Lost in Thought (25 page)

“It doesn’t matter, Lainey. She thinks of me the same way. And I only think of you. Let’s not talk about Jillian or any of this anymore.

There’s nothing to worry about.” He pulled me up on top of him and for a minute I forgot everything else completely. Until we were interrupted, that is.

“Carter?” came a tentative voice from the kitchen. I froze. In our haste, we’d left the door to his bedroom open and I, at least, hadn’t heard anyone come in the back door. Carter actually groaned before kissing me once and sliding me back onto the bed.

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“Melinda wanted me to see if you needed help with dinner,” Jill called.

I honestly doubted Melinda had sent her up here, but it didn’t matter. She was here now and alone time was over.

Carter stood and grabbed his shirt off the floor as he walked toward the hallway. After a second, I followed. He was pulling his shirt over his head when he reached the kitchen, which made my face flame with embarrassment, and I swept my hair over my shoulders to try and cover it up. Even if I hadn’t been sure—despite his protests—that Jill was in love with him, making this extra terrible for her, she’d still caught us fooling around, and Carter had just given evidence to that fact. Sometimes I forgot that, though I felt like a high school girl in her boyfriend’s parents’ house, Carter was technically an adult, and also at least half owner of this house. And he pretty much never felt embarrassed about anything.

“Hey,” he said. “Thanks, but I was just going to order pizza. Are you staying for dinner?”

Jill’s deep blush matched my own. If anything, with her blond hair, she looked even redder than I’m sure I did. In a sort of anti-motion to what I’d done, she nervously tucked strands of her short locks behind her ears. “I…I guess, yeah,” she stammered. “I told Melinda I would.

Want me to call? She’ll be up in a few minutes.”

I hadn’t realized how long we’d been upstairs, but the clock over the kitchen window told me it was indeed past closing time at the store. Dinner hours were open at the Academy, and I was sure Amy and our other friends were already gossiping about my conspicuous absence. I weighed my options, but a slightly awkward pizza dinner with Carter, Melinda, and Jill was probably better than the mocking I’d get from my friends. I went back to Carter’s room and grabbed my homework while we waited.

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That night, as I was lying in bed, I caught myself wondering about what it took to be Perceptum President. Something special, I bet. I drifted off to sleep with a lingering question: what was Daniel Astor’s Sententia gift?

ou look awesome,” Amy said. “Carter’s going to flip.”

“Thanks,” I replied, smoothing my hair for at least the fiftieth time. “
Everyone
is going to flip when they see you.”

Y

“You think?” With a giggle, she twirled around in the center of the room.

“I’m
sure.”
And I was. It was the night of the Winter Ball, and Amy looked practically unreal.

Her dress was a blush pink that looked almost like skin, in a mate-rial that was gossamer but clingy in the right ways, with a deep show of cleavage pretty much no other girl on campus could come close to matching. It looked like she was wearing a designer gown and absolutely nothing, all at the same time. I didn’t know how that was possible, but there she was, pirouetting in front of me. Her hair was gathered in a loose and wavy fall from the back of her head, and her lovely face looked, well, lovely. Quite honestly, I was in awe. I couldn’t stop looking at her.

I wasn’t sure they’d let her into the ballroom, she looked so sexy, but she assured me she wouldn’t be the only one. Northbrook had no real dress code—the wealthy parents apparently wouldn’t stand for

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it—and the Winter Ball was, as Amy put it, the least proper night of the year. I’d been worried about my own dress being acceptable too but, much like the first time I’d met her, I felt subdued in comparison to Amy. And that was saying something, because my dress was one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen.

It fit me right off the hanger like it’d been made for me; the complex folds gave me the appearance of a shapely waist with a hint of curves, instead of my normally straight and narrow middle, and the neckline made my average chest look nearly ample. Not like Amy’s, of course, but good enough to be noticeable. It was short to begin with, and with my long legs and the heels Amy and I had picked to go with it, it looked even shorter.

