Birth control. “Okay.” It might be tricky, though, because my history with blood clots would probably make me ineligible for the pill. But I would ask.
Hartley closed his eyes before continuing. “When I was little, my father’s parents used to send us money every month. But when I was six, they stopped, and he was supposed to start. But he never sent us a dime.”
“Classy,” I said. “And your mother didn’t go after him?”
He shook his head. “She said she wouldn’t embarrass him publicly. No matter that she was always embarrassed. No money, no dad to teach me to tie up my hockey skates…” he trailed off. I leaned over and kissed the velvety skin on his shoulder. “Mmm,” he smiled. “What was I saying?”
I stopped kissing him. “Your asshole father.”
“Right. Well, here I am in the hallowed halls of Harkness, working my tail off. I’ve learned to forget about him, except when I see his name in the newspaper.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “He’s a film producer — very successful. Top shelf. And that fucked with me too. I kept thinking that if I was successful, then maybe he’d acknowledge me. I even picked this school because of him.”
“But this school is great.”
“It’s great, unless you have a giant chip on your shoulder about rich people. It would have been more my style to take a hockey scholarship at Michigan or somewhere. But I came here, because he’s an alum.”
“Please don’t say you wish you hadn’t come to Harkness.” I nuzzled him.
“That’s not what I said.” He kissed my ear. “It’s just that I chose it for the wrong reasons, and it made my pile of shit deeper.”
I slid my body onto Hartley’s back, spreading out on him as if he were a piece of furniture. “What does your father have to do with Stacia?” I asked.
“Right,” he said. And then he took a deep breath. “Callahan, when you’re pressing your boobs against my back, it’s hard to think.”
“Try.”
“Okay…” he chuckled. “Stacia was dating Fairfax, and I thought she was the bitchiest, most high-maintenance girl I’d ever met. But one night she happened to mention that their neighbor in Greenwich had been to a dinner party her parents gave. Stacia is a big name-dropper.”
“And the neighbor…was your father?”
He nodded.
“Wow. Strange coincidence. So you asked her out because of that? Did you want to meet him?”
He was quiet for a moment. “No, I never tried to meet him. That wasn’t it. It was more like…she was inside the gates, and I was on the outside. So she became very attractive to me. If I could get her to love me, then I’d be a member too.” He swiveled his head around to look up at me. “This shit sounds even worse out loud than it does in my head.”
I sank my thumbs into his shoulder muscles. “Keep shoveling, Hartley.” I massaged his neck and he dropped his head in appreciation.
“Last year was great. I thought so at the time, anyway. I won her off of Fairfax.”
“Ouch,” I said.
He laughed. “That’s the only part of this story that isn’t awful. Because Fairfax didn’t mind that much. There’s only so much Stacia a guy can take. Anyway, I worked hard at being with her. It’s not like I just phoned it in, to get the invite to her mansion. We went on our little adventures, and she can party with the best of them. I took all the crap she could dish out. And every time I drove past my father’s house behind the wheel of Stacia’s Mercedes, it felt damned good.”
I stilled my hands on his back, thinking.
“You can say it,” Hartley said. “Pretty pathetic.”
“There is nothing pathetic about you,” I said. “I only wish you believed it. Did you ever see him?”
“No, and I didn’t expect to. I think he works out of L.A. a lot of the time. But once I saw his kids kicking a ball around on the lawn. It was only for a few seconds, because I had to keep driving. That was hard.”
“Oh my God! You have siblings. What did they look like? Did they look like you?”
He shrugged. “Hard to say. They looked like a Ralph Lauren ad. Clean and shiny. Two boys and a girl.”
Hartley rolled onto his side, sliding me off of him. We faced each other side by side. Self-conscious, I pulled the sheet up, covering my breasts.
“Don’t hide those,” Hartley grinned. “It took me months to get my shit together so that I could see them.”
“Months?”
“Sure.” His smile faded again. “This year has been hard, with the broken leg, no hockey, and no fancy princess around to prop me up. And then I started hanging around with you, Callahan. And that really fucked with my head.”
“Why?”
“Because you were so real. And you weren’t afraid to name all the things that scared you. And I realized I’d never had a single conversation with Stacia like I had with you. I was waiting around for a girl I didn’t love. But she said she still wanted me, and I couldn’t stop thinking it was important.” His eyes were sad. “I was afraid to cut the cord. It made me start hating myself.”