Unethical (11 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Payton

I could officially add Internet Stalker 101 to my transcript. Two days had passed since I’d posted my comment on Blake’s thread in the forum, and he still hadn’t responded. He didn’t need to; he had replied to three other people in the class, but it still bummed me out he didn’t want to address my post.

Still in my sweaty clothes and steaming from the tanked situation with Blake, I took a long shower. What had he wanted to tell me? Andrew just had to come in and ruin our moment. The only reason I had agreed to study at the library with Andrew was because I thought Blake was going to be there. Now that he bailed, I wished I could cancel, but hated to be one of those people who flaked on plans last minute.

I let the warm spray wash over me, rinsing away the sweat from my run. After drying off, I trolled Facebook and snuck one of Jules’s Oreos while I waited for her to get back from GNC so we could go study at the library with Andrew.

I logged into the class forum, and a notification popped up that someone had recently posted in his thread. My heart thudded against my chest as I opened his response.

B Hiller 12:32 p.m.

P Daniels,

You’re right. I don’t know what I’m talking about from first-hand experience, but I do know what it’s like to lose someone and not be able to say good-bye. I can’t say which one is worse, but if I had the chance, I would tell her I loved her one last time. Closure can sometimes be a good thing.

Oh, God, his mom. Could I get any bitchier? I had rubbed it in his face that it wasn’t fair that I had to see my mom die, but he never even got a chance to say good-bye. He had no one except his witchy aunt. My throat constricted and tears burned my eyes. How could I have been so mean to him? Why did I block him out of my life when I knew he was in so much pain?

Jules opened the front door, and I quickly wiped away the tears streaming down my cheeks. I needed to make this right, I just didn’t know how. We were so broken.

“He should spend the rest of his life in jail, don’t you think, Dr. C?”

“He’s definitely not a good person. People like that are better off not practicing medicine,” Dr. Centafont agreed.

Class went this way every Friday. Someone put down my dad, and Dr. Centafont did nothing about it. I got it, he had an apparent grudge, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why.

Jules squeezed my hand and gave me a sympathetic smile. Even if I didn’t agree with my dad’s choices, I couldn’t stand to see people putting him down. They didn’t know the whole situation. Come to think of it, neither did I.

Someone in the second row raised her hand, and Dr. Centafont motioned for her to ask her question.

“I don’t get it. How did they know he assisted in her suicide?”

“Good question. According to sources, the oncologist reported that Dr. Cooper asked him for a large amount of morphine, more than recommended. When his wife died, the oncologist put two and two together and turned him in.”

Huh. They’d planned way in advance? Yep, and I so wasn’t part of their decision-making process. One thing still bothered me, though. Dad hadn’t forced the pills down her throat. Mom had taken them when he was out mowing the yard, and he’d ushered me in when she was fading out, just in time to tell her I loved her one last time.

The thick tension in the room sucked out all the oxygen and left me fighting for air. I shifted in my seat, hoping another position would clear out my windpipes. Jules didn’t seem to be having any issues breathing as she typed a message on her phone and smiled as she put it down on her desk. She tapped her toe against the concrete floor to the same rhythm as her fingers drumming along the table top. After a few people in front of us turned around and gave her the stink eye, she stopped fidgeting.

Blake and Andrew skipped class today to help decorate the fraternity for some big event, but I couldn’t remember what.

“That’s enough for today. How about we save this wonderful academic conversation for another day? I want you to get started on your next assignment. Since our next unit of study is treatment of the elderly, you’ll need to conduct an interview with someone over sixty-five at a care facility. Two pages, due the week before finals. Class dismissed.” His voice remained calm and authoritative, but Dr. Centafont’s normally cool exterior was marred by the sweat beading above his brows.

Jules stood and grabbed her bag. We made our way out of the building, and I tugged my scarf around my neck, the cold air burning my exposed skin.

“What are you wearing tomorrow?”

Tomorrow?
Oh, crap, the fraternity formal. Before I had realized Andrew and I weren’t compatible, I promised him I’d be his date for the formal, Seamus O’Leary. From the way Andrew had described it, it sounded like prom, mobster style. Dates, flowers, fancy dinner, and pinstripes—the whole shebang. I opted out of buying a new dress, and instead would use one from my junior year of homecoming.

