Chapter 13
I couldn’t believe I did it, but I swam extra laps that night and took a ton of time in the locker room. Yeah, I was waiting for him to show, though I told myself I wasn’t.
Pathetic, and it didn’t even work. He didn’t show, and I wasn’t about to stay all night to see if he’d resume work on the steam room tiling job.
I did skim under the tape to peek in. It looked like most of the demo work had been done, with all the old, gross tile gone. It looked bare and lonely and very sterile.
Kind of like how I felt.
On the walk home from the women’s IM building, I resolved to shake this off, not let Lucas affect me this way. I was a hot freshman at an elite college, for Christ’s sake; some townie blowing me off was not going to derail my college experience.
And yet I walked slowly, listening for a souped-up car to pull up behind me.
One never did.
* * *
Jane was on her phone, fighting with her father, when I came into the room.
It amazed me how little Joseph Stratton knew his daughter.
I’d only known Jane a little over a month and I knew that she would indeed rather transfer to a community college, or work her way through college entirely on her own, than do that which she said she wouldn’t.
Jane would not make a good politician—absolutely no compromise in her.
Wanting to give Jane some privacy, though she motioned that it wasn’t necessary, I threw my backpack on my bed and made my way through our bathroom to the other side of our suite to see if Syd was around.
When we first moved in, Syd shared a room with Megan, a girl from Nebraska, also here on scholarship.
Megan seemed all right, and we tried to include her in stuff, but after the first two weeks her mother died and she left school to go home to Nebraska.
She said she was coming back, and the residence association didn’t put anyone else in with Syd, but we weren’t betting on Megan returning anytime soon.
She’d taken all her stuff and Syd now lived in a room that was completely decked out on one side and totally empty on the other. Jane had said Syd should spread her stuff out, but Syd said she’d feel weird if Megan just showed up and Syd had squatted all over her area.
At the very least, Jane had put a sheet, a blanket, and a pillow on Megan’s empty bed so we’d have somewhere to veg when we came over to Syd’s side of the suite.
Which is what I did now, flopping down on the bed opposite Syd where she was propped up, textbook open on her lap.
“Hey,” she said, pushing the book off her lap, curling her legs underneath her.
“Hey. I can leave if you want to study.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I need a break anyway.”
I toed my kicks off and curled up on my side, adjusting the pillow under my head.
“So, what did he have to say about not calling you Sunday or Monday? A good excuse, at least? Did you let him have it before you kissed and made up?” She was smiling, not at all thinking that the situation was unresolved.
“None of the above. He took Andy and left before I even got out of the locker room. I never even talked to him.” Stupid voice, cracking as I said the last.
“Oh, shit,” Syd said, getting off her bed and crossing the small room to sit next to me. She placed a warm hand on my back, rubbing it. “Sorry, Lily, that sucks.”
On some level I was glad Jane had been on the phone and that Syd was available. Jane would not have the sympathy and comfort Syd did. Which is surprising, since Syd is a pretty tough chick herself.
“Yeah,” I said, “it does kind of suck.”
“Of course it does,” she said, now rubbing her hand up and down my back in a motion that made me really miss my mother.
“What a douche,” she added, reminding me nothing of my mother.
“But that’s the thing,” I said, sitting up, crossing my legs, and facing Syd. “I don’t think he is…a douche.”
“Is your barometer trustworthy?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. I always thought so.” I had always been pretty dead-on with the guys I’d dated in the past. I knew which ones had the potential for jerkery, and was proven right most times. I also seemed to sense truly good guys, and had not been proven wrong on that front yet.
But maybe Lucas was my first major misread.
I shrugged again. “Who knows? I guess Schoolport douches read differently on my barometer than the Maryland ones I’m used to.” I smiled, trying to make light of my words.
Syd went along with the facade. “Well, I can’t speak for the Schoolport locals, not having met them, but I know the Bribury boys’ douchery is much more polished than that of the guys in Queens. Maybe you just need to recalibrate your mechanism?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
She pushed herself from the bed and went to her desk and picked up her phone.
“Let’s put some feelers out for the best parties this weekend.
You just need one good hookup to get your mind off this guy.
