“Whatever, man. It doesn’t matter,” Nance says. “The point is, you could come in and say you’d never grown a mustache and bungee-jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, and Eli would up and drink.”
“I tried to grow a mustache last year,” Andy says. “My mom wanted me to. She kept talking about how ‘handsome’ I’d look with facial hair. I finally had to break it to her. ‘Mom,’ I said, ‘I know you’re psyched about me taking T because I can finally start to look like the son you always wanted, but mustaches make me look pervy.’”
Everyone laughs.
Hold up. I try to think backward in the conversation. Did someone say something about Lacey?
I glance from face to face. There are a few people from outside our usual crowd—some guys in the UBA I don’t know very well, a girl I don’t recognize at all...and Lacey Colfer, my Foundations of Government teaching fellow. The one who set me up with my internship interview at Oxford. The one who’s expecting me to hand in a not-yet-written paper on the separation of powers tomorrow.
Derek sees me looking.
“T, this is Lacey,” Derek says. “She was UBA president the year before last.”
“Hi, Toni.” Lacey waves at me sheepishly. “Don’t tell Dr. Morris about this, okay?”
“Deal.” I smile at them. I wonder if this will get me a break on my paper’s due date.
“Never have I ever,” Eli moans. “Um. Never have I ever used a strap-on?”
I’m too astonished to hear the words coming out of Eli’s mouth to pay attention to who drinks and who doesn’t. Maybe I should’ve gone for the rum, after all, if this game is already on to sex toys.
“Am I next?” Inez asks.
“No, it’s my turn,” Derek says. “Never have I ever. Uh. Hooked up with a bio-guy who wasn’t circumcised.”
“Ew,” Nance and some of the others say. Then Nance takes a quick drink. Ha!
“I told you, stop cheating, man,” Andy says to Eli, who’s finishing off a drink.
“I’m not this time!” Eli says. “I’ve done that. It was disturbing.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t worry, man. Those days are way behind you,” Nance says. “I’m setting you up with some of my Wellesley friends. You’ll be fighting off the ladies before you know it.”
“Don’t need to fight ’em off,” Eli says. “Just one girl. That’s all I need.”
“You sure?” asks Kartik. “There’s lots of girls out there, man.”
“I’m sure,” Eli says. “Just need one perfect girl. Like Toni’s girl.”
“Yeah, Toni’s got that part all set,” Andy says. “And T’s not even on T yet. Ha, ha! Get it?”
“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend, Toni,” Lacey says.
Too. Many. Worlds. Colliding.
I wait until one of the others takes a turn (“Never have I ever gone down a girl who lived in Dunster, ’cause Dunster girls are hella gross, y’all!”). While everyone is laughing and drinking, I slide off the couch and tap Derek’s shoulder. “Can I talk to you?”
Derek smiles, gets up without a word and leads me into one of the tiny bedrooms. From the number of baseball caps hanging off the dresser, I suspect it’s Eli’s. We close the door and sit down across from each other on the creaky hardwood floors.
“What’s up?” Derek asks. “Oh, and before I forget, you should call Gretchen back.”
“The hell? How do you know about that?”
“She messaged me. I think she thinks you’re mad at her.”
Wow. I do not need those two teaming up against me. I can’t talk to Derek about Gretchen if they’re always going to take Gretchen’s side.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Derek says. “What’s the matter? Is it what Andy said?”
“No, there’s something I’ve been thinking about, and I wanted to ask you—wait, which thing Andy said?”
“Oh, you know what I mean. His little pun. With the ‘yet’ at the end.” Derek takes a drink and smirks at me. “By the way, I’ve heard him say that sober, too.”
Oh. Sure, that bothered me. I don’t want to admit that, though.
“No,” I say. “I’m just crabby. Plus, I’m sick. Plus, I have too much work to do. Plus, it feels like my universe is collapsing in on itself more and more every day.”
Derek grins. “Welcome to Harvard.”
“It isn’t funny.”
“Never said it was.”
“I don’t want to call Gretchen back.”
Derek stops grinning. “Why?”
I shrug. “Every time we talk now, it’s—tense.”
“Since when? Halloween?”
“Yeah.” I pull a stuffed lion off Eli’s bed and hold it in my lap, looking into its furry face so I won’t have to meet Derek’s eyes. “It’s weird. It never used to be like that. We didn’t fight once in high school.”
“Then that was what was weird.”
Derek was supposed to reassure me. Not make this harder.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Everyone fights sometimes. It doesn’t matter how great your relationship is. There’s never perfect harmony because there are always differences of opinion.”