“A dress from high school.”

Jules’s jaw dropped a fraction of an inch as she stared at me like I’d just told her I decided to go naked to the event instead of wearing an old dress. “You can’t go in something you’ve already worn. You need something new. Especially for Operation BH.”

I rolled my eyes. Jules had it in her little matchmaking head that I should get back together with Blake. When he asked her to the fraternity formal as friends, she jumped at the chance to make things right between us.

Way too late for that, though. He avoided looking at me the past week during the internship and class, so I doubted he felt the same way.

“I don’t know.” I bit the inside of my cheek. A new dress would be nice. My normal definition of dressing up included jeans and a button up, definitely an upgrade from my fifty million pairs of running shorts and racer-back tanks.

“I still need to get one. Let’s go to the mall, get manis and pedis, and look for a dress at Nordstrom.”

It wouldn’t hurt to look. I mean, not like I had to buy anything. And if I did find a cute, cheap dress, I had saved a ton of money by rooming with Jules and cutting out late-night, fast-food runs. “Okay. I’m in.”

At least two dozen dresses hung off every hook in our dressing room. Colored fabric covered all available surface space like a rainbow had thrown up all over the walls. Jules insisted we share a dressing room to make the process go faster, because apparently taking two steps out of the room took up too much time. I could tell her patience was dwindling at my noob shopper status.

I shimmied into a red number that had a low-cut, sweetheart neckline. The luxurious satin rubbed soft against my skin, but I didn’t like how the waist bubbled out, making my hips look like something out of the Elizabethan era. Next.

The second, a strappy, blue dress, had an intricate zigzag pattern on the back. Cute, but not perfect. My eyes bugged as I glanced at the price tag. Definitely not worth two hundred bucks.

Slipping into a pale yellow, floor-length dress, Jules gasped as I pulled up the zipper on the side. “Oh em gee. You look hot. I would totally do you in that dress. Definitely an outfit for a mobster doll.”

Glancing in the mirror, I admired the modest front. The material hugged my curves in all the right ways. The real beauty of the dress, though, was the open back that slinked down to right above my butt.

Okay, totally stupid to buy a new dress, especially for a fraternity event, but I needed this dress. I eyed the price tag and was relieved this dress wouldn’t chip away at my savings. In fact, at ninety-nine dollars, it made for the cheapest dress I had tried on.

Jules settled on a hot-pink, strapless dress that made her look like she should have been boxed up and put in the Barbie aisle.

After we purchased our dresses, we headed to the nail salon next door to Nordstrom. My toes and fingers now matched my dress perfectly, and Jules rocked a French manicure with Pepto Bismol-pink tips.

Head-turner dress? Check. Back-raking nails? Check. Operation BH was in full effect.

Jules drove barefoot to the fraternity, her high heels lying at my feet. I would have been driving barefoot, too, if I was wearing her ridiculous skyscraper heels.

I stared out the passenger window as we turned onto Greek Row, the street lined with fraternities and sororities.

Jules’s stilettos and my kitten heels clacked against the pavement as we made our way along the dark stone steps. Alpha Sigma Sigma remained one of the oldest fraternities on campus, and their house looked like it should be on a plantation farm, rather than in the middle of Greek Row in a college town. The white marble pillars extended to the top of the second story, which had a wraparound porch. A few guys milled around on the upper deck. One wolf whistled as we approached the door.

Jules rang the doorbell, and a guy I’d never seen before, wearing a black suit and gold tie, answered the door and waved us in. “Evening, ladies. You look nice.”

We both thanked him and walked into the house.

“Gonna run to the bathroom real quick. Wanna come with?” asked Jules.

“That’s okay. I’ll go find Andrew.” Maybe tonight he would find something more interesting to talk about than his workout routine. Not that I minded the product of his one thousand sit-ups—the exact amount he did each day. Seriously, who took the time to count that many sit-ups?

Jules opened a door that led to another hallway like she owned the place and disappeared.