” I didn’t ask whom she was texting. Syd had networked a lot more than I had during our time at Bribury.
I let her do her thing, and didn’t disagree with her, though I didn’t have much faith in what she said.
I slept in the next morning, not having Montrose’s class until eleven. I skipped going to the caf for breakfast with Jane, just having an apple and a cup of coffee from the room.
I considered blowing off class altogether, but that felt like self-pity and I didn’t want to give Lucas that much power over my actions.
As I left the dorm, I heard, “Lily?” from a voice that zoomed through my body, sending sparks of awareness and self-protection.
Lucas stood to the side of the doors, leaning against one of the pillars that held up the overhang. He had his phone out, his fingers poised, as if he stopped mid-text when he saw me.
“I was just texting you,” he said.
“Why?” I said. There must have been more anger in my voice than I realized, given the way Lucas’s eyes widened.
“I…I was hoping we could talk.”
“What about?” Less anger this time, more curiosity.
“I just wanted to explain why I haven’t called or texted.”
“I’m on my way to class.”
He nodded, stepping away from the pillar, walking slowly toward me. “Yeah, sure. I get that. Maybe later.”
Sometimes you have moments when you just know you’re at a fork in the road. That whatever you say or do next will decide something major in your life. Maybe I was being too dramatic, but I just knew that if I didn’t talk with Lucas right now, there would be no hope for us.
The real question was: did I want there to be hope for us?
“I can skip class,” I said. “My room’s empty, let’s go up there.”
“Really?” he asked. I gave one small nod, then turned and returned into the dorm, Lucas at my side.
We rode the elevator up to the third floor in silence, but he stood very close to me. When we exited the elevator and I turned to the right, Lucas took my hand and held it as we made our way down the hall. It was warm and rough and damn, but it felt so right.
I unlocked the door and stood back, letting Lucas enter the room first. He did, taking his time and looking around.
I tried to see it through his eyes—a blending of two very different styles that seemed to work.
Jane’s side was eclectic and edgy, and yet kind of peaceful in a way.
She had framed black-and-white photography on the walls, though sparingly.
Her bedding was white with a black pattern through it, and some bright red as well.
Her pillows and throw blanket were in the bright red, but her desk accessories were a deep eggplant.
It was jarring when you looked at it at first, but then it all kind of blended together nicely once you got used to it.
Kind of like Jane.
My side was a study in comfortable textures and soothing colors. My comforter was a gorgeous sea foam color with white accents. A slate-gray cashmere throw lay at the foot of my bed.
My mother and I had gone shopping together to pick out all my stuff, then had a nice lunch at the mall.
Over burgers, we’d talked about the great find of the comforter and how nice my room would look.
How excited she was for me to be starting school.
She’d even told some stories about her and my dad in college together, a wistful yet tender look in her eye.
A look I didn’t often see in my typically all-business mother.
It’d been a really good day.
I didn’t have much on my walls. I hadn’t wanted to bring the posters of the bands I liked that adorned the walls of my bedroom at home. I thought that might be too, you know, high school.
And I hadn’t wanted to put a ton of family photos on the walls, either. I’d wanted to start fresh, be a new person. Wasn’t that the whole idea?
The problem was, I didn’t know who I wanted to be. Who was Lily Spaulding if not Grayson and Susan Spaulding’s daughter? If not Alexis’s younger or Gray’s older sister?
Was I, like most of my wall space, bare?
Was Lucas my definition? Was loving Lucas who I was to become?
Saturday night, I would have said an overwhelming yes. Today, I didn’t think so.
Though, standing behind him, watching his long hair move from side to side as he took in the whole room…
“I’m glad you came,” I said in almost a whisper. It was more to myself, but his back stiffened, and his head gave a small nod.
I locked the door behind me. “Let me just text Jane that I’m not coming to class so she doesn’t worry.” I pulled out my phone and quickly did the deed.
Skipping class, I texted.
You need to get your ass out of bed and stop obsessing about that loser, she responded.
Lucas here now. We’re going to talk.
A pause. Either Montrose had just come in and she’d had to put her phone away, or for once Jane was speechless. Textless?
Make the SOB grovel first.
First? She seemed to know there’d be a second act to this visit.