Chapter 25
25
“ W hat is his problem?” Clara asks me as I join her and latch onto her arm, spinning her around so we’re marching away from my door.
I glance back over my shoulder—Kendall stalks after us, his arrogant grump persona on full display. Angry and maybe a little hurt.
Deep breath. I’ve never been this kind of person. I don’t play games. I abhor games. But my other option is to admit I have feelings for this detestable person? And sure he turns me to liquid jelly. And sure, we cannot seem to get enough of each other physically, and sure he was real last night in a way that was potentially sweet. But it’s not enough to risk the rest of my life with, not when he’s still…I mentally wave my hand over his arrogant, stalking figure…him.
“What do you mean?” I ask Clara, realizing she’s been staring at me.
“You seem upset. He seems upset.” She tries to look back over her shoulder. I keep my gaze forward.
“He’s always upset, Clara. Come on, let’s go running. I could use a good endorphin rush.”
She eyes me. “Did something happen?”
My gaze skitters to hers as we cross a cobblestone street. “No.”
She walks along in silence for a while, but I can tell she’s still thinking about it. I stop and put my hand to my forehead in exasperation. “Clara, I just got handed an enormous pile of money, which I’m guessing you did, too. It wigs me out. Doesn’t it bother you?”
She presses her lips together.
Hazarding a look over my shoulder, I tug her forward. I can’t tell her everything I’ve learned, but I can ask questions while we’re running and Mr. High and Mighty can’t stop me. Following my paranoid urge, I take Clara’s phone and my own, and stuff it in the bottom of my bag before shoving the bag under a bench. If they’re stolen, they’re stolen.
“Hey! Helena, we need our phones to record the workout?—”
“If…if you knew something…you would tell me, right? We’re friends now?” I cut her off as I pull her away from the bag. It’s inconspicuous enough. Unless someone saw me ditch it, it should be there when we get back.
Clara nods, eyes widening.
I chew my lip, knowing I need to tread carefully. “Have you ever considered what you may have to trade to be in this fraternity?”
She blinks. “Trade.”
We hit our normal jogging spot, and I stop to do a few stretches. “You know, like, what they want from us.”
The nervous laugh that escapes isn’t Clara’s style. “You mean other than their list of how to be the perfect student?” When I don’t laugh, her blue eyes cloud over with seriousness. “Wait, do you know? What will get us in?”
Dangerous waters. My eyes dart between hers. “Every person’s experience might be different, but based on a conversation I overheard, it seems like this goes beyond simply paying dues and attending meetings. Next level things.”
“Next level.” She’s just parroting my words.
I grind my teeth in frustration as we both finish stretching and move out in a jog. “Like, I’m not sure there’s anything off the table in the contract. Lifelong impact stuff.” My eyes dart around as if the trees themselves are bugged.
We jog for a few beats. I wonder if she’s going to tell me off. But she’s clearly contemplating what I’ve said. Even more than that, she doesn’t seem surprised. I pull her to a stop and turn her to face me. “Wait, you knew this?”
“I’m not exactly sure what you know, so I don’t know if we know the same things.”
I make a head exploding motion. “You know stuff and you didn’t tell me?”
She looks hesitant for a moment. “The stuff I know didn’t seem important?”
We stare at each other.
“So you know that the contracts can involve serious things? Lifelong and, er, physical things?”
I note a fleeting look of panic in her eyes before she drowns it in her perfectly practiced doe-eyed look. “Well, you just confirmed something I wondered about.” She holds out her hands in a peace offering. “I’ll share my intel, too. Look, this is going to sound really stupid to you, but this is how I know what I know. Kendall’s dad? He had a long talk with me the night of the underground party. I was worried because I’m not smart or driven like you, or athletic, like the rowing twins. My looks and family name are all I have. He said there're are different kinds of ambition, and that they’re valuable too.”
“You told me that already.”
She straightens her shoulders as if I’m about to go Elizabeth Bennet all over her Kitty Bennett ass. “And since I’m joining All Saints to find myself an influential marriage, yes, I assumed that there would be some…physical…expectations in my contract.”
I feel like I’ve been slapped. “Marriage.” Now I’m the one parroting. And combined with the fact that Augustine has been telling Clara to wait for Kendall…that does not add up to something I want to consider. Could Augustine actually mean to groom Clara to ultimately be Kendall’s wife? Just when I thought we’d reached the bottom of the draconian barrel, turns out there’s another level down.
She nods, taking my wide eyes for shock over the marriage part, and not the part where I’m wondering if Kendall has any say in his bride. Not like I care on any level except principle. “I don’t want to get marred, like, right away. But did you see that party? There were a lot of really influential families in that room. I could do worse.”
