Easy held it to his ear and let Jenny’s warm, slightly drunk voice sweep over him like the best kind of drug. “Because I’m in love with someone too,” he heard her say, and suddenly his anger disappeared. All he wanted was to be holding her as she was saying that.
“Hot, isn’t it?” Jeremiah nudged Easy in the ribs.
Easy stared at the brocade wallpaper in a daze. What was he doing here, at the stupid Ritz in Boston? He wasn’t interested in watching Heath Ferro get naked with the girls. The only girl he wanted to get naked with was back at Waverly. “Are you okay to drive?”
Jeremiah grinned. “Great minds think alike.” He patted the pocket of his velvet blazer, and his keys clinked inside. “I wasn’t drinking tonight. Are you ready to get the hell outta here?”
“I’m already gone.”
35
A WAVERLY OWL SHOULD AT LEAST GIVE THE IMPRESSION OF TRYING TO FOLLOW THE RULES.
Callie awoke with a start. She’d fallen into a drunken half sleep and had one of those intense dreams that was so vivid, so exact that it felt completely real. She was lying beneath her double-cashmere blanket with Easy, both of them in their underwear, and his fingertips were running up and down her bare stomach, sending chills down her spine. He smelled exactly like he always smelled, like horses and hay and cigarettes, and when he kissed her, Callie could swear his lips were actually on hers at that very moment.
Except it wasn’t Easy kissing her. It was Heath Ferro. “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”
Callie pulled away from him and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Tears almost sprang to her eyes when she realized Easy wasn’t here and that they weren’t in her bed. Her half-dressed body was splayed against the velvety hotel couch. The coffee table in front of her was cluttered with empty wineglasses and crumpled napkins. A pair of heather gray Ralph Lauren boxer briefs were crumpled on the table. Someone on the couch was braiding her hair. She looked up. Tinsley.
“Don’t pass out again.” Callie surveyed the room. No one else was even awake or, at least, moving. Benny Cunningham was lying facedown on the Oriental rug, her skirt pulled up to reveal her red Calvin Klein thong. She’d be mortified if she were conscious. For a moment, Callie thought about taking a photo with her camera phone, but she had no idea where she’d left it. And besides, Heath now had his tongue in her ear.
“Get off me, Heath.” Callie tried to stand up, but her legs weren’t working correctly and she sank back to the floor.
“You’ve already forgotten the rule?” Heath asked drowsily. “It’s be-nice-to-Heath time.”
“Come on.” Tinsley climbed onto Heath’s lap. “He’s the only one who made it through our party conscious. We have to reward him.”
“Oh, yes, yes.” Heath sighed. “Reward me. Please.”
Callie grabbed at one of the glasses that still had an inch of wine in it. She swallowed it quickly. What would her mother think if she saw her now, drinking someone else’s probably back-washed glass of wine, about to hook up with the sluttiest guy at Waverly in a trashed suite at the Boston Ritz? She’d have a heart attack. That almost made it all bearable.
Tinsley giggled and slowly rose from Heath’s lap. She shook out her mane of dark hair and looked impatiently down at him.
“Let’s go out on the balcony,” Heath suggested, a wicked, drunken grin on his lips. “The sun’s going to come up soon. You can see it rise over Boston Harbor.” On his way toward the sliding glass door, he grabbed the velour blanket that was covering the bodies of Ryan and Alison on the floor. They were both snoring. “We might need this.”
“We won’t need this,” Tinsley said as she slid the bathrobe off her shoulders and scampered over to the door, wearing only her bra and panties. She dropped it over the still-sleeping Ryan and Alison. “Actually, I think the balcony is a no-clothing-allowed area, so if you’re coming, you’d better change.” She grinned at Callie pointedly.
Callie quickly swallowed some more wine. Let Tinsley show her up? Not this time. What did she care, anyway? Easy was nowhere in sight and hadn’t been for the past few hours, what little Callie could remember of them. She felt completely lost, like everything in the entire world was upside down, and so who cared if she made one more giant mistake? It was almost soothing to know she was taking an active part in destroying her own life instead of just letting it happen.
