Again (8 page)

That easily, rule number one
was forgotten like it was written on my brain in chalk being erased with each
sip.

We went out front for a
cigarette and a breath of fresh air. The porch trembled below me, the stars
above me spun. Nothing but beer was coursing through my veins as I listened to
Alex and Steph rate the guys we’d met so far.

“You like anyone, Kate?”
Steph asked after she and Alex had made it through five specimens.

“All of the above,” I said,
unable to fight a fit of laughter.

“Kappa loves salad
dressing!” Alex spit.

I guess for the purposes of
the night right in front of me—reveling in the tunnel vision being drunk
offered—I did.

We stumbled back inside and
I kept drinking. I reasoned that I had to otherwise I was going to crumble into
a pile of guilt and shame. It was the reason I always kept drinking once I
started. Why would that have changed just because I was pretending to be
younger? Why would
I
have changed just because I was trying to start
over and be a good girl?

My cup bobbed as I worked on
solidifying the Jell-O taking the place of my bones. It was okay, I argued. I
could get buzzed. Drinking like this didn’t mean I couldn’t control myself,
that I would flunk out again. I’d already finished my reading and homework and
I didn’t have class until 10:00 a.m. on Monday. It was the weekend. I could
have a few beers. I could keep myself in check. I mean, I was the adult here.

That was what I told myself,
but after beer number seven, I joined Alex and Steph and a few other girls who
were Alex and Steph with blond hair or with red hair, on the dance floor. We
jumped up and down, dancing wildly, hooting and screaming. When they threw
their tops off and into the crowd forming around us, I did too.

The room spun, a flutter
filled my stomach as I danced in my bra and jeans. I was no longer even trying
to control myself. I was not being the adult, but I was, I reasoned, acting
like I was nineteen.

I couldn’t remember exactly
what I’d done at the Franklin Law Group holiday party to make David fire and
dump me, but behavior like this would have more than taken care of it. Behavior
like this might have gotten me arrested or committed as a twenty-nine-year old
at a holiday work party. Here, though, people were clapping, laughing, and
joining in. I was fun.

The way I was acting made
sense.

Steph and Alex each took one
of my hands, forming a circle and chanting
Alpha, Sigma, Kappa
, again
and again as we jumped up and down. Maybe I belonged here, with them.

Maybe my problem wasn’t
flunking out of college, but that I’d ever left.

I watched them bouncing to
the music. In my drunk mind our bodies didn’t look so different. Soon the boys
around us also started taking off their shirts and in my drunk mind their
bodies looked pretty damn good too.

The guy with the adorably
shaggy brown hair and ironic wife-beater moved closer to me, his eyes
undressing what was left of what I wore. I was about to cradle my arms around
his neck when there was a tap on my shoulder.

Maybe someone who wanted to
cut in.

Carter

Kate turned to me and her
crazy drunk smile suddenly clamped down.

“Carter?” she asked, a surge
of confusion settling over her. She covered herself with her arms. Apparently,
she was fine with a room of strangers seeing her in her bra, but not me. She
looked insanely awesome in her bra. It was translucent white lace, tracing the
skin underneath. I wished she’d move her arms so I could see her perfect tits
again, but I was glad she had finally covered up around everyone else.

“Hey, Kate,” I replied,
unsure what to say. It was one thing to want to make sure she was okay. It was
another to be standing in front of her trying to explain it.

“What the hell are you doing
here?”

I hadn’t thought about my answer to this
question, I just needed to stop whatever was about to happen as soon as the guy
in the wife-beater targeted in on her.

I didn’t believe every situation in a
frat house would turn out the way Jeanie’s did, but when Kate was about to put
her arms around his neck there was a fire, a wrath coming from my core that
hadn’t been there in years.

Jealousy.

I wanted her to put her arms around me,
but I couldn’t explain that any better than why I was there.

“Hanging out,” I said. Who
was I kidding? I hadn’t hung out anywhere in three years.

Honestly,
I had been on my way home
from the library when I saw Kate standing on the front porch of Delta Tau. She
was so drunk she was swaying like seaweed under water. I was only planning on
stopping in and checking on her.

When she was about to dance with that sleazy asshole, I had to do
more than watch. I had to do something.

She tried to focus on me. Her legs were like empty skin blowing in
the breeze beneath her. She was even drunker than I’d thought and I’d thought
she was pretty drunk.

Poor Kate,
I guess
some of the emptiness in her eyes was actually a cry for numbness. A need to
make all the pain she’d ever been through float away.

“You’re hanging out in your winter
coat?” she asked, clearly not believing me. Her words came slow and slurred.

I leaned back on my heels and put my
hands in my pockets like I was trying to prove it. Even when I was in a frat I
was uncomfortable at parties. I was thankful for alcohol then because at least
it gave my hands and my mouth something to do.

