Tap & Gown (19 page)

see, I don’t need that list. I already know, because I was one of them.”

“You knew,” he said, taking in my stricken expression.

“No,” I whispered.

“Come on, Amy, you knew that.”

“No,” I repeated, slightly more strongly. No. No no no no no.

He studied my face, searching for the lie that wasn’t there.

“How in the world would I have known when you’ve never—” Right. The Black Books. I so called that.

Jamie remained baffled. “Then why did you bring her?”

“I liked her!” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “She’s my Geology T.A. and I—God, what did you think? That I was shoving her in your face like she was George—Oh, God.” I turned around and started walking down the street. I wanted my room. I wanted my bed. I wanted the world to shut down.

“Stop.” I didn’t, and he caught up to me in a few steps. “Hey,” he said softly. “You’re apparently not the only one capable of thinking the worst of the other person in this relationship.”

I paused and looked at him.

“That was an apology,” he said.

“It was a bad one.” I started walking again and he fell into step beside me. “When?” I choked out. They had seemed to get along fine at the party, talking easily. Talking alone. She’d even wanted him to walk her home.

Even knowing he was my boyfriend. My throat went dry again.

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“My junior year, her sophomore,” Poe was saying. “We hung out in Strathmore—ate together, flirted in the courtyard, stuff like that.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“You told me you didn’t have a girlfriend in college.”

“I didn’t. How could I, on my microscopic budget? But we might have been moving in that direction.

We liked each other, we hooked up a few times. But we never had a conversation about where it was all going.”

“So what happened?”

He looked off down the street. “I got tapped. I got busy. I basically disappeared for the rest of the school year. I was so excited. I wanted to spend all my time in the tomb, wanted to hang out only with all my new friends. Then it was exams and summertime. She just fell off my radar.” He kicked at the curb.

“She had her summer research position, I had my internship—when I got back in the fall, someone told me she had a boyfriend. That it was pretty serious, too. They were engaged or something. I saw her from time to time in the dining hall and stuff, but I was so busy. I had LSATs and the society and law school applications and job applications and interviews, and then she broke up with the guy and went abroad and—” He looked at me. “We moved on. There were no hard feelings.”

That had certainly been in evidence tonight.

“There,” he said. “Does that satisfy your morbid curiosity?” When I didn’t respond, he stopped and took me by the shoulders, turning me gently to face him. “You swear you didn’t know?”

“I swear.”

“And it was just some coincidence that you brought a girl you have absolutely nothing to do with to this thing?”

“It’s a small school, Jamie,” I said flatly. “Naturally I’d get TA.’d by your ex-girlfriend eventually.” He didn’t laugh, which was good, because I’d only been half joking.

“I believe you.” He looked down into my eyes. “Now answer my question.”

“What?”

“Why are you dating me?”

I shook him off. What a stupid question!

“Amy.”

I started walking.

He followed. “You thought I hated Michelle. You thought I disapproved of her as a potential tap.”

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“Because you were clearly upset with me,” I replied without turning around. “I think we’ve established that we were both laboring under mistaken impressions. You apparently like Michelle quite a lot.”

“I hardly know her anymore. I have no idea whether or not she’d be a good fit for the Diggers. But Michelle isn’t the only time you’ve decided, a priori, that I’m thinking the worst of your choices.” We’d arrived at the Prescott gate. I pulled out my ID card, but Jamie put his hand over the sensor. “So my question remains. If this is what I think of you—if I disapprove of everything you are and everything you want—why are you dating me?”

I placed my hand over his. The sensor beeped and the door unlocked. I pulled it open, mind racing. I was dating him because he’d saved my life on the way to the island. I was dating him because he taught me to swim. I was dating him because I was leaving school in a month and he was Eli personified. I was dating him because he challenged my perception of the world and didn’t let me give up, even if it was in his best interests. I was dating him because Jamie seemed to like me more than the guys who had dumped me in the past. I was dating him because he helped me last semester and last year even though he knew it would get him in trouble. I was dating him because he kissed like a fiend and made really good waffles.

He stood on the other side of the gate, like he had so many months ago, and looked at me through the bars. He’d liked me back then, in November. I knew that now. He’d liked me, even though I’d thrown him out of the tomb and he’d been secretly undermining my club by helping a few of the boys start the all-male secret society-within-a-society Elysion. He’d liked me, and it killed him that I’d discovered his betrayal.

“Because,” he went on, “there’s a word for girls who date guys who constantly put them down. And there’s a word for those guys, too. And I really don’t like the idea that those words describe either of us.”

I still held the gate open, but he wouldn’t pass through it. If I didn’t say something soon, he’d walk away and that would be it. Jamie may like me more than the other boys I’d dated, but it wouldn’t be enough.