I walked to the table in the foyer where a few pamphlets and flyers lay spread out across the surface. I picked up an orange flyer for a sorority fundraiser to support autism research. Someone across the room cleared his throat.

A familiar voice said, “Wow.”

I turned to Blake. He leaned against the railing at the bottom step of the stairs, his arms crossed over his chest. His gaze drifted from my hair all the way down my body. “You look beautiful.”

The same exact thing he’d told me the night of senior prom. Three weeks before my mother’s death.

Mom was so sick that day, spending most of it on the bathroom floor. That was pretty typical after her chemo sessions. But she had told me this time she felt different. I thought she meant better.

“Just one more picture,” Mom had said, her finger getting a little trigger happy with the camera. A barrage of flashes blinded me, and I put my hand in front of the lens, blinking away the spots swarming across my eyes.

“Blake, honey, you look so handsome.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Daniels. You’re looking much better today.”

She smiled and took his arm in both her hands. “Thank you. We’ve been trying a new chemo drug, and I think it’s working better this time.”

“I hope so. I need you better in time to send me cookies when I’m in Texas. Can’t play a game without eating those first.” He winked at her.

He knew just the right words to say to make anyone feel better.

She drew him into a hug and whispered loud enough so that I could hear, “Take care of my baby girl.”

At the time, I didn’t think anything of her comment. Now, I wondered if she had meant more behind that statement—not just telling him to be careful at prom, but to take care of me once she was gone.

I swallowed past the hard lump in my throat and wiped away the tears that brimmed over my eyelids.

“Thank you,” I said, bringing myself back into the present. Blake stared at me, a concerned look twisting his handsome features.

“Hey, babe.” Andrew walked down the stairs, crossed the room, and slid his arm around my waist. “Lookin’ hot tonight.” His pet name for me made me all kinds of stabby. We weren’t even dating, and I definitely didn’t want him calling me
babe.

“Uh, thanks.” Even the way he complimented me had my gagger going. I’d need to take a shower in hydrochloric acid to scrub off the thick film his words left on my skin. I would take Blake’s compliment on how I looked beautiful over his any day.

I wiggled out of his grasp, took a couple steps back, and pushed a stray curl behind my ear. Andrew frowned at my physical shutdown, but Blake hid a smug smile in back of his hand. Wait, he was happy I turned Andrew down? I smoothed my hands over the fabric of my dress and tried to hide my discomfort by chipping at my polished pinkie.

Jules came bursting through the hallway door and said, “Hey, handsome. You clean up well.”

“You’re looking beautiful tonight.” Blake pulled her into a hug.

A swarm of angry bees stung my heart as I tried not to focus on their embrace. I kept chipping away at my polish, the yellow flakes falling to the floor. If this was her way of hooking us back up, I wasn’t sure this plan would work. The polish on my right pinkie had completely chipped off, and I was busy working on my middle finger. If I wasn’t careful, my whole right hand would be unpolished before we even started dinner.

“I know, right,” she jested. “But the real beauty is Payton. Did you see the back of her dress?”

“She looks amazing,” Blake mumbled.

My face burned, and I bet by now, my neck and chest matched my hair. I peeked in the hallway mirror. Yep, hot mess, party of one. Great.

The chapter president, Chad, seated us at the long table in the formal dining room. A lot of girls wore flapper dresses with fringe hanging from the hems, but a few girls dressed in formal gowns, similar to mine.

Chad instructed guys to sit on one side and girls on the other. Andrew pulled out my chair and scooted it back in as I took a seat. Blake did the same for Jules.

Silver heart-shaped confetti littered the white tablecloth along with vases filled with red roses. Great ambiance—minus the stale beer stench. Apparently, the pledges shirked on their mopping responsibilities after the party last night.

Jules babbled on about a tailgating party for tomorrow’s game against some Washington college. On Tuesday, she made me stand in the freezing-ass cold before the sun had even come out to get section 228 tickets for the game. According to Jules, this was the best student section at the stadium. I would have been fine sitting in the end-zone section, but not my football-obsessed roommate. Her parents and grandparents went here, and she grew up on Lion football.