by Julie Wright
“But how could you have guessed he’d call the dean?” Everett asked, settling beside me.
“I should have known, though. I’m smart, right? Isn’t that what all of this is about?” I waved my hand to the campus around us. “Smart girls don’t go revenge-of-the-jilted-girlfriend on idiot boyfriends. Smart girls finish their degrees and become successful pediatric heart surgeons while the idiot is still trying to figure out what the acronym MCAT stands for.”
I growled and fell back to the grass so I could stare at the blue sky and feel stupid for the bad decision to date Greg.
As though he’d become my shadow, Everett lay on the grass beside me and turned his body toward mine with his head propped on his arm. “You’re exaggerating. He knows what MCAT stands for.”
“He does now. But only because I told him. Before we started dating, he thought it stood for masters or major. He seriously couldn’t even guess the medical part.”
“Huh. Well now I’m just embarrassed for him. So . . . smart girl. I know you’re already making plans for either decision the board comes back with; care to share?”
I rolled over to face him and sucked in a deep breath to find him so close to me. But I didn’t scoot away. I tucked my arm under my head and shrugged. “There aren’t good plans. But there are plans.”
He didn’t prod me for more, but simply waited. Some guys tossed a football just down from us, their yells and laughter bouncing off and around the buildings and back in our direction.
“My dad,” I explained. “He’s the backup plan. Which means I will have to listen to all the reasons why a heart surgeon is far too ambitious for me and how I should reconsider my future.”
“Too ambitious? For you? How can anyone say that? You’re three years younger and at the top of the class.”
He was close enough that I could smell his mint toothpaste as he spoke. He must have dressed and come right over when he found out what Greg had done. It made me glad I had not only brushed my teeth, but also flossed and swished mouthwash. “Top of the class doesn’t mean much. It’s about the position in the family. I am one of two children. And I’m the youngest. And I’m the girl. My parents are what you would call extremely traditional, and we come from old money. My mom wanted a debutante. My dad wanted a little boy who he could raise to be a brilliant doctor just like him. They wanted me to learn how to say pretty things at parties with lots of other influential debutantes. They wanted my brother to get all the degrees and achievements. And they are incredibly disappointed in the children they ended up with.”
He didn’t argue with me. He didn’t try to say I was wrong and that surely my parents loved me just as I was. He didn’t try to make my situation bright and shiny. He simply let it be.
I never appreciated anything more.
He also didn’t give me the whole oh, poor you, born with a silver spoon in your mouth and not liking the palace you were raised in that some people gave me. Most people who knew who my parents were assumed I lived on the parental dole.
What they didn’t know was that I had taken care of my own finances since I turned sixteen and was legally allowed to get a job, just to give myself the freedom of making my own choices.
And it was worth it.
Except if the board yanked the scholarship out from under my feet, I would be forced to either give up my educational dreams altogether, or swallow that bitter glass of pride and accept my parents’ help.
“And look at you now,” Everett said, half of his smile disappearing behind his elbow.
He couldn’t know how those words cut me at that moment where looking at myself made me feel incredibly sick. I took the words for how he’d intended them and not how they made me feel. “And look at my brother, too. He’s a culinary chef with his own YouTube channel that has more followers than Adele. He’s doing great, but he’s not doing what my dad wants.”
“So wouldn’t your dad want to make sure you at least followed the doctor dream? At least then one of his kids would be redeemable in his eyes, although I can’t see why anyone would turn down having a chef in the family. Think of those Christmas dinners . . .”
I picked at the blades of grass under my hand. “That’s just it. He doesn’t consider a girl doing those things as redeemable. He thinks I’m taking part in an unnatural rebellion.”
Everett let out a laugh that didn’t sound as if he found anything actually funny. “You should have been born into my family. My mom is the greatest women’s rights activist on the planet.”
“Lucky.”
“Not for me lucky, but my sisters . . . yeah, lucky them.”
The football game that had been just down from us was now suddenly in the middle of us as a football landed right between Everett and me.
We both jumped and sat up. A guy in basketball shorts and a tank top jogged over, “Hey sorry about that, man.”
“No problem.” Everett threw the ball back and returned his attention to me. “Anyway, so your backup plan is your dad. It sucks, but at least you have options.”
“Kind of. He thinks I’m too young to be on my own. He’ll want me to go to school closer to home.”
“Connecticut?”
“Good memory. Yeah. My family’s from Connecticut. If he’s buying, I’ll have to change schools.” I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.
“But you’re almost done here.”
I shrugged. No one could ever accuse my father of being rational. But I didn’t say that out loud. What did it matter? I only sighed.
“Maybe the board will decide to give you a pass on this one incident. You’ve never been in trouble before. Maybe you’ll get a warning. I mean, c’mon, his truck is fine. No real damage done.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t believe that would be the outcome. School boards couldn’t afford to look the other way in cases of criminal activity. It opened too many floodgates for other infractions to be overlooked and their reputation would be blackened. I knew what they would decide. And I couldn’t even really blame them.