His pride wouldn’t let it be, just as it hadn’t let him accept me as his secret hookup and nothing more.

“I like Michelle,” I said, “because she reminds me of me. Not in any way you can put on a resume or list for the society newsletter. I like her. I think she’d be a good fit for Rose & Grave. I want to push forward with her in Howard’s position. It will make me feel better about Topher. He’s not like me, but if we can get Michelle—well, I’d have a real replacement.”

His eyes narrowed.

I let out a little laugh. “And to be perfectly honest—after the initial shock—the fact that you were once into her sort of cements that belief. Because I don’t think the things you like about me appear on a resume, either. I know this because you saw my resume, and you didn’t like it.” I closed my fingers around his through the bar, leaned close. “You didn’t like me. Not until you got to know me.”

He leaned in, too, rested his head against the bars until our skin touched, warm next to the cool brand of the iron gate.

“Why I like you is no more quantifiable.” I stroked his fingers and gazed up into his eyes. “I can’t explain it to my friends. I can’t explain it to you.”

He softened. “You need to try to explain, at least to yourself. If this is what you think of me …”

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He didn’t finish. Strange. So many things he was willing to sacrifice to get the success and security he wanted. Things he
had
sacrificed: friends, romance, money, independence. So many things I knew he’d accept at any cost. But not me.

Where did he draw the line? Who was this man?

I tugged on his hand. “Come inside. Come inside and talk to me. I bet the more I get to know you, the more I’ll like you, too.”

He pulled away. “No. I told you everything there is to know about me and Michelle. I’m not giving you a C.B.”

I came around the outside of the gate and put my arms around him. “I don’t want one. I want you.”

“They’re ridiculously expensive,” Jamie said, twining his fingers around mine and lifting our arms together into the lamplight. We lay curled together in my bed, no clothing removed aside from shoes and jackets.

“For a piece of felted wool? It’s absurd.”

“A friend of mine sewed her own,” I said. “Cost about fifteen bucks.”

“My father wouldn’t sew,” Jamie said. He’d told me long ago that his dad was a gardener who struggled to make ends meet after Jamie’s mom, a social worker, had died while Jamie was still a child. “But he would save up to get me one. It was my big gift that Christmas. A hundred-dollar scarf.”

With Strathmore College colors. Sold in the overpriced JPress store down the street. The college scarves were a major status symbol among the preppy set on campus, harking back to those good old days when everyone wore beaver coats and straw hats and proclaimed school spirit by having their college scarves and their society pins prominently displayed.

“He was so proud of himself for getting it for me, especially since I’d been telling him how much I wanted one for the last three years.”

I imagined a teenaged Jamie, after years of being the scholarship kid at his fancy prep school, trying desperately to make up for lost time by lusting after the preppy trappings of Eli life.

“You could see it on his face. His son, the Eli University senior.” Jamie took a deep breath and closed his hand around mine so our knuckles interlocked. He brought them down between us, squeezed them to his chest. “I wore it for a few weeks. But we had an early spring that year, remember?”

I nodded.

“And to tell the truth, it’s kind of stiff for a scarf. And in law school—”

“You don’t want to be seen walking around campus in your undergrad finery?” I smirked at him.

He smirked back. “With my undergrad girlfriend and my stolen undergrad waffle maker? Yes, there’s only so much humiliation I can handle.”

I poked him. “Hey. No denigrating the waffle maker.”

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“Anyway, I’d hate it if he knew.” Jamie stared up at the ceiling. “He tries so hard to understand this life.

Sometimes I worry that one day I’ll go home to him and we’ll have nothing in common anymore. There will be nothing he can give me that I’ll be able to appreciate. Nothing …”

I rolled toward him and put my palm against his cheek. “But he already gave you those things. The things that got you here in the first place. The hard work, the devotion—the sacrifices after your mom died so you could have this education, this chance. It’s not a scarf that’s important to him.”

“I guess.” He ran his hand down my side, from my collarbone to my hip. “And your parents? What do they want from you?”

“To call them more often, I think.” I cuddled closer. “I don’t know. They’re pretty independent themselves, and as long as I haven’t gotten into trouble, they let me do what I want. They were proud when I got into Eli, of course, but they would have been proud of me at any college. They aren’t snobs.”

“What would they think of Rose & Grave?”

I wrinkled my nose. “My dad would probably call it elitist bullshit. My mom wouldn’t say it, but she’d think it. Especially if she knew that I was in the first class of women. She doesn’t hold truck with sexism.”

“This is the same mother who disapproves of your sexual escapades?”

“Oh, she’s totally an equal opportunity prude.”

“So she probably wouldn’t like that I’m doing this.” His hand slipped down over my butt.

I smiled. “Unlikely.”

“Or this?” He flipped up the hem of my skirt and brushed his fingers over the inside of my thighs.