“Meet you out there.” With that, she pulled her red dress over her head and walked out to the balcony, not about to let Tinsley win. At least, not this time.
36
SOMETIMES AN OWL MUST AWAKEN IN ORDER TO DREAM.
Jenny opened her eyes at the sound of voices. She’d been having a nightmare, one of those awful ones where you got all the way to class before realizing that you were completely naked. In the dream, everyone in the classroom—Mr. Wilde’s AP American History classroom—was coming up to Jenny and poking at her and trying to give her messy, wet kisses. Only Easy, sitting by himself at a desk in the corner, wasn’t paying attention to her. He was drawing a picture of a beautiful girl—when Jenny squinted to get a better look, she saw it was Tinsley.
But now she was awake. And there were definitely voices. She blinked a few times, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the dark, and could make out a figure climbing into Brett’s bed. A peal of giggles filled the dark room, and Jenny, still groggy with sleep and vodka, remembered the last time she’d been awakened in the middle of the night by a boy climbing into her roommate’s bed. Her whole body remembered how Easy had ended up sitting on her bed, rubbing her back. Her stomach felt sick with longing.
What was going on? “Jeremiah!” she heard Brett whisper happily. “When did you guys get back?”
You guys? Jenny’s heart started to beat faster as she tried to understand what was happening. Did that mean …
“Hey.” Someone crouched down near Jenny’s head. It was Easy.
“How did you …” Jenny shot up in bed, feeling a little too skimpily dressed in her black Calvin Klein tank and matching boy shorts. “What happened to the Ritz?”
Easy shifted his lanky body onto Jenny’s bed. Was this really happening? Was she getting a second chance? He reached for her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “The Ritz is way overrated.”
If Jenny was a cat, she would have purred. “Oh.”
He cleared his throat. “Truth is, I realized it wasn’t where I really wanted to be.”
Jenny swallowed. Was her breath okay? Did she smell?
Easy grinned. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I want to show you something.”
Jenny tossed off her blankets and hopped out of bed, feeling Easy’s eyes watching her body. Instead of feeling nervous, it just made her feel … warm. “Remember what happened last time you were in this room?”
“How could I forget?”
After pulling on the first pair of pants she found—her Miss Sixty stretchy jeans—and her cinnamon-colored sweater coat from Anthropologie, Jenny let Easy grab her hand and lead her toward the door. She didn’t ask where they were going—it didn’t matter. Brett and Jeremiah, snuggled under Brett’s thick down comforter, were in their own world.
“Are you cold?” Easy asked when the two of them were sitting on top of the bluffs, overlooking the slow-moving Hudson. The sky was lightening to a smoky gray, and Easy wanted to watch the sun rise. He put his arm around her shoulders.
“No.” She leaned her head into Easy’s neck, breathing in his smell.
One hand tightened around her, and his other one pulled a cigarette away from his mouth. He had lit it a few minutes ago, his fingers trembling a little. Like he was nervous, Jenny thought in amazement.
She looked up at him. “About that other stuff …”
Easy shook his head. “I overreacted.” He took a drag from the cigarette and leaned back on the grass, looking straight up at the disappearing stars in the sky. “You were just having fun with your friends. It’s okay.”
“No.” Jenny shook her head. She tugged at
a lint ball forming on her sweater. “I mean, yeah. But … I would have been totally crushed if I’d heard about you, you know, kissing someone else.” She sighed and felt herself wanting to be completely honest with Easy, even if it meant looking uncool or childish. “I just—wanted to belong, and I got swept up in doing what all the cool girls were doing.”
“They’ve got nothing on you. Seriously.”
Birds were starting to chirp, and it felt like the whole world was waking up, even though the sun still hadn’t appeared over the horizon. She glanced up at Easy and took a deep breath. “I’ve never felt like this before.”
Easy stubbed his cigarette into the dewy grass next to him and pulled Jenny down on top of him. His blue eyes looked almost black in the darkness. He nodded slowly and swallowed noisily like something was caught in his throat. “I know.”
I know. That’s all he needed to say. Jenny was so giddy she thought she might black out, so before she had the chance to, she kissed Easy the way she dreamed of kissing him all those other nights.
