Plop. It landed in the left cup of the row of three.
Penelope looked down, then back at Hunt.
He smiled knowingly. “Not only was I captain of an undefeated crew my senior year, I majored in chemical engineering. Ergo, I also took introductory fluid mechanics.” He turned to Justin.
Hunt and Justin shared a well-coordinated high five.
Penelope gulped. She spoke in a low voice to Nick. “I think that, given the competition, you should drink most of the beer. Even sober, I will definitely be the weak link in the group.” She daintily removed the Ping-Pong ball and passed the cup to Nick.
“No way, sis. House rules state you have to alternate drinking,” Justin informed her.
“Oh, dear.”
“Don’t worry.” Nick smiled encouragingly. “Drinking a few beers will relieve the tension in your arm. You’ll throw even better. After all, Don Larson pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series with no memory of doing so, supposedly because he was still drunk from the night before.”
“The World Series of what?” she asked innocently.
Nick rubbed his brow. “This could be a very quick night.” He chugged down the cup of beer, then tossed it backward into the audience.
Out of the corner of her eye Penelope saw the camera follow the action.
There was a loud cheer that Larry and Clyde recorded before returning to the game.
“Go for it, Penelope,” Nick encouraged her. “The worst that can happen is total humiliation and shame.”
The thing of it was, as the game wore on, Nick was right. Not the part about humiliation, but that alcohol seemed to free up her muscles.
Or maybe she wasn’t used to drinking this much beer?
The game was nip and tuck. Both Justin and Hunt were natural athletes and, while rusty, they were clearly the more experienced players. Nick proved to be no slouch, either.
There was only one cup remaining at their end, and two at the other. It was Hunt’s turn. He shot the ball. It fired through the air, heading on target. The little ball found the edge of the cup. It circled the rim.
There was a collective holding of breath.
Nick leaned forward.
Penelope covered her face. She couldn’t look.
Then, as one, the crowd groaned.
Penelope lowered her hand to see the ball rolling on the table. Breath returned to her lungs.
Then it was Nick’s turn again. Two cups remained across the table. The one closest to them, and the one on the back right.
“Fastball,” Penelope coached. She wavered slightly on her feet, the beer making her a little wobbly.
Nick picked up a ball. “No worries. This is going to burn up the radar gun.” He gave her a large, slightly tipsy smile. “I’ll explain that to you later.” Without waiting, he pitched the ball forward on a near-straight line.
Plop. It found the back cup.
Cheers went up.
Nick beamed. “I do believe we are dead even. Your turn, amigo,” he said to Justin.
Justin confidently picked up the Ping-Pong ball. “Sayonara, suckers.” He made a dartlike throw with his wet ball.
Penelope pressed her fist to her mouth. Nick rocked on his heels and looked as if he expected defeat.
The ball overshot.
“Ouch.” Justin winced.
Penelope clapped. She hadn’t felt such relief since successfully defending her Ph.D thesis.
Nick retrieved the ball and placed it in her hand.
“Oh, no, can’t you do it?” she protested. “You’re so much better.” It was true. He was the only one on their team who had successfully landed the ball in any of the cups.
“House rules,” the whole room roared.
Nick cupped her hand in his. “Don’t worry. Just throw it without even thinking.”
“I never do anything without thinking.”
“So, maybe it’s time you started.” He kept his face close to hers for a moment more. “No thinking,” he mouthed silently.
Penelope wet her lips and nodded. She faced the table and, barely registering where the cup stood, tossed the ball with a quick flick of the wrist. “Oh, no,” she called. “I forgot to dunk—”
Then a miracle occurred.
The ball rocketed to the cup and, like a beer-seeking missile, found the center.
Plop.
The crowd roared and started jumping up and down. Downstairs the music from the band suddenly seemed to up in volume and the bass practically shook the floor and the walls. The photos rattled on their hooks. Larry barely managed to protect his camera from a stray hand or two. Clyde’s sound boom swayed precariously above it all.
Penelope stood there blinking. She pointed to where her ball had landed. Then she looked up at her brother, who seemed as stunned as she was.
After a moment, Justin recovered with a broad smile. “You’re not going to rub this in, are you?” he asked before picking up the cup and downing it. Half the contents poured down his cheeks. He tossed it over his shoulder. “Well done, Penelope. Well done,” he congratulated her.
“There you have it. Not only survival under fire, but victory,” Nick declared with a fist pump. “What can I say but never underestimate the prowess of a rare-book librarian.” He put his arms around her shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Penelope decided to return the favor—in her own natural way.
She placed one hand on the side of his head and angled it downward. Then she went up on tiptoes and kissed him fully on the lips.
He responded immediately, deepening the pressure, parting her lips and letting his tongue tango with hers.
Penelope breathed in the smell of cheap beer, shaving cream and lust.
There came the sound of wolf whistles and clapping. Was it coming from the people gathered around? Or could there be a joyful band in her head?
Did it matter?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HESITANT, AMARA TAPPED her fingers on the handlebar of Penelope’s bicycle propped against the garage wall.
