“So we’re not eating here,” I say, adding up what just happened.
“Would you like to eat here?” he almost shouts, unbuttoning the top of his black-collared shirt.
“Not really.” My cheeks blossom with an ugly red tint the longer people stare.
He rolls up his sleeves. “I had no idea that respect needed to be earned in a fucking restaurant.”
“Can you stop messing with your shirt?”
“Why?” he asks, calming down. He scrutinizes my body language. “Is it turning you on?”
I glare. “No. It looks like you’re about ready to run into the kitchen and beat the crap out of our waiter.” Which is comical. Lo avoids most fights and would be more apt to scream in your face, verbally attacking, than throw a punch.
He rolls his eyes but stops messing with his sleeves per my request.
Only a minute passes before the manager returns with a gold bottle and the American Express card. Lo stands, gestures for me to rise, and he grabs both and shoots everyone a scalding look on his way out, even the manager who did nothing more than apologize and offer a grateful thanks.
I slip my hands into my long woolen coat. “Nola isn’t supposed to be here for another hour,” I tell him.
“We’ll walk for a while. The taco stand is ten blocks away. Think you can make it?”
I nod. My short heels already stick in divots along the cracked sidewalk, but I try not to fuss about it. “Are you okay?” I ask him. The bottle swings in his hand, but he reaches down for mine with the other, holding tightly and warming my chilly palm.
“I just hate that,” he says, wiping his sweaty brow. “I hate that we’re still treated like children even though we’re in our twenties. I hate that I had to pull out my wallet and buy respect.” We stop at a cross-walk, a big red hand flashing at us, telling us to stay put. “I feel like my father.”
His admittance takes me aback. And his cheekbones sharpen, making my stomach summersault. He looks far more like Jonathan Hale than I will ever confess.
“You’re not him,” I whisper. “He would have flipped that table over and then left the staff to clean his mess.”
Lo actually laughs at the image. “Would he?” The sign changes to walk, and we cross the halted traffic, cars lined on the street with bright headlights shining forward and backwards. Just like that, the mention of his father drops in the air, lost behind us.
I spot the taco stand in the distance, lit up with a string of multi-colored lights. A small park resides across the busy street, and a few college-aged kids surround a surging fountain, chowing down on burritos. I suppose we fit in with this demographic, but wherever Lo and I go, I always feel like an outcast. Some things never change past high school.
“Are you cold?” Lo asks.
“Huh? No, I’m fine. My coat is fur-lined.”
“I like it.”
I try to hide the smile. “Check the tag.”
He swiftly falls back with furrowed brows and takes a peek. “Calloway Couture?” He joins my side again. “Rose designed it,” he concludes. “I take it back. It’s ugly.”
I laugh. “I can get her to design you a sweater vest.”
“Stop,” he says with a cringe.
“Or a monogramed shirt. She’ll put your name right over the heart, L-O-R-E-N—”
He pinches my hips, and I shriek and laugh at the same time. He guides me to the taco stand, his lips by my ear the whole time, whispering some R-rated things that he would like to do to me for being so bad.
“Can we skip the tacos?” I ask, suddenly hot.
His grin lights up his face. He turns to the vendor, not feeding into my desires. Yet. “I’ll have three chicken tacos. She’ll take beef with extra lettuce.” He knows my order by heart, not surprising since we eat here regularly, but now that we’re together, it seems sexier.
“You want hot sauce on those chicken, right?”
“No, not today.”
I frown. “You always get hot sauce.”
“And you hate spicy food.”
WhaaatOhhhh. It clicks. He plans to kiss me sometime soon. That, I like. We pick up our orders, pay and settle down across the street on the fountain ledge.
He gently rocks the champagne cork from the bottle and it sighs once released. He pours each of us enough to fill our two flimsy Styrofoam cups.
Around the same time, I take a big bite into my taco, and sauce dribbles from the end and down my chin. Hurriedly, I find a few of the napkins that haven’t blown away, but I fear Lo has already witnessed my embarrassment.
