommend it.”
She smiled at her hands. “I think I can handle a shower.”
Trent put his fingers under her chin, gently turning her face to him. “I’m glad you came down.”
“Me too.”
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, still crouched in front of her. Still holding her face so she couldn’t look away from this heartfelt Trent McKinnon who made her uncomfortable and awkward and not sure what do with her hands. “You’ll be okay.”
Fi swallowed a sudden lump in her throat and nodded.
He dropped his hand and smiled just barely. “It’s because of you, you know.”
“What’s because of me?”
“My evolution past the fart joke. And if you can wield that sort of magic on a dumbass such as myself, then it’s only a matter of time before you pull yourself out of this funk.”
They stared at each other a long moment. Trent slowly leaned forward—probably to hug her, she was sure it was just to hug her—but Fi immediately tensed, gripping the wheel. Trent paused, his eyes leaving her face to take in her rigid posture. He took a slow breath, shook his head, and slowly placed his lips on her forehead.
FIONA
Fiona hadn’t taken a word of Lucy’s advice. All break, she had avoided Jackson—and real conversations with David. Now back at school, she had a new semester with new classes—and the same old problems.
For example, she should be thrilled about her music class. Professor Weitz was a published jazz composer, played guitar beautifully and—unlike Flem—she’d yet to bow to anyone’s clarinet. However, the class had One Major Flaw—or opportunity, as Weitz called it.
“Each of you will perform an original composition,” she had said in the first class. “And benefit from the feedback of your peers.”
“So,” Weitz was now saying. “Who’s up?”
A tall, pretty blond girl—Fiona recognized her from the dorm—walked to the front, oboe in hand. She sat on what Weitz called the individual critique stool. “I call this Interlude in D,” Oboe Girl said.
She played about five minutes. The piece was a little old-fashioned, but man, the girl’s fingering was crazy good.
“Comments?” Weitz asked, when the girl finished and rested her oboe on her lap.
Fiona braced herself. The redhead held up her hand to go first—of course.
“Isn’t the point to bring classical elements to modern compositions,” she said. “Not the other way around?”
Redhead always went first. She had been the first to play for the class—cello—and had therefore escaped the bloodbath that these critiques had slowly descended into.
“It didn’t sound very original to me,” Flute Guy was saying, nodding toward Redhead. “It was just Brahms and Mozart squished together.”
“Three hundred years later,” Yankees Hat added.
And the ball was rolling. Oboe Girl sat up there, enduring the “helpful feedback” free-for-all, while Fiona broke into a sweat.
If she couldn’t handle someone else being criticized, what was she going to do when it was her turn? Where was Flem and his eighties covers when she needed them?
After class, Fiona merged onto the path back to the dorm, biting her nails and wondering how to “divide one of her existing melodies into phrases, making sure the cadence in the second phrase completes the incomplete cadence in the first.”
She called Lucy to whine. “It’s negative ten outside. My coat is freaking enormous.”
“And I was just wondering about the weather in Chicago. And your coat.”
“Sorry. Bad class.”
“Let me guess,” Lucy said with a sigh.
Okay, Fiona might have complained about this class a few times already. “Those people are insane. They’ll eat me alive.”
“It’s only opinion. You don’t have to listen to them.”
“I just can’t do it.”
“Fiona Doyle,” Lucy said. “You are the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met. What kind of singer doesn’t want to sing?”
Fiona wished she knew. In theory, her fear should have been cut out of her, left on the operating room floor with the scars. She was fixed now. She should be able to do this.
“I know. I know, it’s crazy,” Fiona admitted. “I just don’t know how to, you know, fix it.”
“Well, you could always just sing.”
“They’ll all be looking at me.”
“And lucky they will be, my non-scarred friend.”
“I’m not unscarred.”
“Oh. My. God. Get over yourself and sing a damn song.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“None of them are ready.”
Fiona had to pull the phone away from her ear, Lucy’s exhale was so loud. “Right. New rule à la Tough Love. You can’t call me again until you’ve sat someone down across from you, looked them in the eye, played your guitar, and sung one of your songs.”
“What? That’s not fair.”
“Oh, it’s totally fair—and a requirement for my sanity.”
“But, I have played for people. I’ve sung for you.”
“Amy LaVere covers don’t count.”
Curse Lucy and her Tough Love. “Okay. I’ll sing one of mine for you. Tonight.”
“What, over the phone?”
“Yeah. It’d be better anyway. Baby steps.”
There was a painful pause. “Nope,” Lucy finally said. “I’ve waited six years to hear an original Fiona Doyle. I want it in person.” Fiona heard another deep breath. “So this is where I tell you good-bye and say I truly hope to hear from you soon.”
“Lucy—”
“Hanging up now.” And then she did.
Fiona stared at her disconnected phone—then trudged back to the dorm, numb. She didn’t notice the biting cold or the slippery path or the ugly gray-white snow.
She was Lucyless. She felt like a cat with a bandanna around its middle.
She was almost to the top of the dorm steps when she looked up. The person she wanted to see most—and least—stood on the landing, looking down at her.
This was the first she’d seen Jackson since the disaster that was Otherlands. He’d texted a few times over break—asking her to meet him at the coffee shop, to help him spend his Christmas money at Shangri-La, to come with him to the Harry Potter marathon at the bargain theater. She gave lame excuses each time—rather than saying, I have a boyfriend but I like you more, which makes me feel like the most horrible person ever.
“You look like you lost your best friend,” he said.
“What a perfect summary.”
“What happened?”
“Something with Lucy. Music assignment thing.” She shook her head. “Nothing.”
Jackson o
pened the door and followed Fiona up the interior stairs.
“So,” he asked. “How was the rest of your break?”
“Good.” This was such a lie. “You?”
“Kind of sucky, really. First Christmas without Marcus.”
Fiona drew in a long breath, looking at Jackson. “Oh, I’m so sorry. And all those texts—you needed a distraction.”
“Looked like you had all the distraction you could handle.”
So much for hoping the Coffee Shop Awkward hadn’t been obvious. “Your schedule’s good?”
He stopped and looked at her with that Jackson-y smirk. “What a lame subject change—you’re as transparent as a well-dressed preacher.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
He laughed. “Yeah, classes are fine.”
A few dark curls escaped his hat. She wanted to tuck them back in—or tug off the cap and wrap her hands in his hair. She got them walking again, instead.
“What else are you taking?” he asked.
“Statistics, which is ridiculous.”
“Why?” he asked, looking adorably baffled. “It’s just common sense.”
“Uh, no. I’m very sensible—and I still get the alternative and null hypotheses mixed up.”
“Null assumes that the event you’re hypothesizing has no effect. Alternative assumes the event created some change.” He rattled this off like everyone had this information memorized. “Just remember null means no.”
“Okay, math genius. Explain Bayes’ Rule, then.”
“The conditional probability of event A given event B—and then the other way around. It links the degree of belief in a proposition before and after accounting for evidence.”
“Can you pretend you’re me and take the tests?”
“Miss Fiona, really!” He laughed. “I can help you study, though.”
Fiona reached her floor but stopped just outside the door. She adjusted the strap on her guitar case and took a deep breath. “Can I ask you a favor?” she said.
“Sure.”
Fiona pointed toward her room. “I need an audience. For practice.”
“An audience?”
“It’s a requirement for one of my classes—to perform one of my own songs. I’m kind of freaking out.”
Everything That Makes You Page 17