“Why not, we can all go,” Kate said sourly, never imagining it would come to pass. She had no intention of following through.
A few days later, when Griff told her the private jet was a go, Kate reconsidered. She’d had a particularly gruesome couple of days—oversleeping after a night of partying and missing a midterm, realizing she’d used up her March allowance by the twelfth of the month—and the urge for escape was more powerful than ever. She imagined lounging by the pool with views of the ocean, rubbing lotion on Lucas’s back. Lucas’s perfect body in a bathing suit, with a tan, would cure her winter doldrums. She would lie out on the lounger with him at night, talking under the stars, or swim with him in the salty ocean, clinging together as the waves battered them. There was only one problem: Lucas seemed determined to avoid her. Since that time they ran into each other at Shecky’s, Kate had succeeded in spending only the occasional night with her townie, and always in her room. He never invited her to his. The next morning without fail he would slip from her grasp and disappear back into his own life so completely it was like an air lock sealed behind him. His detachment took Kate by surprise. After their first night together, she expected the sort of adulation other guys gave her, but Lucas was elusive. Nobody had ever been so indifferent to her before, and she was caught by it. She loved the head games, loved the chase, loved how he ignored her in the Commons and sat with his boys instead. She developed a sixth sense for his presence. She could recognize him from the corner of her eye from the far side of the Quad based on the color of his jacket or the tilt of his head. The thought of spending time with Lucas in Jamaica was intoxicating. Lucas, not Griff.
“I don’t think it’ll work,” she said. “I’m not on speaking terms with my father. He’d never approve.”
“From what you’ve told me, you’re the one who’s refusing to speak to him,” Griff said. “I bet if you asked, he’d say yes, as a gesture of reconciliation. What have you got to lose?”
“I’ll give it a shot,” Kate said, thinking that if Keniston did say yes, she would figure out some way to get Lucas to come along. But getting Griff not to? That part seemed like a long shot. He was like gum on her shoe.
Kate e-mailed Keniston, and as Griff had predicted, he wrote back right away. He would allow her to stay at the house in Jamaica provided that responsible people would accompany her. For example, her roommate, Jenny Vega, had impressed him at Thanksgiving as a girl with a good head on her shoulders. If Jenny accompanied Kate, he would approve the trip.
Keniston had solved Kate’s problem. She had an excuse to turn this into a group trip, with free airfare and a free place to stay. Who would say no to that? Not even Lucas, not once she told him that a lot of people were going. Enough people to make it nonthreatening to Lucas. Enough people so she could create a buffer between her and Griff, and have time to indulge her Lucas fixation.
She showed Griff the e-mail.
“I have to bring Jenny,” Kate said, laying the groundwork. “I can’t invite Jenny without inviting Aubrey, too. I’m sorry, but this means it won’t be just you and me.”
“No problem. The plane seats ten,” Griff said.
“I wouldn’t want my girls to feel like third wheels, so we’ll need to invite guys for them.”
“I can ask around at the frat to see who’s available.”
“Let me take care of the invitations,” Kate said.
A week later, six of them stepped from the air-conditioned sterility of the terminal in Montego Bay to the hot, humid chaos of the pavement—Kate, Aubrey, and Jenny; and Griff, Lucas, and some dweeb named Drew that Jenny picked up somewhere, whose chief assets were being male (ostensibly; Kate had her doubts) and being available to go on vacation with no notice. Vans and taxis and minibuses jockeyed for position at the curb. People accosted them, holding signs for hotels and cruise lines. Kate led the way to a taxi stand, where she asked around for a van big enough to carry them out to the countryside. Nobody wanted to take them to the Eastmans’ house, which was up in the middle of nowhere in the hills. Taxi drivers preferred going to the big hotels or the port where the cruise ships docked, so they could count on a fare back. Finally Kate agreed to a rip-off price for a ride in a dilapidated old station wagon with the word “taxi” hand-lettered on the side, driven by a guy with no front teeth.
“C’mon, we’ll sit in the way-back,” she said, taking Lucas’s hand. She wanted him badly enough to be brazen about singling him out. She would throw Griff together with Aubrey, who’d been crushing on him noticeably for months—so much so that Kate might have minded if she’d given a rip about Griff.
The way-back of the station wagon smelled like a dead animal.
“Hey, roll the windows down, it stinks back here,” Kate yelled, as the others piled into the car.
Soon they were speeding along a potholed highway heading east. The azure ocean sparkled beside them, breaking in delicate lacy waves on the white-sand beach. Wind roared through the car, drowning out any attempts at conversation. The first few bumps tossed Kate and Lucas around the rear compartment, rattling their bones and making them grunt at every impact. They hunched down together, using each other’s bodies to brace themselves against the floor. Kate turned toward Lucas with her lips parted, hungry for his kiss, and found his hand against her chest, holding her off.
“What?” she whisper-shouted into his ear.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“Are you with me or with him, the frat guy?”
“You mean Griff?”
“Yeah, what gives?”
“Are you asking whose bed I’m sleeping in on this trip?”
“Uh, well…”
“Yours,” she said, her heart thrilling as she looked into his golden-brown eyes. She couldn’t remember being this excited about a guy—well, ever.
“Does he know that?” Lucas asked.
“He’ll figure it out.”
“No. I don’t put moves on another dude’s girl.”
“Look, Griff’s a big boy. And this isn’t high school. I don’t belong to anybody. I just do what feels right.”
He looked at her disapprovingly. “I think you mean, do what feels good.”
“Huh?”