“No,” I laugh. “I want to be a doctor.”
“Aha,” he says, like he’s figured out something important about me. “Did you know that over half of the incoming freshmen at this school consider themselves premed? But only like seven percent of them end up taking the MCAT.”
“I did not know that.” I must look tense, because Thomas laughs.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to depress you,” he says. “Let me get you a drink.”
I open my mouth to tell him that I’m not twenty-one, but of course he must know that. The only time I’ve ever had alcohol at a party was that summer with Tucker. Ava Peters’s house. He made me a rum and Coke.
“What’s your order?” Thomas asks me. “They have pretty much everything. I bet you’re a martini type of girl, am I right?”
“Uh, rum and Coke,” I say, because I know I was able to handle that okay that night without getting even a little tipsy. I want to be able to drive home.
“Rum and Coke it is,” he says, and away he goes to the kitchen.
I look around. Off in a back room I can hear people chanting somebody’s name. There’s another group around the dining room table, dipping stuff into fondue pots, and dancers going wild under the disco ball, people holding shouted conversations in corners, the occasional couple making out on the stairs and against the wall. I spot Amy on the couch in front of the TV, with a bunch of people playing some sort of drinking game that involves watching That Seventies Show. I wave, and she waves back enthusiastically.
Thomas returns with my drink.
“Cheers.” He knocks his plastic cup dully against mine. “To new adventures with new people.”
“To new adventures.” I take a big drink, which burns all the way down my throat and settles like a pool of lava in my stomach. I cough.
Thomas pats me on the back. “Uh-oh, are you a lightweight?”
“This is rum and Coke? Nothing else?” I ask.
“One part rum, two parts Coke,” he says. “I promise.”
It doesn’t taste anything like the drink I had at the party with Tucker. And now, almost two years later, I realize why. Tucker never put any rum in my rum and Coke.
That little stink.
That overly protective, impossible, infuriating, and utterly sweet little stink.
In that moment I miss him so much my stomach hurts. Or that could be the rum. There’s a loud cheer from the people in the back room.
“Christian! Christian! Christian!” they’re chanting.
I push forward through the crowd until I’m standing in the doorway of the back room, arriving in time to see Christian chug a large glass of dark brown liquid. They cheer again when he’s done, and he grins and wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his white polyester suit.
The girl sitting next to him leans over to whisper something in his ear, and he laughs, nods at her.
My stomach clenches.
Christian looks up and sees me. He stands up.
“Hey, where are you going?” says the girl who’s sitting on the other side of him, pouting prettily. “Christian! Come back here! We still have to get through another round.”
“I’ve had enough,” he says, not quite slurring, but not sounding like himself, either.
I don’t have to touch his mind to know he’s drunk. But underneath the haze of alcohol I can feel that he’s upset about something. Something that’s happened since I saw him this afternoon.