Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  But now, it’s time to go back. And with no public relations job prospects down here in Florida, and quite a few in Manhattan, moving back north is my only option. But it’s been five years. People forget. They move on.

  At least, I hope they have. Because secretly, I don’t think I have, and I don’t need anyone else to join the party.

  We pull up in front of Ellie’s apartment building, and Keely calls her. Ellie promptly skips out of the apartment building she lives in on campus. She’s been an RA all four years, and on-campus living never really grew old on her.

  “Hey, Ell,” Keely says.

  “Hi, my boos,” Ellie says, her sweet brown bob falling perfectly into place as she slides in. “Let’s fucking do this!”

  The two of them talk, go on about their exams, discuss plans for the beach, and figure out when their families are getting into town. I hear it all going down in the background, but my mind is still on New York. On home. On my family. Wondering if I’m going to move forward or jump right back into the nightmare that was my life five years ago.

  “Yoohoo, Earth to Maryn,” Keely says, waving her hand in my face as we park.

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry,” I say, unbuckling and hopping out. Ramsay’s is a bar on the first floor of the Sandgate Hotel, a big, fancy hotel right on the beach, just a few minutes from campus. It’s a Melladon tradition to spend the night before graduation at Ramsay’s, and the hotel blocks a bunch of rooms for seniors to spend the night—to promote safe drinking-and-driving practices. It’s a far cry from the rundown, cheap-ass bars we went to our first few years. Going to Ramsay’s is a rite of passage for Melladon seniors. It means you’re stepping up in the real world. You know that money will be coming in soon. You’re no longer in the same class as the rest of the student body. And baby, it’s a wonderful feeling.

  As we’re getting out of the car, we hear whistling from across the parking lot. Trey rushes over to us, pushing himself up against Keely and squeezing her butt as he kisses her neck. She nuzzles back against him before spinning on her heel and kissing him way more passionately than necessary for a public parking lot.

  Blech. They’re so disgustingly adorable. They’ve been together since the third week of freshman year. We’ve sat with Keely and held her hand during their early-stage, bullshit fights, and we’ve been there when Trey asked Ellie and me to go ring shopping for her. They’ll be engaged by the end of the year, and it’s not hard to see that it’s a no-brainer.

  Ellie, on the other hand, is sort of a hot mess—in and out of different guys’ beds, on and off all the hook-up apps. She’s finally slowing down, but that’s because she’s found a longer-term catch. One I’m not particularly happy about.

  “Professor Dickface meeting you here?” Keely asks as Trey swings an arm around her shoulders. We walk in through the hotel lobby and to the high-top table that Trey reserved for us weeks ago.

  “It’s Dick-son,” Ellie says, rolling her eyes. “And no. He doesn’t like to mingle with students until they are officially graduated.”

  I can’t help but snort, and Keely stops in her tracks.

  “So does fucking one of his students not count as mingling?” she asks. Ellie’s jaw drops. She rolls her eyes again as she hangs her sweater up on the back of her chair.

  “Fuck you, Keely,” Ellie says, holding her hand up to wave over a waiter. She orders us each a round of shots to get the night rolling, then turns back to Keely to defend herself for the fiftieth time in two weeks. “He hasn’t been happy in years. She tricked him into getting pregnant so he’d stay with her.”

  Keely snorts as she throws back her shot.

  “He’s a grown-ass man. And you’re the woman wrecking his family,” Keely says. Though I’m not as blunt with Ellie, Keely and I are one-hundred percent on the same page here. What Ellie’s doing is wrong. She blames it on this undeniable attraction her and Professor Dickson share. She says the moment she walked by his office, they couldn’t keep their eyes off each other.

  The first time he asked her to stay after his class to review her grade, they had sex on his desk. And as she’s sworn to us multiple times: “they couldn’t stop themselves.” When Keely and I rolled our eyes, she kept going.

  “I’m serious. I couldn’t stop my hands from touching him. It was like all my senses went numb. I needed him so badly, and that hasn’t stopped,” Ellie had told us in our apartment that night.

