“And you were naked? Together?”
“Well, we were together for the first few blocks. Then Marcela stepped on a rock and stopped and I ran ahead.” I pause. “Then the police came. We both hid, but they only found me. I was hiding behind a compost bin near the hardware store—”
Crosbie’s laughing so hard I’m not sure he can hear me.
“The policeman had to get a blanket from the trunk so I could sit on it in the backseat. They’d found our clothes so they knew there were two of us and he kept asking where my ‘friend’ was. I said I didn’t know and eventually he drove me to the police station.”
“And they charged you?”
“I was the only person in the holding cell! They had nothing else to do.”
He gives up the pretense of walking and bends over to hold his thighs as he roars with laughter, tears gathering at the corner of his eyes. My parents had had a very different response.
“Anyway,” I continue primly, “they charged me with two misdemeanors: public intoxication and indecent exposure.”
Now he just kneels on the wet sidewalk and laughs his ass off.
“I got three hundred hours of community service and had to collect trash on the side of the highway all summer. That’s why I stayed at Burnham.”
I kick him when he doesn’t stop laughing, and eventually he sobers up and gazes at me, almost worshipfully.
“I like you so much more now,” he says, slowly getting to his feet.
“Funny. I’m liking you much less.”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong—I really like the cardigan-wearing, library-obsessed Nora who doesn’t jump on beds, but this… Well, I like the criminal side of you. It’s hot.”
“Stop.”
“I mean, the Burnham Police Department also saw it…”
“Crosbie!”
He teases me the rest of the way back to the apartment, even though it means passing the Frat Farm so he’ll have to double back later. We’re not at the point where we spend every night together, and I’m definitely not ready for a sleepover at the frat house, anyway.
“Remember,” I say, sticking my key in the lock. “Not a word to Kellan. This is a secret.”
“Got it.” He mimes zipping his lips. “Top secret.”
Suddenly the door is wrenched open and Kellan’s standing there. “What’s a secret?”
“How long have you been waiting?” I exclaim.
“I saw you through the window. Come in here—I want to show you guys something.”
Crosbie and I exchange bemused looks but follow him inside, stepping out of our boots and climbing the stairs to the living room…where Kellan has erected a giant easel with a huge sheet of paper with the numbers forty through fifty printed on it. There are eleven spots for entries: seven have actual names, four have descriptors. That bathroom wall is burned onto the back of my eyelids: the last time I saw it, forty-one and forty-two were blank. Now forty-two reads “BJ at May Madness party” and forty-one reads “Red Corset.”
Fuck. Me. Aka “Red Corset.”
“What’s this?” I ask, trying to hide my terror.
“I’ve eliminated sixty-two through fifty-one,” Kellan answers. “They’re all clean. This is the next batch.”
“Good job,” Crosbie says, studying the list. “You’re making progress.” He taps the blowjob entry. “I’d forgotten about this.”
“Me too,” Kellan replies, as though that’s totally normal. As though getting a blowjob while a bunch of your friends look on is par for the course. “Except then I remembered that she—” number forty-three, Karina (brunette), “mentioned it when we hooked up the next week. Which made me remember that right before the BJ there was a chick in a closet.”
I want to die.
“A closet or a corset?” Crosbie asks, squinting at the writing.
“Both. I banged her in a closet, and she was wearing a red corset. I remember watching her tits bounce as we fucked.”
“That’s hot.”
“It’d be hotter if I could remember her face. I was so drunk, man. I’d messed up at finals, coach put me on probation for the team… I was just doing everything I could to forget.”
Crosbie looks wholly unconcerned with this reasoning. “Looks like it worked.”
I try not to gag. It’s absolutely nauseating to have your roommate and your boyfriend discuss your most regrettable sexual encounter like it’s nothing. Like you’re nothing. Which, if “Red Corset” is anything to go by, is entirely accurate.
Crosbie pulls out his phone and scrolls through, muttering, “Do you have contact info for any of them? I might have Karina in here somewhere.”
I look at him sharply.
“Dude,” Kellan whispers.
“What?” He finally clues in. “She’s in my chem lab,” he says hastily. “That’s it.”
“Uh-huh.”