Her father had stopped by the house earlier and had tried to get Amara to go along with them to Lion Inn. Despite his seeming eagerness to have her join them, she had watched the way his eyes had followed Penelope around the living room as she neatly placed a bookmark in her hardback copy of War and Peace. “I’m trying to improve my Russian,” she had explained. “It’s pretty rusty.”
Rusty or not, Amara was pretty impressed that Penelope hadn’t needed to use a dictionary. She would have needed one just for the English translation.
Anyway, given the way her father looked at Penelope, Amara had no desire to be the proverbial third wheel. “I’m kind of tired after babysitting all afternoon,” she’d said, making excuses. “Besides, I haven’t slept that well since…well…you know—the whole getting kicked out of school bit.” It was a cheap move, but not entirely inaccurate.
Penelope had seemed genuinely hurt. She’d immediately taken Amara by the hand and guided her to a tin of biscotti.
“I understand completely. You know, I find that puttering around the kitchen is useful when I have trouble sleeping. In fact, I made these at three in the morning just as a distraction. When I was younger, I used to decline irregular Latin verbs, but then I learned them all…” She’d almost seemed embarrassed at that last admission.
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” Amara had assured her, practically pushing the two adults out the door. The truth was, she had other plans.
Press.
She’d gone to the Grantham University website and looked up the schedule of the Reunions activities for the weekend. There was the annual softball game bet
ween the graduating class and the tenth-year Reunion members. Since Press didn’t have to work, she figured he’d be there. The only problem was that by the time her dad and Penelope had left, the game was already underway.
She looked down at her watch. By now it was probably in the fifth inning. The university’s baseball field was a fair hike from Penelope’s house. If she walked—even ran—she might miss him. But if she had wheels…
She squeezed the bike’s hand brake and considered her options. The obvious choice was the vintage sports car. Amara had already noticed that Penelope, being the superorganized person that she was, placed all her keys in a small wicker basket on the small table in the kitchen. But she’d already gotten into trouble borrowing a car without permission.
So the bike was her best bet. Besides, Penelope had said that Amara could borrow it whenever she wasn’t using it. True, the implication was for trips like going to the library or tooling along the towpath by Lake Vanderbilt. Probably a mission to lose her virginity would not have been included on that list.
Amara hesitated. Then she noticed the bike lock in the front wire basket on the bike. And sticking out of the lock was a key.
It was karma, Amara figured. Or Penelope’s organizational skills.
Whatever. Amara whipped around and raised the garage door. She wheeled the bike out the driveway, leaned it against the house and turned to close the overhanging door. Penelope might insist on bolting her bike, but she didn’t bother locking her house.
“Except for the bike thieves, Grantham is so safe,” she had informed Amara. “Besides, what are they going to steal? My complete works of Ovid?” Penelope had chuckled. “That was a joke, wasn’t it? I made a joke.” She had seemed very pleased with herself.
In that instant, Amara thought that Penelope looked truly beautiful. She had laughed in response.
Amara wasn’t laughing now. But she was determined. She swung her leg over the bike and straddled the frame. Penelope was a few inches taller, so she’d have to stand on the pedals the whole way. She pushed out the driveway and headed up Henderson Street. It was slightly uphill, and her calves started killing her within five minutes. Amara decided to ignore the pain. What she couldn’t ignore was the feeling of the slim packet slipped into her back jeans pocket. The packet with the condom.
* * *
PRESS STOOD NEXT TO THE on-deck circle, metal bat in one hand and a plastic cup of beer in the other. “C’mon, throw strikes,” he jawed at the pitcher. “It’s past bedtime for your teammates in the field, so just put ’em outta further misery.”
It was the bottom of the last inning, with his team trailing by one run. Every ball counted. Big time. A man, or rather, a woman, was on first, with Press’s class president up at bat. The guy already had an analyst’s job lined up at a private-equity firm—and what looked like a good eye for balls and strikes.
His classmates hooted from the sidelines and stamped their feet on the metal stands. The “Game” was a long-standing tradition at Grantham Reunions. Last year, the ten-year Reunion members had uncharacteristically won—a situation that was not about to happen again this year.
Frankly, Press didn’t give a hoot about being some kind of athletic hero. To his father’s dismay, he’d refused to play football, despite being courted by practically every Ivy League school. Even Big Ten Stanford had scouted him in prep school. Instead he’d been a walk-on for the tennis team his freshman year, and confounding expectations, had actually made varsity.
Yet Press had found himself chafing at the hours of practice and the hefty chunk of travel time required for away matches. And his enthusiasm for competitive sports began to wane as he found his love of learning begin to blossom. Talk about out of the blue. His old man had just about freaked when he informed him he was majoring in biology with a concentration in paleontology.
“Lodges don’t dabble in living organisms,” Conrad Lodge III had announced in his lockjaw accent between sips of his single-malt scotch. “We establish investment banks, and we serve our country by being ambassadors.”
“Of course,” Press had sniggered under his breath.