  Keely has shared plenty of sex stories about her and Trey, too. Like how they just had to have sex in the middle of one of the campus parking lots in the back of his car in broad daylight one time. They couldn’t wait the five-minute drive to one of their apartments.

  Or how hard it was to hold off the one night they realized they didn’t have a condom. More babbling bullshit that I cannot relate to.

  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I haven’t had sex. It’s not that I haven’t had good sex. Shawn is pretty good in that department. So are most of the other guys I’ve been with. But no dick has ever made me crazy enough to lose my goddamn mind. To risk getting arrested in a public place. To go against my morals.

  No way. There’s no such thing.

  “You just haven’t had the right dick,” Keely said to me one night when we were discussing our latest sexcapades. I rolled my eyes.

  “A dick like that does not exist. You two are just weak,” I told them.

  We’ve now been waiting for our onion rings and hot wings for twenty-five minutes, and the waiter hasn’t been back to take our drink orders in a hot minute. Not that I don’t like listening to my friend discuss the extramarital affair she’s having with a man whose wife had a baby three weeks ago, but it’s not high on my priority list.

  “I’m gonna go get us some drinks,” I say, excusing myself and hopping down off the pub chair.

  “Excuse me,” I say, leaning over the edge of the bar and trying to speak up so the bartender can hear me. This place has gotten increasingly more loud and more crowded since we sat down. “Excuse me,” I say again, louder. A few people around me look over for a second before turning back to their evenings.

  “You’re gonna have to be louder than that, sweetheart,” a man says. His voice is clean and smooth, like a piece of glass. I turn my head and see him. He’s standing in the middle of a crowd of about ten guys and girls all mingling together. He seems huge, much taller than the other men he’s with. His skin is dark under his light-green button-up that is stretching to curve itself around his chest and arms. He’s got one hand in the pocket of his slacks, the other wrapped around a beer. And then our eyes meet.

  I wouldn’t forget those green eyes anywhere. They match his shirt perfectly, even standing out under the shitty bar lighting. The smile leaves his lips when he sees me, too.

  My jaw drops, and my eyes narrow.

  This fucking guy.

  For five years, I’ve wanted nothing but to nut-punch him, drop-kick him in public, pop his tires, key his car. When I left for school, I thought I was leaving all this bullshit behind. I made it through four years without having to see or talk to anyone from home. I was the only one from my graduating class to come to Melladon, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  But I’m not the first from home to ever attend.

  Wyatt Mills, the bane of my existence, graduated before I got to high school. And he happens to be an alumnus of Melladon. But fortunately for him, he graduated before I even started here.

  “Oh,” he says when our eyes meet. I see his chest heaving up and down, but his eyes never drop from mine. And for some reason, that bugs me. He should grovel. He should be nervous, apprehensive, guilty.

  But he’s not. He’s cocky, sure of himself. His eyes narrow on mine.

  The bartender slides a drink down the bar, and before it reaches its rightful owner, I stick my hand out and grab it, ignoring the, “Hey, that’s mine,” coming from next to me. I take a few steps down the bar, headed right toward him.

  This is it. This is the moment I’ve
been waiting for. Five years.

  This one’s for my dad, motherfucker.

  I step dangerously close to him, causing the crowd of beautiful alumni to separate slightly. I’m inches away from him now, and the scent of the cologne he’s wearing would be enough to knock me out of my panties if I didn’t want to bash his head in with a bat.

  “Wyatt Mills,” I say, taking a sip of the mystery drink in my hand without letting my glare waver. He swallows.

  “Maryn,” he says with a curt nod. “It’s been a while.”

  I feel this weird, sadistic smile spread across my lips as I take one step closer to him. Then, I take what’s left in the glass and turn it over upside down on his chest.

  “Not long enough,” I whisper before setting the glass down on the bar and walking away.

  I get back to the table, and I’m shaking. I never pull off shit like that. And though I know I didn’t look as calm, cool, and collected as I was picturing, the sound of his friends “ohhhing” as I walked away was enough to help me keep my shit together.