37
A PROUD OWL WILL NOT BE PRESSURED INTO DOING THINGS SHE FINDS REPULSIVE.
Heath had pushed the two thickly padded chaise lounges on the balcony together to form a sort of regal outdoor bed. The streets below them were empty and lonely-looking, with only a few stray cars and cabs roaming around, their headlights still on in the gray early-morning air. It was chilly, and Callie felt weary and exhausted, but she wasn’t about to head back inside for a nap. Instead, she curled under the velour blanket next to Heath, with Tinsley huddled on the other side of him.
Callie yawned and glanced at the other balconies on both sides of them—no one else seemed to think that a pre-dawn September morning was particularly romantic. She couldn’t blame them. Heath finished his cigarette and tucked his hands under the blanket.
“Comfy, ladies?”
Tinsley, who had the blanket pulled up to her chin, slapped at one of Heath’s hands that had strayed too far. “No,” she admonished him sternly. “You can only go where I tell you.” She reached for his hand beneath the blanket. “Like, here.”
“Oh my God.” Heath’s eyes almost rolled back into his head. “I love this rule.”
Jealously, Callie grabbed Heath’s other hand. “Or here,” she announced, pressing Heath’s sweaty palm onto her collarbone.
“You’re torturing me,” Heath moaned, still with an ecstatic grin on his face. This was shaping up to be the best night of his life, Callie noted. Thank God, Callie had thought to kick his digital camera under the sofa—she didn’t want any pictures of this surfacing in the Atlanta newspapers.
“How’s this?” Tinsley’s eyes flashed wickedly as she moved Heath’s hand somewhere else.
Callie was about to do the same when she felt Heath’s hand trying to slide its way down her body all on its own. Uh, no! Feeling his wiggling fingers was like a disgusting wake-up call—why the hell was she competing with Tinsley for Heath Ferro? Why was she letting herself be groped by him? She didn’t even like him!
“Get off me, perv!” Callie pushed Heath’s wandering hands away and jumped out from under the blanket into the chilly morning air, feeling instantly triumphant. She was tired of trying to impress Tinsley. It was exhausting.
For a minute, Callie forgot she was almost naked. Standing there, she felt her drunkenness slowly wear off as she gazed at the city of Boston. She felt almost queenly, goddesslike, as Brandon liked to tell her. She’d go inside, take a shower to wash off all traces of Heath’s hands, put on some clean pajamas, and fall into a deep, relaxing sleep.
Her thoughts were interrupted by an explosion of sound as the door to the neighboring balcony slid open and the air suddenly filled with the familiar voices of Good Morning America. Before Callie could duck for cover, Dean Marymount stepped out, in a white fluffy robe exactly like the one Heath had been wearing earlier.
His eyes fixed on Callie, freezing her in place until a pair of vaguely familiar freckled arms wound around Marymount’s waist. Angelica Pardee stepped outside, wearing a matching Ritz bathrobe.
“Callie!” She gasped in horror.
“Oh, fuck!” Callie cried, then slapped her hand to her mouth. Heath and Tinsley jumped up from the chaise, wrapped in the blanket, and turned to see what the problem was. Callie darted beneath the blanket. Dean Marymount had seen her underwear!
But that didn’t seem like their biggest problem at the moment.
“This is a bit awkward,” Dean Marymount admitted dryly, unable to hide the irritation in his voice.
“I’ll say,” Heath slurred.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, young man.” Heath immediately stopped smiling. Marymount turned and whispered to Pardee, who disappeared inside. “Now, I don’t know what you three are doing in Boston when you should be back in your beds at Waverly. And I don’t want to know.”
“Dean Marymount, I can explain.” Tinsley’s voice was innocent and persuasive, but even she knew that crouched there on the balcony at the Ritz, nearly naked beneath an overcrowded blanket, she had little to no credibility.
Marymount cut her off. “I’m sure you can. But I’m not interested.” Strangely enough, he looked far more regal and intimidating in his bathrobe than he ever did in a suit. Even with his mussed-up, post-coital gray hair. Ew! “You are to get back to school. Now.” He glanced at his wrist before realizing he wasn’t wearing a watch. “And no one will say a word—about any of this.” He stared at each of them individually, threatening them with just a glance. It was an impressive performance, Callie thought, considering he had just been caught messing around with someone else’s wife.