He tries hard not to smile. “I do remember you being in cotillion. Or was that a dream?”
I snort, not helping my case. “Hardly. I had to dance with Jeremy Adams all night and he was a whole head shorter than me. Since someone chose to go to the ball with Juliana Bancroft.”
He takes a large bite of his chicken taco to suppress laugher.
“I still don’t understand why you did that to me. She was horrible.” I take a big gulp of champagne, the bubbles tickling my nose. I already feel more relaxed. Liquid courage, something Lo knows a little about, but I predict that he’d be just as brazen without the added consumption.
“She wasn’t that bad,” he says, scooping fallen chicken from the tray back into the tortilla.
“She filled my locker with condoms.”
“You don’t know that was her.”
“I slept with her boyfriend. If I had known she was dating some guy from a public school twenty miles out, I would have never touched him.”
I avoided sleeping with guys from Dalton Academy. I hardly wanted a slutty reputation, so I chose my conquests very, very carefully. But obviously not too wisely or else I would have noticed his lie when he claimed his single status. Lady Luck had been somewhat on my side, though. Juliana never told anyone what happened because she didn’t want people to know she was dating “lower” in the first place. A small plus to the horrible ordeal.
“It could have been any other girl,” Lo still refutes. I think partly to rile me. He picks up his champagne cup.
I gape. “The condoms had glittery stickers all over them. Who else in high school had a Lisa Frank fetish? She even carried around a binder with a rainbow unicorn and she was in ninth grade. So not only was she cruel, but she was vain enough to practically sign her name across the crime.” I pause. “You know the sad part of that story. I actually used those condoms.”
He snorts on his champagne, choking on the alcohol.
I pat his back. “Take it easy there. Maybe you should switch to something you can handle. I’m an alcohol aficionado. You should listen to me.” I flash a smile.
“Is that so?” he says, his face red from hacking up a lung. He takes another sip to clear his throat.
“So why did you take Juliana?” I wonder. “You never answered.”
He shrugs. “I don’t remember.”
“And I don’t believe you, Loren Hale.”
“Use my full name, Lily Calloway, its authority is lost on me.” He flashes an equally smug smile.
“You escorted me to plenty of balls before that one,” I remind him. “So what changed?” I shouldn’t nag, but my curiosity prevails over my sensibility.
He sets his empty tray aside and holds the champagne bottle between his legs. I wait while he thinks about the right words, on how to frame his answer. He picks at the flowery gold paint. “The night before Juliana asked me, I came home trashed. I paid off some guy to buy me a bottle of Jim Beam. I spent that afternoon drinking in the back of our old elementary school.” He rolls his eyes. “I probably looked like a fucking delinquent. I was bored. And I guess that’s not even a good excuse anymore. My father saw me stumbling in, and he went off on some tangent about being unappreciative.” His eyes narrow at the brick walk. “To this day, I remember what he said. ‘You can’t even fathom how much I’ve fucking given you, Loren. And this is how you repay me?’”
I’m afraid to touch Lo. He’s in s
ome kind of trance, and if I put my arm around him, he may jerk out from it, sullen and unhappy. He may be both regardless.
He continues with a heavy frown, “I listened to him rant for an hour. Then he started talking about you.”
“Me?” I touch my chest, not believing I could enter this kind of conversation.
He nods. “Yeah, he said you were too good for me, that I would never be able to grow up and be with a girl like you. I was young, rebellious, and when he said ‘go,’ I yelled ‘stop.’ When he said ‘Lily,’ I shouted ‘Juliana.’”
“Oh,” I mumble, not realizing how deep-seated the truth really is.
“For the record,” his voice lightens, “I was miserable all night having to listen to her go on about her horses. And if I remember correctly, you did use Jeremy’s short height to your advantage.”
My ears heat and redden at the memory. I use my hands as blinders to shield my mortification. “You’re not supposed to find my past conquests amusing,” I whisper-yell, still blocking my peripheral vision.