  “You okay?” Trey asks. Keely and Ellie look up at me. I sit down at the table and grab an onion ring, my hand shaking as I shove it in my mouth.

  “Yeah, I’m just, I...” I stammer in between bites.

  “Jesus, Mare, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Ellie says, patting my back. I let my eyes carefully trail back over to the bar where Wyatt and his crew were standing. And as our eyes meet again, I feel my body freeze.

  “I wish. Unfortunately, he’s very much alive,” I say. Then I stand up. “I think I’m gonna go up to the room. I’m not feeling too hot.”

  They all stand up to protest, but I wave them off.

  “Do you want us to walk you up?” Keely asks. I smile and shake my head.

  “Thanks, but I think I can make it up a few floors in an elevator.” They nod and hug me goodnight.

  “Oh, Mare,” Trey calls, “when Shawn gets here, do you want me to have him come to your room or...”

  I sigh and shake my head.

  “Not really feelin’ it tonight,” I say as I stalk off. And despite Shawn’s Ken-like physique, that’s the truth. Seeing your mortal enemy can have crushing effects on your libido.

  I grab my bag and make my way to the front desk, giving them Trey’s name. They give me the key to one of the rooms and point me to the elevator. As the doors open, I’m pleased to note that I’m the only one in it. But just as the doors are closing, a long, brown, slender hand pushes through the opening, making the doors slide back open.

  And in steps Mr. Mills himself.

  And suddenly, I feel sick all over again.

  2

  December 2014 - Maryn

  I’m not sure how much longer I can stare at this stupid study guide before my head explodes. I know I’m not getting college credit with this dumb AP exam, but my parents are paying for me to take it anyway since I “worked so hard” in the class all semester. It’s the first official night of winter break, but I don’t have much going on, so I’m spending it studying like the true nerd that I am.

  But it’s senior year. I’ve been working hard since I could hold a pencil. And now I’m halfway done with my last year of schooling before I’m off to college. I have my top-five list: NYU, Cornell, Boston University, Penn State, and my backup, this small school in Florida called Melladon. It’s a good school and has a good communications program, but it’s really far away. But it’s just my backup.

  Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I need these days off more than ever. Senioritis is definitely kicking in big time, and I need the mental break.

  My phone rings on my bed as I get up off the floor to grab it. It’s a text from Shelly.

  Are you coming out tonight?

  Coming where?

  A bunch of us are meeting at Stone Creek Park to go sledding. I roll my eyes. It’s as cold as a witch’s tit outside, and we’ve already gotten two big snowstorms even though it’s only December. My phone buzzes again.

  Matt’s coming.

  My eyebrows shoot up. Matt has been on my radar for months now. He and Tanya Meadow supposedly went at it in the gym after a basketball game once, but that has never been proven true. He’s the basketball MVP and rivals me for highest grade in all of our classes. He’s a top prospect as far as I’m concerned.

  I’ll be there, I reply. I dress in as many layers as I can find while all the while making myself not look too frumpy or stuffed. I need to be warm—but sexy.

  I make my way downstairs and grab for my keys just as my dad is coming around the corner from the kitchen to the key rack.

  “Where you off to, kid?” he asks.

  “A bunch of us are meeting to sled,” I say, pulling my beanie on.

  “Love that you kids are still getting outside,” he says. “Tell Shelly she still owes me her research paper from last week.” I roll my eyes. Yes, my dad is a history teacher. At my school. Like, where my friends see him, and have to talk to him, and know that I’m his kid. But if I’m being honest, it doesn’t bother me as much as it should bother a teenage girl. In fact, he’s kind of the man. So, ipso facto, I’m kind of the man’s daughter. It’s got its perks.

  “Will do,” I say. “Where are you going?”

  “Leave it to your mother to forget chicken when she offers to make chicken pot pie for Christmas Eve dinner,” he says with a smile. I laugh.

  “That’s Mom for you,” I say. He follows me out the door, and I say goodnight as he hops into his car, and I hop into mine.

