Tempted (18 page)

“Why are you sharing a bed?” Jeremiah asked, the panic in his voice replaced with anger.

“Can I explain?” Brett asked plaintively. Jeremiah crossed his arms over his chest, his muscles flexing beneath his jersey as if he were about to be sacked. She could feel him thinking about scrambling away, too, like she’d seen him do a million times on the football field to avoid being hit.

“I don’t know, can you?” he shot back. It was clear that he had heard the full rumors about her and Kara and had simply taken Brett’s word for it that they weren’t true.

“There was a flood on the first floor.” Brett launched into her defense. “A tree smashed into one of the bathrooms on the second floor—”

“You said the first floor,” Jeremiah interrupted her. He smoothed back the lock of hair that had hung so tantalizingly over his smooth skin.

“The bathroom is on the second floor, but the pipes burst and flooded the first floor. And Kara’s room got flooded.” Brett injected a note of pleading into her voice. She just wanted a chance to explain everything—the mouse, the broken boiler, how everyone at Waverly had blown whatever it was she had with Kara out of proportion for their own pleasure, how she was in danger of being expelled if she didn’t toe the Waverly line, all of which helped explain what Kara was doing in her bed in the middle of the night, both of them in their underwear.

“She’s telling the truth,” Kara said meekly, sitting up in the bed and pulling the comforter up over her knees. “They put me in here. She didn’t have a choice.”

Brett smiled over her shoulder at Kara, grateful for the backup. Kara stifled her smile, probably so Jeremiah wouldn’t see, and Brett was doubly grateful.

“They made you sleep in the same bed?” Jeremiah asked incredulously. “What do you think I am, stupid? Why not on the floor? Or with Tinsley?”

Tinsley couldn’t resist interjecting. “I don’t share my bed with
anyone,
” she said coolly, excited to see all the trouble she’d caused. It was only fair—where did Brett get off thinking she could have an illicit lesbian love affair and still manage to get her hot boyfriend back?

Tinsley rolled over in her bed, burying her face in her pillow to avoid the light. While she knew she should have been happy to see someone else get what was coming to her, her own words kept ringing in her ears:
I don’t share my bed with anyone.
She’d said it as a clever punch line, but the moment the words left her mouth she realized they were true. No one was interested, especially not Julian—the one person she could not, for the life of her, get out of her brain. She shivered under her sheet even though the room was sweltering, an immense sadness enveloping her so that she could hardly hear the scene that was playing out a few feet away.

“Jeremiah,
please,
” Brett pleaded, grabbing him by the arm and leading him out into the darkened hallway. She listened for sounds of Pardee shuffling out of bed, but there was only silence. “I know it looks weird, but really. It’s just this totally ridiculous set of circumstances that …” She trailed off, running a hand through her tangled red hair, which was probably all matted.

Jeremiah tugged at his coat, his face flushed red. “It
is
really fucking hot in here.” His eyes scanned down Brett’s body, taking in her lithe torso, braless underneath her thin tee, and her long, slender legs. “I guess I, uh, overreacted, didn’t I? I’m sorry, sweetheart, but look at you. Can you blame me for wanting to be the only one in your bed?”

Brett’s knees weakened as Jeremiah pulled her toward him and wrapped her in his strong arms. “You will be soon,” she promised with a sigh.

The time for them to be together, with no distractions, couldn’t come soon enough.

The smell of buttery popcorn filled the Cinephiles screening room on Sunday afternoon as Tinsley rearranged the free snacks she’d put together for her fellow Owls. In addition to bags of freshly popped popcorn, she’d laid out a bowl of bite-size Snickers, Junior Mints, a plastic jug of licorice, and a pile of Pixie Stix for those who liked to mainline their sugar. A cooler full of diet soda was iced and ready under the table, a couple of wine coolers buried all the way at the bottom, in case Tinsley was so inspired.

The number of favors she’d had to call in to lay her hands on the film would never be known by her fellow Owls, though they’d all be impressed with the
FOR
YOUR
CONSIDERATION
tag at the bottom of the screen, revealing that the bootleg had come from an Academy Award voter. Much cooler than if it had come from one of the hawkers on a nondescript corner in Chinatown, which was sort of like buying knockoff perfume or fake Fendi bags.