His lips quirk. “I love all of you.” He raises my chin with a finger and kisses me so delicately that I wonder who the man is on the other side of me. The tenderness draws me in, and I lose breath in the short moment.
I break away first, not sure if I can last kissing him like this without the promise of wild, passionate sex. He raises his eyebrows, putting his cup to his lips, grinning. Yes, he knows exactly how I feel right now. I’m so transparent.
I change the topic to keep from oozing into the fountain. “Poppy keeps asking me about your birthday. She wants to meet all of our friends at the party they’re supposedly throwing for us—Charlie and Stacey especially.”
He remains calm. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her that she’d hate the party. Too many drunken college students, and she’ll have to meet them some other time. She bought it pretty quickly. Besides, she has no reason to believe we’d create fictional friends.”
“I wish you’d chosen a better name than Stacey. I don’t know any Staceys that I’d ever be friends with.”
“That’s name prejudice and immature.”
“There’s no such thing as name prejudice, but I don’t doubt it’s slightly immature. I have many faults.”
“About your birthday”—I stay on track—“since you’re not passing out at noon, can I actually take you out to celebrate?”
He rips off the last of the champagne label. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. We can dress up in costumes and go to a party.”
“Why can’t we just stay at home, drink and have sex?”
“We do that every day, Lo,” I say irritably. Since we’ve been together, my late night clubbing customs have disappeared. Unlike Lo, I’m not used to being cooped up in the apartment so much. “There has to be some perks to having a birthday on Halloween.”
He takes a swig from the champagne bottle, thinking. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I guess we already have the perfect costumes.”
I grin and then immediately frown. “Wait, what costumes?” My stomach flops, and once my embarrassment begins to set in, his face lights up. Oh, I hate him. “No, not the same ones we wore to Comic-Con.” My skimpy X-23 outfit! And his tight, equally revealing Hellion suit. The picture framed on his wall.
“You want to go out so badly, that’s my condition.”
He’s trying to see how much I want it. I inhale deeply. I’ll wear a cape in the front or something absurd to cover me. “Fine. You have a deal.”
“We like making those, don’t we?”
I suppose we do.
{13}
“Take these numbers into account, not these.” My tutor gives me a concerned look. “Do you follow?”
My eyes grow wide. “I’m going to fail. Again.”
He taps the eraser of his pencil on the thick economics text and stares at the numbers. His lips draw into a thin line, trying to figure out how to tutor the stupidest girl at Penn. I’m hopeless. It took three more days of solo-torture before I sucked up my pride and emailed Connor to tutor me.
Now I have company in hell.
“Try this one, Lily.” He slides the book to me and points to a big paragraph. Words. Too many words for something involving numbers. Why can’t economics choose between the two? Having both numbers and words in an equation sends a splitting migraine to my skull.
I struggle for another five minutes before I throw my pencil down in a huff. “I swear I’m not doing this on purpose,” I say quickly. “And I know you’re probably wishing I chose someone else.”
He leans back in the rickety old library chair. We’re holed up in a tiny study room with a white board, a long table, a light fixture and one glass wall to remind us that other people do exist. The perk: I can scream in obnoxious frustration and no one will hear my cries but Connor.
Time ticks by, and the sun has already bailed on us. I’m probably keeping my tutor from his dinner or evening plans. I glance occasionally at his thick, wavy brown locks and deep chocolate eyes, scoring high on the Guy-I’d-Like-to-Fuck chart—or the chart I used to have before I entered a monogamous relationship.
The collar to his navy peacoat is popped, the first sign of his preppy status. Honestly, I hoped for some dweeb with glasses and acne. Someone who wouldn’t entice me so much.
“How did you learn about me anyway?” he asks, intrigued. “Referral?”
“You were listed as a tutor on the economics departmental website. I just kind of went for the coolest name. It was between you and Henry Everclear.” No girls, or else they would have been my first choice.
“So you went for Connor Cobalt,” he smiles in amusement. “Connor isn’t my real first name. It’s Richard.”