The muted shine of the black satin matched my hair almost perfectly. I’d planned to wear it up, since I almost never did, but Amy insisted it had to be down. As usual, she was right. The long, straight curtain of it made a great contrast against my skin and complemented my dress. I was a picture of pale and dark—dark high heels, long pale legs and arms, long dark hair and short dark dress, dark lined eyes— and I admitted to myself that I looked good. Okay, maybe
really
good.

I’d honestly never felt so beautiful. I couldn’t stop fidgeting.

Amy, naturally, noticed everything. “Relax! You clearly need more of this,” she said, before pouring more champagne into the glass I was holding.

She’d produced the bottle, and one that was already empty, along with real crystal glasses, after we’d returned from the hair salon. Classes met only in the morning on the day of the Ball, and campus was a flurry of excited girls and limousines for the rest of the afternoon.

Group by group we were chauffeured to beauty appointments and last-minute fittings with tailors, then back to campus to dress for our big night. The guys were much more relaxed about the whole thing,

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and I had hardly seen any of them around the entire day. I would not see Carter until he met us to leave for the Ball.

I sipped the champagne and tried to do as Amy said. I had no idea where she’d gotten it—for such a small town and closed campus nothing seemed very hard to get around here—but I was grateful. It was bubbly and sweet and made my stomach feel fluttery in a much better way than the nerves I was having trouble calming.

“I…” I started, but was immediately cut off.

“Yeah, you’ve never done anything like this before, I know. Relax, Lane,” Amy said, in her form of exasperation, which was more like she thought I was funny. “You seriously need to learn yoga or something.

You look wicked hot, Carter’s going to fall over when he sees you, and tonight is going to be super fun. You don’t have to have done this before to enjoy it. I promise.” She drained her own champagne then refilled
both
of our glasses.

I blushed, embarrassed and frustrated by my inability to loosen up, and I didn’t tell her that my aunt had been trying to get me to do yoga with her for years. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Okay, relaxing now.” I lounged back on my bed and sipped some more of the champagne. As always, thank God for my roommate. She provided a fine distraction.

“I won’t be back to the room until way late tonight—or well, early this morning—so don’t wait up, at least not for
me
anyway,” she announced while giving her hair one last primp in her mirror. It was almost time to go.

I was, as ever, the naïve innocent. “What? Why? What time does this thing end?”

She gave me another exasperated-but-not-really look from the mirror. “Lane. Seriously. Why do you
think
I won’t be back until early?”

Again I blushed. Of course. “But…But where are you going to go?”

“Caleb’s room. You know he has a single.”

“But…how?”

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This time she sighed, and it was clearly all she could do to keep from laughing at me. “It’s not
that
hard to sneak into someone’s room if you want to, but tonight, pretty much anything goes around here.

Everyone
is in a good and look-the-other-way mood, if you know what I mean. The only important thing is being back in your own room before the sun comes up. Otherwise sneaking back gets a little trickier.”

As almost, but not really, an afterthought, she added, “It’s not very hard to sneak someone
into
your room either, you know. I put some condoms in your nightstand…”

I nearly leaped off the bed in shock, though honestly, I wasn’t sure why. This was, on the scale of shocking things she’d said to me, near the bottom of the list. Still, I was mortified. “Amy! That’s…not going to happen. Not tonight anyway.” I opened my nightstand and, sure enough, there was a small package of condoms, decoratively tied with a bow. I shoved them to the back of the drawer.

Now she did laugh, a sound almost as bubbly and irresistible as the champagne. “Hey, that’s fine. Just, you know, want you to be prepared. It’s a good night for sneaking and…other things. I put those in there
last
weekend, by the way. You obviously don’t use that drawer very often.”

“Last weekend” was my seventeenth birthday. Amy, Caleb, Carter, and I had gone on a real double date, meaning at an actual restaurant, off-campus. It had been, in a word, great. But not great like that.