Tinsley glanced at the watch on her left wrist. In her mid-thigh-length Citizens of Humanity denim skirt, a snug-fitting yellow tee from Urban Outfitters, and her vintage Gucci knee-high boots, won in a fierce bidding war on eBay, she’d gone for casual-sexy. She was trying not to get nervous … but where
was
everyone?

The door to the screening room creaked open, and Tinsley almost sighed in relief. A freckle-faced freshman peeked in shyly. “Am I the first?” she asked. Her cropped dark hair was held back from her face with a red scarf. She wore a heather gray cable-knit sweater and a pair of tan cords, and looked as if she had stepped out of the pages of one of the free J.Crew catalogs that got stuffed in Tinsley’s mailbox every week. But not in a good way.

If Tinsley were being honest with herself, she’d admit that it was Julian she had hoped to see sauntering through the front door. As improbable as it seemed, she’d wished all night that he’d show up and kiss her and everything would be right again. No more walking through campus feeling like she had cholera or some other gross disease they’d learned about in Mr. Robinson’s world history class, no more paranoia about people whispering or pointing in her direction. She knew a kiss from Julian could turn all that around.

She suddenly remembered an underlined quote from a Kurt Vonnegut book she’d borrowed from Easy Walsh freshman year—”We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” At the time, she felt like he’d underlined it for her, right before he lent it to her, as if he were trying to get inside her head. She’d been wrong then, of course—he apparently didn’t care who Tinsley was pretending to be, a fact made clear when he started dating Callie. But thinking about it now made her … really lonely. Julian, she’d thought, had seen through her, too. But she’d been wrong about that as well. Or, maybe he
had
seen through her … and hadn’t liked what he saw.

“Help yourself,” Tinsley offered, her head spinning. The freshman sidled up to the popcorn and picked a single piece to pop into her mouth. She eyed the Snickers and Junior Mints hungrily but didn’t reach for one.

“I’m dying to see this movie!” the girl exclaimed, looking around the reclining leather seats of the screening room as if searching for other people. “How did you get it?”

“I just did,” Tinsley said, the smell of popcorn suddenly nauseating her.

“Are there … uh … going to be any boys here?” J.Crew asked. She smiled at Tinsley like they were sorority sisters.

Tinsley rubbed her hand over her face wearily. “I’m going to step outside for a cigarette. Help yourself to anything.”

Tinsley spun on the heel of her clunky boots and trudged out of the screening room and into the gray fall afternoon, shielding her eyes from the rain to survey the campus for the drove of filmgoers she’d been expecting. A few guys in fleeces chased one another around the quad in what looked like a primitive mating ritual. Assorted Owls with their arms loaded down with books rushed off toward the library, hurrying through the downpour. But nobody was headed in the direction of Hopkins Hall. Was she really getting stood up … by everybody? J.Crew girl totally did not count.

She knew how cool it was to be late for things, but this was Ryan Gosling. Illegal Ryan Gosling, if you wanted to get technical. Tinsley lit a Marlboro Light and took a long drag, cupping the cigarette to keep it dry.

The door to the screening room popped open. “You don’t have any alcohol, do you?” J.Crew asked.

Tinsley felt herself deflate even more. “Bottom of the cooler.” This was what she had become—a lonely, friendless junior peddling alcohol to overzealous freshmen.

“Thanks,” J.Crew squealed and disappeared back into the darkness of the screening room.

The tobacco couldn’t obscure the taste of failure that coated Tinsley’s tongue and formed a lump in her throat. This sucked. Was no one on her side? And
where
was Callie? She was away for the weekend, okay, but why was her phone still off? No texts, no messages, nothing. It was like she had died—a terrible, scary thought Tinsley couldn’t quite shake no matter how unlikely it was. She hugged herself as a chill wind blew through campus, rattling the trees overhead, a sprinkle of leaves falling around her. She missed Callie more than she’d ever thought she could, feeling her absence all the way down to her core. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so alone. She tossed the cigarette and stamped it out, careful to pick up the butt and take it inside.