“Oh.” My arms heat. “I guess that’s not as cool.” I could smack my head at my reply, wishing for something pithy or witty. Instead, I get dumb.
“What’s your full name?”
I glance warily at the clock on his phone, resting on the table beside my book.
He follows my gaze. “I won’t charge extra.”
I flush further. I’ve definitely heard that before. “I don’t want to keep you from your plans.”
“Oh no,” he says with a laugh, setting down his Starbucks coffee. “I don’t have any plans. I’m actually kind of glad you’re a little slow. I’ve been tutoring freshman A-type personalities for the past few months and they whiz through my problems in under twenty minutes. I need tutoring hours for my resume. The MBA program at Wharton is pretty competitive and any extracurricular helps.”
I should take offense to that, but I can’t argue with the truth here. I am struggling. “Well, I may be a lost cause.”
“I’m the best tutor at Penn. I bet you a thousand dollars I’ll have you at least capable of passing your next exam.”
I gape, disbelieving. “That’s in two days.”
He doesn’t even blink. “I guess we’re going to be cramming for the next forty-eight hours.” He checks his watch and simultaneously picks his coffee back up, taking a sip. “You never told me your full name by the way. It can’t be worse than Connor Cobalt.” He flashes a pearly white smile—the same blinding ones that surrounded me in prep school.
“Lily Calloway.”
His head jerks back in surprise. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to Rose Calloway?”
“Sister.”
He grins again. I wish I could tell him to stop. After years of pretending and lying, nothing screams “fake” more than overzealous smiles. “She’s on the Academic Bowl for Princeton, right? We compete against them all the time. She’s wicked smart. I’m surprised you didn’t ask her to tutor you.”
I laugh dryly. “I think you’d have to be built of armor to learn anything from Rose. She’s a tough teacher.”
His eyebrows rise as he finishes off his coffee. “Is that so?” He’s too curious for his own good.
I decide to save him and turn back to my books. �
��So are you really prepared to lose a thousand dollars?” He may be keen on racking up hours for his resume, but I actually need to learn this stuff.
“My pride is on the line. It costs more than a thousand dollars.” He checks his Rolex watch again. “Do you have a Red Bull at your place?”
Wait? Is he inviting himself over to tutor me?
He sees my confusion as he starts stacking textbooks together. “Library closes in ten minutes. I wasn’t kidding about cramming for the next forty-eight hours. It’s either your place or mine. But I have to warn you, my cat hates girls, and I haven’t cut her nails in a few weeks. So unless you want to be jealously assaulted by Sadie, I suggest your apartment.”
I prefer the Drake anyway. With Lo around, I have less chance to do something moronic. Like listening to my lower brain.
“My place is fine.” I sling my backpack over my shoulder as we leave. “But I live with my boyfriend, so we’ll have to be quiet.”
He whistles. “A junior and shacking up already. That explains a lot.”
He holds open a glass door for me, but I freeze before stepping onto the campus quad. “How so?” Do I wear everything right on my chest? Or is Connor Cobalt so arrogant he believes he has me all figured out in a short study session?
“A lot of girls here are from family money—”
“Wait,” I stop him before he continues. “How do you know I have money?” I glance at my wardrobe. Nothing on me screams distastefully wealthy. I wear a pair of Nike sneakers, track pants and a Penn sweatshirt. If Rose saw my style, she’d have a hernia.
“Calloway,” he says my name with a laugh. “Your daddy is a soda mogul.”
“Yeah, but most people—”
“I’m not most people, and I make an effort to know names, especially ones that matter.”
Uh, I have no idea how to respond to that conceitedness.
He leads me outside into the chilly night. “Like I was saying, most rich girls all tend to do the same thing. Find a guy at an Ivy League who will be incredibly successful, marry early, and have their future set without having to do the extra lifting—straight As, stellar recs, full CVs. I’m not judging. If I was a girl, I’d probably be on the same path. Hell, I’ll end up marrying the type.”
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