*
And when she came back, she was.
Cath had curled up on her bed and let herself cry like she hadn’t all Thanksgiving weekend. She found The Outsiders wedged between the bed and the wall, and threw it on the floor.
Reagan saw the book when she came back to the room. She was wearing yoga pants and a tight gray hoodie, and square brown glasses instead of contacts.
“Oh, fuck,” she said, picking up the book. “I was supposed to help him study.” She looked over at Cath. “Were you actually just reading?”
“Not just,” Cath said, her voice a hiccupy wheeze.
“Stop crying,” Reagan said. “I mean it.”
Cath closed her eyes and rolled toward the wall.
Reagan sat at the end of her own bed. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said solemnly. “And I knew he liked you—he was here constantly. I just didn’t know that you liked him back.”
“I thought he was here constantly because he was your boyfriend,” Cath said. “I didn’t want to like him back. I tried to be mean to him.”
“I thought you were just mean,” Reagan said. “I liked that about you.”
Cath laughed and rubbed her eyes for the five hundredth time in twelve hours. She felt like she had pink eye.
“I’m over it,” Reagan said. “I was just surprised.”
“You can’t be over it,” Cath said, sitting up and leaning against the wall. “Even if I didn’t kiss your boyfriend, I thought I was kissing your boyfriend. That’s how I was going to repay you for all the nice things you’ve done for me.”
“Wow…,” Reagan said, “when you put it that way, it is pretty fucked up.”
Cath nodded miserably.
“So why’d you do it?”
Cath thought of Levi’s warmth against her arm last night. And his ten thousand smiles. And his forty-acre forehead.
She closed her eyes, then pressed the heels of her hands into them. “I just really, really wanted to.”
Reagan sighed. “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the deal. I’m hungry, and I have to finish reading The Outsiders. Levi likes you, you like him—I’m over it. It could get weird around here real fast if you start dating my high school boyfriend, but there’s no turning back, you know?”
Cath didn’t answer. Reagan kept talking.
“If he were still my boyfriend, we’d have to throw down. But he’s not. So let’s go have lunch, okay?”
Cath looked up at Reagan. And nodded her head.
*
Cath had already missed her morning classes. Including Fiction-Writing. She thought about Nick, and right at that moment it was like thinking about almost anybody.
Reagan was eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. “Okay,” she said, stabbing her spoon at Cath, “now what?”
“Now what, what?” Cath said, her mouth full of grilled cheese.
“Now what with Levi?”
Cath swallowed. “Nothing. I don’t know. Do I have to know what?”
“Do you want my help with this?”
Cath looked at Reagan. Even without her makeup and hair, the girl was terrifying. There was just no fear in her. No hesitation. Talking to Reagan was like standing in front of an oncoming train.
“I don’t know what this is,” Cath said. She clenched her fists in her lap and forced herself to keep talking. “I feel like … what happened last night was just an aberration. Like it could only have happened in the middle of the night, when he and I were both really tired. Because if it had been daylight, we would have seen how inappropriate it was—”
“I already told you,” Reagan said, “he’s not my boyfriend.”
“It’s not just that.” Cath turned her face toward the wall of windows, then back at Reagan, earnestly. “It was one thing when I had a crush on him and he was totally unattainable. But I don’t think I could actually be with someone like Levi. It would be like interspecies dating.”
Reagan let her spoon drop sloppily into her cereal. “What’s wrong with Levi?”
“Nothing,” Cath said. “He’s just … not like me.”
“You mean, smart?”
“Levi’s really smart,” Cath said defensively.
“I know,” Reagan said, just as defensively.
“He’s different,” Cath said. “He’s older. He smokes. And he drinks. And he’s probably had sex. I mean, he looks like he has.”
Reagan raised her eyebrows like Cath was talking crazy. And Cath thought—not for the first time, but for the first time since last night—that Levi had probably had sex with Reagan.
“And he likes to be outside,” Cath said, just to change the subject. “And he likes animals. We don’t have anything in common.”
“You’re making him sound like he’s some rowdy mountain man who, like, smokes cigars and has sex with prostitutes.”
Cath laughed, despite herself. “Like a dangerous French fur trapper.”
“He’s just a guy,” Reagan said. “Of course he’s different from you. You’re never going to find a guy who’s exactly like you—first of all, because that guy never leaves his dorm room.…”
“Guys like Levi don’t date girls like me.”