The air inside the screening room smelled like a foul combination of wine cooler and butter, and it was all Tinsley could do to keep from vomiting when the frosh asked if she wanted to hang out instead of watch the movie. “I’m good either way,” the girl said in her best cool voice, shrugging and shoving her hands in the pockets of her dorky tan cords.

“Actually, something just came up,” Tinsley muttered, turning on her heels and pushing through the front doors. “Help yourself to the rest of the wine coolers. And turn the lights off behind you.”

Do people really bate me that much?
Tinsley wondered as she trudged back toward Dumbarton in the rain, not caring enough to open her umbrella, the cold droplets coating her skin in a wet sheen. And did they love that bitch Jenny so much as to hold a collective grudge? She doubted it—she knew she hadn’t fallen so far that people actively hated her. Instead, it was like she had just fallen off their radar. Which was far, far worse.

A squall of rain beat against the window of Dumbarton 303 as Drew poured Jenny another glass of the delicious red wine he’d bought in town. She had no idea whether it was expensive wine or cheap wine—she hadn’t drunk enough of it in her lifetime to know the difference—but to her, it was luscious. When Drew had shown up Sunday afternoon with a picnic basket in one hand and a single red rose in the other, the weather inside her dorm room had changed from dark and stormy to sunny blue skies.

“I thought we could have a floor picnic,” he’d said, scanning the messy floor. He looked his normal stunning self in a simple olive green crew-neck sweater and a pair of dark wash True Religion jeans. As he leaned in to kiss her cheek, the pleasant scent of aloe shaving cream hit her nose.

Jenny had quickly shoved everything—random clothes, stray shoes, scribbled-on notebooks—under her and Callie’s beds to make room for the rich burgundy Ralph Lauren cable-knit throw that Drew had spread across the floor. As she sat cross-legged in her stretchy charcoal gray
BCBG
knit pants and black jersey wrap top, she felt very sophisticated. Here she was, having-a romantic picnic with a senior, on the floor of her dorm room, drinking probably expensive red wine.

She could feel the wine tickling the back of her throat, her stomach full of the cucumber-and-Brie sandwiches that seemed to keep coming from Drew’s picnic basket. He produced a giant container of red grapes, seedless and washed, the dew still fresh on their skins.

“Open your mouth and close your eyes,” Drew said seductively, raising a sandy brown eyebrow at Jenny. He leaned back against the edge of Jenny’s bed, her ancient blue-and-white flowered quilt wrinkling slightly.

“What?” She giggled as she tugged at the top of her wrap shirt. She had a vision of Cleopatra lying back on some kind of gold-encrusted chaise lounge, a handsome Egyptian in a toga fanning her with a palm frond while another slipped grapes into her mouth. It was kind of a fun fantasy, but it didn’t exactly feel right for a Sunday afternoon in upstate New York. “I don’t think so. _You. _” Jenny heard the flirtatious confidence in her voice and wondered where the hell it came from.

Maybe it had something to do with having a gorgeous senior leaning back against her bed, obediently opening his mouth and closing his eyes. Jenny gently lobbed a grape toward his open lips. It missed, bouncing off his nose.

Drew lazily opened one eyelid, revealing a sparkling green eye. “You suck.”

“Come on. Give me another chance,” Jenny pleaded, aiming another grape at his mouth. As it left her fingertips, he jumped forward and tackled her. They landed in a pile on the bedspread.

“No more grapes. You’re too dangerous.” Drew’s arms were around her, his magnetic eyes staring directly into hers. His lips were just inches away. Finally he sat up and leaned against the headboard again, smiling at her.

Saturday had been a blur. Their afternoon drive to Sleepy Hollow to wander in and out of the tiny used bookstores that dotted the picturesque downtown had turned into a candlelit dinner in a restaurant overlooking the banks of the Hudson River. Dinner had melted into a midnight stroll around campus. They held hands in the moonless dark, Drew pulling her into blackened corners to press his firm body against hers, his lips fumbling for hers in the dark. Her body had been so abuzz that she could hardly sleep all night.