Without it I appeared as out of place as
I felt.

“You’re hanging out in your bra,” I
replied, the word elusive like a secret on my tongue. I loved Kate in her bra.
I just didn’t like sharing the moment with fifty other horny guys.

I just didn’t like that her being drunk
was the reason.

As I continued to watch her, the blood
rushing to my cheeks, to my dick, it was hard to deny I was a horny guy too. It
was dizzying, especially considering she was the first live girl in front of me
in years.

“I was hot,” she said, her
arms tight against her chest, making her cleavage more evident.

“Are,” I said, glancing down
without even meaning to.

“I thought you were at the
library.”

“It closes at eleven,” I
said. I needed to get her off of why I was there and try to figure out how I
could get her to leave. There was no way I was walking out of here without her.
That was the only sure part of my plan. I needed to get her back to the dorm
safely. “Here,” I said, trying to give her my jacket.

She shook her head. “You’re the only one
in your coat,” she said. “I’m not the only one in my bra.”

It was true, a lot of the girls were.
“None of them look as good as you, though,” I said before I could stop myself,
my dick clearly doing the talking. Not caring about my plan.

She smiled—the kind that could blow
someone’s hair back.

“Maybe you should take off your jacket
and stay a while,” she said, reaching for it.

I considered her invitation. It would be
nice to be normal for once. I deliberated getting wasted and then doing
everything my brain had kept me from trying to do to Kate all week long, until
I saw Alex and Steph.

Something about the way they were
dancing, the way they had themselves on display, like cheap jewelry spinning in
a case, made me want more for Kate.

She was valuable.

I also had to get her out of there
before they had a chance to say anything about my past. My at-the-moment,
considering where we were standing, very relevant past. It was clear they
hadn’t told Kate yet, if so, she would not still be talking to me.

“We should go,” I said.

“Make me,” she said, her lip
curled up on one side.

She might have been
flirting, but I decided to take that as an offer, as a cry for help she
couldn’t admit.

This
was why she’d come into my life—so I could take care of her.
Everything changed the minute I realized she needed someone—the
second I’d decided that someone would be me.

Making sure she was okay would
be my first step toward redemption.

“Remember, you asked for
this,” I said. Before she could respond, I wrapped her in my coat, picked her
up off the ground, and slung her over my shoulder.

She shrieked, yelling at me
to let her go.

I ignored her cries and
carried her out of the party, pushing through the drunk and sweaty masses
toward the door. Luckily Steph and Alex were too busy with the male drunk and
sweaty mass right in front of them to notice.

Kate

“Put me down,” I yelled,
smacking at Carter’s back like it was a bongo drum as he carried me over the
threshold of the door.

When we were outside the
party and on the porch of the frat house he finally did, gently balancing me on
my feet.

“What the hell are you
doing, you jerk?” I asked, hitting him again.

“You’re down,” he replied.
Maybe he thought I was too drunk to realize I was standing on my own two feet. “I
should walk you home,” he continued, catching his breath.

“You should mind your own
damn business,” I said, pulling his coat tighter against the cold. Even wasted
I couldn’t deny being outside with bare skin in the cold of winter was even
stupider than dancing around the middle of a frat party in your bra at age
twenty-nine.

The thing was, it didn’t
feel stupid until I understood what Carter must have seen: a drunk, naïve freshman
trying to get attention—sadder still considering I should have been old enough
to know better.

“When you made yourself a
sexual object to every guy in there,” he said, pointing at the closed door, the
music practically bursting through it, “You became my business.”

“What are you, president of
the date-rape deterrent club?”

His face went pale. Sadness
bloomed then dissipated like smoke in his eyes. “No, I’m your RA and even
though you wouldn’t believe it,” he said, “that’s a campus function. It’s like
my duty now to make sure you get home alright.”

“What about Steph and Alex?”
I asked.

“They wouldn’t come with me,
anyway,” he said, the sadness in his eyes blooming anew.

“What makes you think I
will?” I huffed.

“You’re still standing here,”
he said and, even though he was clearly unhappy with the choices I had made so
far tonight, he smiled.

The kind that could make me
stand in the biting cold with him in front of a crappy frat house forever, that
is, if I was the kind of person who deserved his attention. He had no idea that
my choices tonight were my life choices and that I didn’t deserve him at all.

“Find someone else to
rescue,” I said to my boots, my words slurring like everything was covered in
syrup.

He touched my chin, tipped
my head up. “I pick you, Kate.”

I let myself stare into his
eyes. The cold made them water so they were even more blue.

“I don’t need you to take
care of me,” I said, still trying to deny I needed him, hell
wanted
him,
even though my body only inches away from him was telling a very different
story.