Everett stood and swept the grass clippings off his jeans. “C’mon.” He held out his hand.
I stared at it. “C’mon what?”
“We are going to go have some fun. We’ve both worked hard all semester and deserve a break.”
I still didn’t take his hand. “I don’t need a break. I need to get to work, to prove I’m worthy to keep my scholarship.”
He jiggled his hand in front of my face. “It isn’t like the board has hired a private investigator to see if you’ve jumped right back into studies after nearly getting cuffed and hauled to jail. They only see your grades. And since you and I have almost all the same classes, I know you have only one class today, and it’s totally missable because all we’re doing is handing in reports and discussing the reading. And if I know anything about you at all, you’ve already uploaded your report, and it’s better than everyone else’s, and you’ve already got 100 points in extra credit and you’ve never missed a day in your life, even though the professor gives us two ‘escape days.’”
He was right. I had never missed a day of class. This semester was nearly over. My assignments were all done.
I took his hand and did something I’d never done in my life.
I acted irresponsibly.
Well, I acted irresponsibly for the second time in my life, since painting tool on Greg’s truck was totally irresponsible.
But this was different, because no anger preceded this moment, no emotional trauma compelled me forward through an act that I knew was out of my character. This was different because it promised something new, something fun, something unknown.
Anything new had to be good.
As I let Everett lead me away, I gave the slightest tug on my hand so he knew he could let go if he wanted to.
But he didn’t let go.
His fingers tightened over mine.
And I laughed. For the first time in a long, long time.
Chapter Four
He walked me to the DeWolfe boathouse.
“Everett . . .” I started, pulling back a little. I didn’t have a row class, though I’d been tempted to take the class just for the excuse to start my day on the Charles River, but my classes never lined up well enough to allow me the opportunity.
“What, you scared of the water?” Everett asked.
“No, I just don’t have a class here. I don’t think we’re supposed to be in here if we don’t have a class.”
“We’re okay, Andrea without an E. Trust me. I’m not going to get you in trouble with campus police when you’re already stressing about losing your scholarship. I promise you won’t get kicked out of school on top of everything else. He tightened his hand on mine and tugged me closer to him until our noses were only inches apart, until I could see his eyes shifting colors from green to brown to gold and back again.
I had the insane urge to close the distance between us. Startled at the unbidden thought, I backed up a little and said, “Course I trust you.” I cleared my throat. What kind of girl wants to lip-lock with her ex’s roommate only two days after the break up?
Andra Stone was not that girl. And she never would be that girl.
I gave my head a sharp nod as if I’d made a pact with myself. Good. I hadn’t totally forgotten myself.
Everett led me inside the door to the boathouse.
The room we entered was spacious with several staircases, one leading down directly in front of us, and two on either side of us, leading up. A bank of exercise machines to the left were in use by a couple of students. I nodded and tried to smile as though I wasn’t the interloper that I actually was. The smell of wet and wood and New England soaked the air. Everett waved at the guy and girl on the workout machines and headed down the stairs as if he owned the place. “Hey!” he called out once we were in the basement. “Hey, Renee! Are you down here?” He led us through the maze of stacked row boats and oars, searching out the person named Renee.
A female voice from around the stacks of rowboat shells called back. “Ev! Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
A girl giggle filled the entire basement in a way that reminded me of champagne bubbles.
“I knew you’d come! I’ve been waiting for you to take me up on my offer to borrow the boats during off time so that we—”
She rounded the corner and stopped short when she saw me. “Oh. You’re with someone.” She fixed him with a look that should have frozen the water under the boathouse all the way to the silt and said in tones so icy, I actually shivered. “So who’s this?”
Either Everett was totally oblivious to the fact that this girl really liked him and him bringing me in here made her furious, or he was a callous creep who didn’t care about the feelings of others.
Everything I knew about Everett told me it was the first option. He was completely unaware that she felt any attraction to him.
Which was something new.
Greg had always been hyper-aware of how other girls viewed him. A flirty waitress in a restaurant made him smile wider. A pretty jogger smiling at him on the trail along the river made him square his shoulders and put a strut to his jogger gait. One of his roommates’ girlfriends batted eyelashes his direction, and he was right there to tell her jokes and keep her entertained until his roommate came down to claim the girl—the girl who always took a last lingering look at Greg before she left with the guy she’d intended to be with.
It had never really bothered me because out of all those girls who competed for his attention, I was the one he chose to be with.
It made me feel bad to see this girl looking at me like I was encroaching on her territory. It was outright agony to watch her eyes drop from Everett’s face to our hands linked together between us. I forced Everett to let go of my hand as I reached out to take hers and introduce myself. “I’m Andra Stone. We’re just friends.”
“Oh,” she said. Her face brightened.
“Right,” he said. His face didn’t brighten.
“What are you guys doing today?” she asked.
