He nearly told Max about Annie, but suppose Sammie grabbed his phone, which she’d done before, and saw his texts. Would she classify having coffee with another girl as cheating? Had no desire to find out.
They walked down the stairs, chatting. That sense of responsibility Dad claimed he didn’t have kicked in: I’m here; I’m going to do this right. He would do his research. Ask Annie lots of questions and write down her answers in the notebook Dad had suggested he bring for keeping track of his impressions. He wouldn’t put it past Dad to double-check. Crap. He’d left the notebook in the bedroom where they were staying. Could visualize it on the nightstand. He’d have to make notes on a brochure.
They pushed through the door, back out into ice age cold. Harry tugged his jacket around his chest. The wind bit like a flesh-eating monster with sharp metal teeth. The campus cop was still there. The dude hadn’t moved. He watched them, which was creepy as fuck. Talk about instincts . . . That didn’t feel right. At all.
“Gorgeous day,” Annie said.
For real?
“It’s been such a terrible winter,” she said. “That polar vortex was something.”
“Yup. Our county got down to ten degrees one night.”
“Ten degrees? That’s all?” She laughed. They left the path and crunched through snow, which seemed like a really, really bad idea. She was wearing boots, but he wasn’t. Would the snow come over the top of his Docs?
“Why do you want to come here?” Annie asked.
“I don’t. But I have good SAT scores.” Actually, I have perfect scores. “And a high GPA.”
“Everyone here does.” Annie smiled.
“My dad believes in striving for the best. He thinks anything less than perfect isn’t—”
“Aha. Get it. You’re here because your dad made you visit.”
“Yes and no. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Intriguing.”
“It’s hard to explain. We have an odd relationship.” Harry paused. “But it’s getting better.”
“Closer to your mom?”
“Yeah.” Although maybe that wasn’t quite true. Not anymore. He used to be closer to Mom. These days, he went straight to Dad for pretty much everything from pocket money to advice on Sammie.
They walked through another ornate wrought-iron gate. Lots of gates in this place. To keep people in or out? Two students on bikes pedaled by frantically, heads down. Harry looked up into the blue sky framed by leafless trees. No evergreens. If he were here, he’d miss the pines. The grand building off to their right was a doppelganger for the St. Pancras train station in London. Freaky.
“Since you bailed on your college tour, I’ll tell you that we are now crossing the plaza, and I’m about to show you the best part of campus. Did you know Winnie-the-Pooh lives here?” She tucked her arm in his.
Harry wasn’t sure how to react. Annie seemed nice enough. Open, his kind of person, but she was being a bit too friendly. Even by his standards. She stopped in front of a tree stump that had been turned into a little house. The wooden shingle roof was held in place with strips of tin, and a small hand-painted sign above the wooden door read “Pooh”—in red.
“It has its own caretaker, but the history of Pooh’s Harvard home is shrouded in mystery. We thought we’d lost it when they cut down the tree in 2012, but it proved impossible to dispossess Pooh Bear. He just had to relocate for a while.”
“Adorable.” Harry flattened his hand across his chest. The cute factor alone was almost enough to make him change his mind about Harvard.
“I was a total Winnie-the-Pooh nut.” Annie giggled.
“Me too,” Harry said. A forgotten memory—reading Winnie-the-Pooh, but with Dad, not Mom. Dad reading to him at bedtime in Granny’s house. From a battered old copy. “Tigger was my guy. Had even more energy than me.” Dad had liked Eeyore.
“Definitely time for a hot drink.” Annie shivered.
They entered the Science Center, and she paused to stomp snow off her boots. “Let me treat you. What’ll you have? Coffee? Tea?”
Yuck. Harry shook his head. “Do they do hot chocolate?”