  An hour later, I’m sulking in the parking lot of the park while my friends are taking turns chugging beers and jumping onto each other like wild animals before taking off down the hill. Matt was a no-show, but now I’m stuck here because they are all drunk and need a ride home.

  Their drunk asses are finally ready to go, and I drop the last of them off and pull into the driveway. I go inside quietly, hushing the dog before he wakes everyone up. But I hear the TV on in the living room.

  “What are you doing up, Dad?” I ask him as he turns to greet me.

  “Reruns of M*A*S*H are on. Couldn’t pass that up,” he says with a smile. I drop my stuff on the ground by the door and kick off my boots. I take off about twelve layers and skip over toward him, plopping down on the couch next to him. I love M*A*S*H, and I love watching it with my dad. It’s our thing, just the two of us.

  “Did you get the chicken?” I ask, picking around the remnants of his popcorn bowl.

  “Yep. Saw Willa Mills up there while I was shopping,” he says.

  “Oh, cool,” I say. Willa is a grade below me. She’s the captain of the girls’ volleyball team. We had P.E. together last year, but she tended to lead the pack on the mile runs while I tended to bring up the rear, so we didn’t talk much.

  “Ready for that test?” he asks me, sticking his hand back in the bowl to pull out some of the last pieces.

  “Ugh, I don’t know. I hate that I have to stress about it all break,” I say.

  “You don’t. Don’t stress about it. Take it head-on, kid,” he says, not taking his eyes off the screen. I smile. Dad is so matter-of-fact. I’m a lot like my mom: anxious, Type A, a worrier. But Dad has a different mindset. He’s a doer, not a worrier. Tucker inherited that gene from him, and it’s one I’m most envious of.

  Tucker is three years younger than me and is sailing through his first year of high school. He’s smart as a whip but puts in minimum effort and gets results that are irritatingly close to mine. But he’s like Dad: matter-of-fact, to the point, and has way more common sense than should be allowed for one person.

  The next morning is Christmas Eve, and—to be expected—Mom is running around like a chicken with her head cut off. Dad’s family is supposed to be here midday, and Mom’s panicking over the one section of the counter that has flour on it rather than being pleased that she has an entire four-course meal basically prepared and ready.

  I’m in the kitchen that afternoon, waiting for the cookies I m
ade to be done in the oven, when Dad comes in, staring down at his phone with a perplexed look in his eye.

  “What’s up, Dad?” I ask, reaching in to finally pull out the cookies.

  “Got an email this morning from Principal Pickett,” Dad says. Mom stops stirring whatever it is she’s working on and looks over to him.

  “And?”

  “Willa Mills is missing.”

  We all stop what we’re doing and turn to him.

  “What?” I ask. “But you just saw her.”

  Mom’s eyebrows shoot up.

  “You just saw her?”

  “Yeah,” Dad says, rubbing his temple. “At the grocery store last night. Said she and her brother were running an errand for their mom. He waited for her in the parking lot, but she apparently never came back to the car.”

  My stomach drops. I don’t know Willa that well, but any news like that is unnerving. And way too close to home. Mom walks over to Dad and puts her hand on his.

  “That’s awful. I’m sorry, hon. Hopefully, they’ll find her soon,” she says. He gives half a smile and nods. He makes his way into the living room, and we can hear his recliner creak as he plops down.

  “Poor Dad,” I say. Mom nods.

  “I know. She’s one of his best students.”

  News about Willa spreads like wildfire, just like any sort of news does in a small town. I’ve heard three different versions of the story so far: one saying she was dragged out of the parking lot while her brother tried to stop the perpetrator; another that she ran away; and another saying that she was already back home and that the whole thing wasn’t true.

  Unfortunately, based on the updates my Dad’s getting from Principal Pickett, I know the latter isn’t true. Willa is definitely missing.

  Our family comes, and Dad’s not himself. I watch him go through the motions, hugging, kissing, telling the little cousins how grown up they look. But his eyes are somewhere else. Willa. He’s worried, and I feel for him.