But best to be humble, apologize, and get the hell back to Waverly. “Yes, sir.” Tinsley hung her head. “We’re very sorry, sir. We’ll be on the next train” She couldn’t risk getting expelled again.
Marymount almost shouted. “Get moving! If you’re not back by nine A.M., I’ll have to call your parents.”
All three of them scrambled for the door in such a hurry that Heath didn’t even notice Callie toss his pants off the balcony.
38
A WAVERLY OWL KNOWS THAT SOMETIMES THE SUBTLEST PUNISHMENTS CAN BE THE HARSHEST.
Several minutes before nine, a silver Mercedes-Benz pulled to a stop in front of the Waverly gate. The rear doors opened, and three very disheveled owls tumbled out, their long night of drinking and debauchery obvious to all. Callie and Tinsley’s faces were smeared with remnants of last night’s makeup.
“Run!” Tinsley ordered after tossing some large bills at the driver and slamming the door shut. She’d called a car service the second they’d gotten back inside the hotel room and left a note for the others saying that they were going for a ride around the city and would see them back at school. Callie couldn’t think about anything except the fact that Dean Marymount had seen her practically naked. Gross. Thank God he hadn’t been naked!
Heath took off, sprinting across campus with his black leather John Varvatos overnight bag thudding against his hip.
Callie rolled her eyes as she and Tinsley jogged across the wet grass. “Loser.”
“At least he makes things interesting.” Tinsley paused for a moment to tug off her BCBG Max Azria satin wedges. She had to buy some more practical shoes. “Come on, Cal, speed it up. We’ve got, like, two minutes till nine.”
Callie had stopped and was holding her hands to her stomach. It had been heaving the entire ride home, and now with the running, it was too much for it to handle. She leaned over one of the groomed flower beds and heaved.
“Shit.” Tinsley measured the distance they still had to cover to their dorm—there’s no way they were going to make it if they had to wait for Callie to finish puking. Fuck.
Callie wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her black Juicy Couture tie-front sweater. Of course this was how it would end—her alone, facedown in her own vomit on the Waverly lawn for the entire campus to see. She wanted to die. “You go ahead.”
But Ti
nsley didn’t move. Instead, she unzipped her Prada nylon tote bag and dug through it until she pulled out a half-full bottle of water. “Here.” She handed it to Callie. “Drink.”
Callie’s eyes teared up. All right, so maybe Tinsley wasn’t a complete bitch.
Ten minutes later, when they tiptoed into Dumbarton, they thought they were home free. Until, that is, they passed the door to the common room and saw Dean Marymount, leaning against the fireplace, waiting.
“You’re late.” He sighed, clearly still pissed. He ran a hand over his graying comb-over.
“Like, five minutes!” Callie cried, then clamped her mouth shut for fear of projectile vomiting all over him.
Tinsley spoke up pleadingly. “Come on, do you have to punish us?”
“Unfortunately, I do.” Marymount straightened his maroon-and-navy tie—what was he doing wearing a tie on a Sunday morning, and how the hell had he gotten back to campus so quickly? “This institution has rules that must be upheld. However”—he looked at them pointedly—“because of extenuating circumstances, your punishment will be considerably lighter than it should be. Starting immediately, you two will no longer be allowed to live together. We’ve been able to do some rearranging, and a room on the first floor has opened up. Callie and Jenny Humphrey will remain in Dumbarton 303, while Tinsley and Brett Messerschmidt will move to Dumbarton 121.”
Tinsley’s mouth fell open. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She and Brett, alone? Talk about awkward. Maybe they could discuss Eric’s kissing techniques while they lay in bed at night. She almost snickered, it was so absurd. And Callie and Jenny? They could compare notes on Easy while painting each other’s toe-nails. Not. The administration really couldn’t have planned a more perfect punishment for any of them.
Marymount gave her a sharp look. “The room is vacant now. It shouldn’t take you too long to get resettled.” He headed toward the door. “The sooner you get started, the better.”
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