Screw the whole Masters of the Universe thing, Press had thought that day as he’d gotten up and walked out of the Grantham Club. The local institution was famed for WASP deal making over Yorkshire pudding and gray slabs of roast beef.
His half sister Mimi liked to tell him that he had a problem with authority. As if she didn’t? In fact, he figured she was about as mixed up as he was. But that hadn’t stopped her from becoming a leading journalist. Just the way he intended to become a groundbreaking paleontologist.
In the meantime, when it came to his turn at bat, he just wanted to knock the cover off the ball. To wipe those smug grins off the alums, all so comfortable with their well-paying jobs at “white shoe” law firms and elite hedge funds.
Press breathed in loudly. Actually some of them seemed really nice. One guy who was an engineer for Schlumberger in Papua New Guinea thought being a paleontologist was just about the “neatest thing ever.” So, it wasn’t as though the need to win was personal. No, there was something else involved besides his put-it-to-people-in-positions-of-authority attitude.
Something had been bugging him for a couple days now. It was akin to an itch between your shoulder blades or an invisible hair that kept getting in your mouth. He figured it was just senioritis. Four years was a long time to be in school, and it was definitely time to move on.
The class president finally connected with a ball. It was a weak grounder to second base. Despite the fact that the second baseman was standing with a beer in his bare hand, he managed to put down the cup, field the ball cleanly, step on second base, thereby forcing the lead runner, and throw to first in time. A double play—all without knocking over his cup.
Press looked back at his teammates who were booing. “What gives?”
“He played Triple-A ball at Pawtucket before he ruptured an Achilles tendon,” his friend Matt Brown informed him from the sidelines. Matt was a year younger and was also a local. The two had met when they worked during a summer in high school at a local country club. Press had taught tennis, and Matt had manned the cash register in the pro shop. Even though Press gave Matt a hard time for going to Yale, he admired him—a lot.
It was a long story, involving Matt’s mother dying and his coming to live with the father he’d never known. But Matt had survived that crisis, and this summer he’d be heading off to Congo for the second time to work for Lilah Evans and her nonprofit organization. If anyone deserved to have a good time right now, it was Matt.
“Pawtucket?” Press repeated. “Isn’t that a Red Sox affiliate?”
Matt nodded. His tall, lanky body seemed dwarfed in his faded khaki shorts and Yale T-shirt.
Press made a face. He was a diehard Yankees fan. “Yet another reason to annihilate these guys,” he declared and took another gulp of beer. Then he rolled his shoulders to try to loosen up that nagging feeling.
That’s when he saw her. And he stopped moving his shoulders.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
HE WATCHED AMARA HOP OFF this bike that looked way too big for her and come walking toward the sidelines. He saw her scan the crowd—and finally spot him.
She waved.
He gave her a nod. That pain between his shoulder blades? It just got worse. Another gulp of beer. A short swing of the bat. “Here comes trouble,” he said to Matt with a nod of his head in Amara’s direction.
The kid—that’s what he kept telling himself she was—locked the bike against the fence and headed in his direction. She didn’t run, thankfully. She took her time slowly, her hands next to the sides of her jeans. She had a tight smile on her face as she passed Matt.
She’s nervous, Press realized. Out of the blue, he felt protective. That was the weir
d thing about Amara. She stirred up these emotions he didn’t know he had. And which he didn’t particularly want. She rattled his sense of who he was and what he wanted or, more appropriately, what he expected out of life.
And she was a kid, he reminded himself. Barely out of high school. Jailbait. And despite her tough-girl look—which he couldn’t help noticing she had abandoned in favor of jeans, boat shoes and a white T-shirt. Even her hair didn’t look so coal-black as before, but rather a dark brown, the waves gently caressing her shoulders and spilling down her back… . Not good, Press chided himself. She was innocent, clearly not in his sarcastic, dim-view-of-the-world league.
Someone offered her a beer, but she declined. Yeah, she was a good kid.
The guy in the on-deck circle had moved to the batter’s box. So far he’d hit a couple of fly balls. “Hey, Matt,” Press called out as he moved into the on-deck circle. “That’s Amara. She’s coming to Grantham University next year as a freshman. Think you can entertain her while I’m busy?”
Matt shuffled his feet around and held out his hand. The guy was hopelessly shy. That didn’t keep Amara from smiling more broadly as she returned the handshake, Press noticed.
He tried to refocus on the game. “C’mon, Doug,” he encouraged the batter. The guy had been his freshman lab partner in Organic Chemistry. “Enough with practicing your swing. Put the ball in play.”
Doug glanced over his shoulder. “You always did like to order me around.”
“Hey, you got an A thanks to my efforts,” Press reminded him.
The pitcher went into his slow pitch windup. Their teammates clapped. The opponents heckled. He threw the ball.
Doug made contact, hitting a seeing-eye single that the third baseman—an up-and-coming bond trader—made a diving catch for, but missed. He got up and dusted his shirt off. “Just don’t come looking to me for a job when you graduate,” he called over to Doug who was standing on first base and taking bows.
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