Her perfect fucking legs.
The moment that Stacia found Hartley, her face lit up, and she began to prance across the dining hall toward him. His table fell silent, and I couldn’t look away. Beaming, she walked around behind his chair. “Well, give us a kiss, Hartley,” she said in an affected voice, which proved she knew she was the center of attention.
Into the silence, Hartley mimicked, “Give us a kiss, Hartley. What, there’s more than one of you to service now?” His friends laughed.
Then, as everyone watched, he pushed back his chair and stood. Stacia took his face in her hands and kissed him full on the mouth.
And he kissed her back.
While his friends hooted, he cupped his hands on her face and closed his eyes. It went on and on.
The world went a little fuzzy at the edges until Dana pinched my hand. “Corey,” she said, her voice low. “Breathe.”
But it was difficult, because I felt as if a vice was squeezing my chest.
“Should we just go?” she asked me.
I forced myself to look only at Dana. “No.” It would be too obvious if I got up and bolted from the room. I wished I could sink into the floor instead.
Dana took the newspaper and studied it. “We need an eight letter word for a boat trip. Starts with a C.”
“Um,” I forced a deep breath into my lungs. “Cruise. Cruising? No — crossing.”
“That’s it,” she said. “And the G at the end starts a Greek food.”
“Gyros,” I said automatically.
“You’re on a roll.”
I gripped my coffee cup. “I didn’t think.” What I meant was, I didn’t think it would hurt this much.
“Oh, sweetie,” she said. “Deep breaths.”
Over at Hartley’s table, they’d found Stacia a chair. I could hear her whiny voice. “But Hartley, you said you’d take me to the Christmas Ball.”
“And you said you were coming on my birthday,” he returned, humor in his voice.
“Interesting choice of words,” Bridger put in.
“You don’t have to dance,” she said. “You are only there to look good in a suit.”
“Well, in that case,” he said, his voice humming out the same patient, half-amused smirk I’d heard on move-in day as he dealt with her. He spoke to her the way an indulgent father speaks to his little girl.
It was not at all the way he sounded talking to me.
“So where were you, anyway?” he asked her.
“I would have come up from New York,” she said, “but Marco had theater tickets.”
“Who did?” Bridger cut in.
“My ride.”
“Interesting choice of words,” Hartley said. “But you know, they’ve invented these things called trains…”
“I thought of that,” she sighed. “But I had so much luggage.”
“Now that I believe,” Hartley chuckled.
Across from me, Dana just shook her head. “The evil one wins.”
“Okay,” I said, pressing my palms against the ancient wood of the table. “I’m ready to go now.”
Chapter Fifteen: The Ass Crack of the Year
— Corey
When I told Dana that I was ready to leave, I wasn’t kidding around. I needed to put a meaningful distance between Hartley and my crumbling heart. Fortunately, Christmas vacation was about to hand me the perfect excuse.
But first, exams. I hadn’t wheedled and begged my way to Harkness to blow it during the first semester.
For the next two days, I worked my butt off in the main library. From a study carrel deep in the stacks, it was impossible to listen for Hartley’s voice in the hallway, or wonder whether he’d turn up to play RealStix. I ate take-out salads from the coffee shop and studied like a maniac.
Even my hope fairy took up the cause, fluttering between chapters of my calculus textbook, spouting theorems. She put on a tiny pair of glasses and perched on the lid of my travel coffee mug. Even better, she didn’t mention Hart-throb’s name. Not even once.
I turned in my take-home exams early, and then turned my attention to economics. When I sat for the exam on the morning of the tenth, I was so well prepared that having Hartley seated beside me wasn’t too much of a distraction. I finished before the time allotted. When I wheeled out of the exam, he looked up.
I gave him a quick wave, because it hurt to look at him directly. And then I was gone.
He texted me fifteen minutes later. Celebratory lunch at Commons? On my way over there. But I didn’t even reply to the text, because I was already on the phone with my mother.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, her voice breathless.
It wasn’t. Not really. But I would never admit it. “I’m fine. But I’m done early, so I changed my ticket.”
“But what about the Christmas Ball? Your brother always loved that.”
“Well,” I said, “it turns out that not everybody sticks around for it.”
“Okay, Sweetie.” Her voice was uneasy. She wrote down my new flight number and time. And I went back to my room and packed.
By the time the Christmas Ball got underway, I was in the air over the Great Lakes.