Everett looked down at my hand hanging loosely at my side until I folded my arms across my chest, and he turned his attention back to Renee. “Andra, my friend, has always wanted to take a row class but she refuses to carve time into her schedule for herself, so I wanted to give her a glimpse into how great rowing is, so that she actually makes time for the class next term.”
“Freshman?” Renee asked, still a little wary of my position in Everett’s life.
“Senior.” I corrected her.
“Wow. You look really young.” She shot Everett a look that could be interpreted as, “She’s a kid. Stay away from jail bait.”
Technically, I was too young to be a senior. Getting two years of college out of the way when I was in high school sped things along nicely. But I wasn’t about to tell her I had just barely celebrated my twentieth birthday, not when every glance cast in my direction felt like a dissection.
She sighed as if in deep regret. “You know I can’t let you take a shell out on your own—even for a prospective rowing student.”
Which was directly in conflict with what she’d been saying she could do before she saw me.
Everett didn’t seem bothered by her lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll check it out, nice and legal. I want a two man sculling boat.” He handed her his student ID.
She sucked in her cheeks as though biting into them hard and turned and said, “Fine. Two man sculling.” She walked around to one of the other rooms and pointed at one of the boats.
“We’re going to get into that?” I felt apprehension once faced with the contraption they called a boat. It wasn’t much wider than a broomstick handle.
Everett took the boat down. “Yeah. It’ll be fun.”
“It’s not very wide though, is it?”
Renee smirked at my apparent ignorance.
Everett didn’t smirk. “You’ve seen the row teams out on the water, haven’t you?”
Of course I had seen them, every morning on my way to classes, but the boats looked wider from a distance.
He carried the boat through the large open bay doors that led to the water. Not wanting to stand in the boathouse with Renee smirking at me, I hurried after him. He seemed perfectly at ease as he settled the boat into the water and placed the oars in their brackets. He took off his shoes and placed them at the front of the boat. “You’ll want to take off your shoes, as well,” he said.
I sat down and did as directed. “Are we going to end up in the water?” I asked
“Not unless you rock us over,” he answered.
I thought I heard a laugh from inside the boathouse bay doors and wondered if Renee had called the people from upstairs to come watch a newb enter the waters. They were probably taking bets on how long it would be before I tipped us.
“How do you know how to do this?” I asked.
Everett tightened in the last oar and smiled at me. “I was on the novice row team my freshman and sophomore years. I make a point of taking one class for fun every semester.”
“Oh. Right. Makes sense.” Taking a class for pleasure to help offset the stress did make sense. I just didn’t have the time for that kind of sense.
“Okay,” Everett said, holding one set of oars, but looking at me. “I want you to go in first so I can help you and keep you steady. It’s easy.”
“Easy huh?”
Another laugh from within the boathouse made my ears burn with anger. The competitive side of me kicked in. Renee had no idea who she was dealing with. I wasn’t going to let some Everett-girlfriend-wannabe make me feel stupid. “Okay,” I said, “what do I do?”
He explained about weight and keeping it centered in the right place and holding the oars so the one stays on the stage and the other stays flat on the water to provide extra balance. After a few false starts where I realized the seat was on rails that made it move around, which complicated everything for me, I finally made it onto a se
at, and no one went swimming in the effort.
Take that Everett-girlfriend-wannabe.
Everett gave me a few instructions regarding the oars and how to keep them in my hands at all times in order to keep the boat balanced and how not to push down on them too far or I would end up soaked.
Everett settled onto the seat behind me, and we were ready to go.
“Okay. We need to push off away from the stage,” he said.
When I tried to push off and we didn’t really go anywhere, Everett’s laugh joined Renee’s.
“No, sorry. My fault for not explaining. Boats aren’t made to go sideways. So we angle in at the stern and push back.” As he said the words, he shoved against the deck and propelled us backwards.
It wasn’t like we were going very fast, but we were going backwards, and I felt incredibly unsteady. I inhaled a sharp breath that I could not seem to make myself exhale.
Everett laughed again. “It’s okay to breathe, Andrea without an E.”
“If you keep laughing at me, you’ll be the one not breathing, Everest without an S.”
He laughed again.
My teeth chattered entirely from fear. Everett dipped in his oars and we were off.
I did exactly as he told me, relying on my own sense of balance to keep us upright in spite of the fact that we were skimming the water on a broom stick. I didn’t add much in the way of rowing since the few times I tried to be helpful in that area nearly dropped us into the river. But after a while, the speed over the water and the wind blowing my hair back off my neck felt so freeing that I even forgot to be worried about losing my scholarship.
He slowed as we neared the bridge. As we passed under the words Make History graffitied on the side of the train bridge that I had seen every time I walked this way down the river, I wished I dared turn around to peek at Everett, but didn’t dare for fear I’d offset the boat.
Everett was a make history kind of guy.
“Novice, huh?” I asked.
“I’m a skilled novice,” he said.