"It's nice, Kate." Nice is such a stupid word, I think, as soon as it comes out of my mouth. Katherine's drawings are beautiful -- that was my first thought when I picked up her sketchpad, before I realized they were all of me.
"I wasn't drawing you before because I'm obsessed with you or something," she says. I hand her the sketchpad and she closes it, and I can tell by the way she looks at me that she's embarrassed.
"No?" I ask, my eyebrows raised. "I'm disappointed. I've always wanted a stalker."
She doesn't say anything for a minute, and I think I picked the wrong way to lighten the mood, but then she looks up and shrugs. "Well, I did take a lock of your hair for the shrine I made to you."
I sit down on the bed. Katherine is leaning up against the pillows on the headboard, her knees pulled up to her chest. She looks so vulnerable that I want to reach out and hug her, but that seems too corny, so I just pull her feet into my lap and cover them with my hands. There's something about being with her right now that feels comfortable. "That's good," I say. "Hair is okay. If you would have cast a mold of my cock, that would have been weird."
"Damn it. There goes my plan for the evening," she says. "I'll have to take the plaster I bought back to the store."
"Plaster would have been uncomfortable anyway. I prefer chocolate."
She laughs, but the sound fades quickly and we sit in silence, with me rubbing her feet. Isn't this something -- Caulter Sterling, two months of monogamy under his belt, rubbing a chick's feet and talking. "Do you think about her a lot?"
"Who?"
"Your mother," I say, nodding toward the sketchpad.
Katherine shrugs. "She's been gone a long time now, you know?"
"Not that long," I say. "A few years, right?"
"Yeah," she says. "At the end of my eight grade year. She was sick for a year before it happened. Breast cancer. It was too late when they caught it."
I'm sorry." I don't really know what to say.
Kate shrugs. "It is what it is, you know? I mean, there's nothing you can do about it."
"You've been at Brighton since then," I say.
"As soon as my dad could get rid of me, he did," she says, her voice bitter.
Being gotten rid of is definitely something I can understand. "He and Ella are made for each other, then."
She looks at me. "What do you mean?" she asks. "Is your father around?"
"Ella has been jonesing to get rid of me as soon as I came out of her," I say. "Who knows who the hell my father is?"
Katherine's brow wrinkles. "You really don't know?"
"She told me that he was some loser, lived out in Georgia somewhere," I say. "When I was fifteen, I hired a private investigator and tracked the guy down. He copped to her paying him to say he was my father and stay out of my life. Apparently she partied a lot back then. She doesn't know who it is."
"Aren't there DNA tests for that?"
"Not if you can't even narrow it down," I say.
"Shit. That sucks."
I move up to her calf, grateful for the distraction as I rub her leg. "Whatever. It's no big deal, right? That's life. At least your father is her fucking age, not like some of the guys she was dating, barely a day over eighteen."
"Sometimes I think I'm not supposed to be happy, you know?" she asks. "Like, other people are supposed to be happy, but I'm not."
That I can understand. Chasing happiness is like a fucking curse. "If you told your father to fuck off, I bet you'd feel happy."
She chokes on her laugh. "Yeah," she says. "You're probably right. I bet I would."
"So no more Harvard in the fall, then?" I ask.
"You're assuming that won't make me happy," she says. "Maybe that's my dream."
"Yeah, that's a ridiculous assumption," I say.
"Maybe I want to go to Harvard."
"No you don't." I speak the words with certainty, even though I shouldn't. I shouldn't know what she wants or doesn't want, but I do. I know with certainty she doesn't want to go to Harvard, and that she doesn't want to go to law school. It's not who she really is.
"Can I show you something?" she asks. "But you have to swear you won't say anything to anyone."
"Show me." I watch as she jumps up and races to her desk, pulling a folded piece of paper from underneath a stack of papers in the top drawer, then hands it to me. "What is it?"
"Look."
I read the letter, an acceptance letter from UCLA. "Is this where you want to go?"
"I mean, it would never happen, you know what I mean?" she says. "It's not an Ivy League school. But they have a really good art program. My father would shit a brick if I went to art school. He would say it's a useless degree."
"But you applied," I point out. "And you got in, right? You should do it, if it's what you want to do."
She grabs the paper from my hand and puts it back in the drawer. "I think it's past the deadline anyway. And it's in California. My father would have a heart attack. Miss summer internships at the Capitol for art? I mean, what am I going to do with my life -- sketch? It's not practical." She shrugs. "I just wanted to know if I was any good, you know?"
"You should do what makes you happy."
She rolls her eyes at me, returning to where she was sitting before on the bed. "I'm not taking the advice of Mr. Life-Is-One-Giant-Party," she says. "Your mom has, like, mega money. You don't even have to do anything with your life."
"Fuck if I don't already know that," I say, my voice hard.
"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," she says. "Just that, you're completely set for life, aren't you? You can have fun all the time."
"Well, that's not all it's cracked up to be." I sound ungrateful and spoiled. "It gets old after a while."
"See?" she says. "Being irresponsible all the time isn't even fun."
"First you say I don't have to do anything with my life, and now you're calling me irresponsible?" I ask. "I thought were getting along, and now you're back to insulting me."
Katherine sighs. "It came out wrong," she says. "I didn't mean it like that. I just mean that you're obviously smart, you know? And you're set for life. You can do anything you want."
"Says you." I feel like my path is laid out pretty clearly - I'm the bad boy son of a celebrity. People already know everything they want to know about me.
"So what would you want to do, if you just said, fuck it, and didn't give a shit about anyone watching?" She rubs her lower lip absently with her finger, her knees tucked up to her chest. I think about how my tongue was on that lip earlier, how that lip felt as I pulled it between my teeth.
I fucked her less than two hours ago; I should be worn out. But I'm not. I'm showered and reinvigorated as I sit here looking at her. And, I can see the fabric of her panties that barely covers her *, peeking out from between her thighs.
"You," I say, reaching for her ankle and pulling it toward me on the bed.
She laughs, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Yes, obviously," she says. "But you know what I mean."
"I do know what you mean," I say, crawling up the length of her body, rubbing my cock against her the whole way. She giggles and puts her hands on my chest.
"Not so fast," she says. "Not until you tell me."
I kiss her, drawing her bottom lip between my teeth again, my hands on either side of her shoulders. "Tell you what?" I ask. "There is nothing to tell. I'd do you. I'd never stop fucking you. That's what I'd do."
"I was being serious."
"So am I." I reach under her shirt, slide my hand up her abdomen until I can feel her breast. No bra. Her nipple is hard, and I groan as I squeeze her flesh in my hand, watching the expression on her face change as her eyes lightly flutter closed. "You wouldn't spend your time fucking me if no one was watching?"
"No," she murmurs.
"No?" I ask. "That's rude. You should at least lie to the guy who's cock is pressed right up against your *."
"Okay, then. Yes," she whispers.
I stroke her nipple with my thumb until she's moaning, her voice soft. "Yes, because I told you to lie or yes because you'd want to do nothing but fuck me?"