“Amy, geez. I’m not going to need these for…a while.” I didn’t want to put a timeframe on it, because I had no idea when I’d be ready.

“And I think
you’re
the only one who’s pressuring me.”

I pretended to be outraged, but the effect was ruined when I couldn’t stifle a giggle at the end. I blamed the champagne and, true, I’d felt a little lightheaded when I jumped up from the bed. I hoped dinner was served right away at the Ball.

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She looked surprised, and I didn’t think she was pretending. “Really? I mean, I know we talked about how you weren’t rushing or anything, but…well, I thought it was a done deal by now. Everything about you and Carter is…serious, you know? Then I was in the library on Wednesday night a few weeks ago but couldn’t find you anywhere.

You’re so private about those things, I figured you’d made up an excuse and that was your alone time with Carter.”

For a second, all I could think was
Shit!
I’d told Amy I volunteered to help with a project at the library on Wednesday nights. As far as deceptions went, it was pretty small and, so I’d thought, a good one.

Probably foolishly, I
didn’t
count on her looking for me, but Amy sometimes came to the library in the evenings, like every other student.

In a way, she was right too. The hour or so of our practice actually
was
my private time with Carter…just not
romantic
private time. Mostly. My champagne-fogged brain was having trouble coming up with a response.

“Hey, it’s cool, okay?” Amy said while I fumbled for a new excuse.

“And I’m
not
trying to pressure you, honest. But…well, if you’re not with Carter, where on earth are you on Wednesday nights?”

“I…I am at the library,” I finally said. “I’m usually on the Special Collections floor sorting things, so you wouldn’t see me if you looked for me.” I decided to throw in a little more truth to make it convincing. “And sometimes I am with Carter. But it’s
not
how you think. He just comes to hang out. We don’t see each other all that much, you know, and the librarian doesn’t mind if he’s there. Sometimes he even helps me. It’s pretty boring, but I don’t mind the work.”

She looked sideways at me, like she was a little skeptical, but it wasn’t in the way I thought. “So you give up an hour of what could be play time with your boyfriend to help sort boring books or whatever at the library? Maybe you
are
trying to become Saint Elaine.”

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My laugh was genuine, since I was
so
not close to being a saint— lying was, after all, part of my daily existence—and I was relieved that I’d gotten out of another near screw-up with my roommate. Keeping my secrets from her was an on-going problem. “I’m not
that
good,” I said, with enough implication in my voice to make her smile slyly.

“Thank God,” she said. “ ’Cause if there’s a boy out there worth not being good with, it’s Carter. Speaking of…” Her phone had begun to buzz at almost the same time mine did. The guys were waiting downstairs.

MARQUISE HOUSE MADE for a great entrance. The final turn of the staircase opened into our dorm’s grand entryway, complete with a glittering chandelier that before tonight I’d seen lit only once. I went up and down these stairs many times a day, but tonight it felt new and special. Amy’s natural flair for the dramatic had us descending like queens, slow and stately, and to great effect. The looks on our dates’

faces were worth every second we took to reach them.

Carter’s eyes were as large as I’d ever seen them, and I heard him utter a barely audible, “Wow.” I’m not sure he meant to say it out loud. Caleb, I noted with amusement, had nearly the same reaction.

Not that I wasn’t impressed with the two of them either. They cleaned up quite nicely, I was not surprised to see.

Carter looked shockingly good in a modern-cut tuxedo with tie that emphasized his broad shoulders, slim hips, and somewhat untraditional good looks, all of which was complemented by his seductive smile. I wasn’t sure how the rest of the night would go, but I admitted that the beginning of it had been worth all the hours we’d spent getting ready.

Finally seeing Carter miraculously cured my nerves, replacing them with a sense of anticipation and excitement.

Caleb wore a more traditional tuxedo that suited him well, complete with a bow tie, matching pocket square, and what I thought might even be a pocket watch. He looked like a classic Hollywood