Above our heads, the gray clouds give way to little spatters of rain, but we ignore it. We jog quietly for a time, our breaths coming out in puffs of steam. She’s not wrong. Kendall had said as much last night: marriages were indeed something All Saints traded in. Plenty of people went to Ivy League schools hoping to snag an upwardly mobile mate. Maybe Clara’s goal is even more wholesome than my own—less to be taken advantage of, since she just basically wants a match maker. Her contract would be really straightforward—her contract purchaser could be her future husband. In which case, it couldn’t be Kendall. But what if the person who purchases her contract is the one who will do the matchmaking? What if…what if Kendall’s father plans to purchase her contract to control both Kendall and Clara? My stomach lurches, something rising up in me, a snake that rattles my chest.
Her hand on my wrist brings me out of my reverie. “I really appreciate you trying to warn me, though. That was very…good…of you. Probably more than I deserve.”
“I’m still not sure either of us should be doing it,” I say as we both pick up the pace again. But there’s a weight lifted. At least partially. I hadn’t wanted Clara to be caught unawares, but she has her own sources. Her own goals. I have to honor that.
“Me either,” she agrees darkly, “but I can’t afford to stop now.”
I nod in agreement and we both turn to running to exorcise today’s demons.
I hate that All Saints stole my ability to slouch around in athleisure clothing in public, because I would give a kingdom for a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Here I sit at a table in a dark library, dressed in heather gray wool slacks, a black turtle neck and a belt . A goddamned belt. My invite for our meeting tonight stated that I needed to dress “formally and elegantly , befitting my status as an All Saints pledge”. It’s also now suggested I get a weekly blow-out, to ensure my grooming is at its peak. I guess as the money is shelled out, they expect us to buy fancier clothes. I’d been forced to do just that.
The girl in the shop looked like I’d handed her Christmas and she’d loaded me down with several outfits and cooed over my hair. Despite my reluctance, I must admit that my hair has become longer and shinier than ever before, thanks to all the attention I’ve given it with specialty shampoos and salon visits. I feel like a Stepford version of myself. It’s not entirely comfortable even if I admire that in the mirror I look more polished.
It’s nearing the end of Michaelmas Term and I’m very much looking forward to a break. Unfortunately for me, All Saints has full control. I have a full itinerary through the New Year. Even if I could have revised my statements to my parents and bought a ticket home with my new found funds, my schedule won’t allow it. As much as I love the history here, I will miss my mom’s ham on Christmas Day and our snug little house with the tree.
I’m having a hard time focusing on reading, and I find myself with my phone in my hand yet again. So much for willpower. But social media doesn’t hold the answers I need, so I’m pleasantly surprised when a text from Jaqueline pops through.
Just wanted to let you know I finished that stupid-hard organic chemistry lab! B+! Now I just have the final exam for the recitation portion and that bitch is finished.
I send her several appropriately excited gifs in response.
I’m still mad I won’t see you for Christmas. It’s not going to be the same at all.
I know. I’m sorry.
I wish you could tell that scholarship to fuck right off, but it just means we’ll have to have an epic summer break. Although it’s going to be hard to go back to living with my parents after this week blissfully alone.
I laugh, picturing Jaqueline sitting alone in her dorm room, stretched out on her bed. Her roommate had decided to drop out of school last week and go home, leaving her side of the room empty.
My parents will freak if I don’t go home for summer, rest assured. I’m already signed up for sorting through Grandma and Grandpa’s furniture and dishes with my mom.
Talking about my grandparents bring my conversation with Kendall screeching back to me. Deciding to throw over studying completely, I reach into my bag and pull out the book with my grandfather’s picture in it. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I flip through the rest of the book and find what I suspect Kendall didn’t want me to find. There’s a picture of a severe-looking man with the name Alastair Saint James. And, once I flip through another page, my grandmother, Cella Venn. She looks like a movie star, and now I wonder why she’d never shown me many pictures of her in college. She’s a knockout…long dark hair like my mother’s and mine, big brown eyes, thick curly eye lashes. She looks quite a bit like Hedy Lamar, her favorite actress. These people do not look like they should have been embroiled in scandals. They look picture perfect.
I pull out my phone and do something I’ve never done. I google my grandfather. Almost nothing comes up. There is his obituary, and an article about a horse he’d raised that ran in the Kentucky Derby—it finished dead last, and he’d loved every moment of it. That’s it. It’s like my grandfather never existed. So I try adding “Oxford scandal” to the search results, and a news archive website pops up, asking if I want to search the Oxford school publications for his name. I hadn’t even thought of doing that, so I log on using my Oxford student credentials and wait while it loads. Sometimes I suspect the library of having slow internet on purpose to dissuade students using the wifi.
When the site loads, there is a plethora of stories about my grandfather. About his choir work, about the productions he worked on, producing Opera scenes on the Oxford campus. About his exemplary public service record, his volunteering with impoverished youth—several quotes about how he feels like music is the great leveling field if we would just expose all children to its healing and edifying powers. My grandfather fleshes out in my head, no longer just the man I knew before he died, but a full person who lived an entire life before he had children or a grandchild.
I screenshot a few of them, and paste them into the family group text. I know my father will cherish seeing these things. If I’d never gone to Oxford, we would never had had a way to access these. The last entry in the queue catches my eye, and I click on it. It’s not about my grandfather, but he’s mentioned in the list of keywords. It’s a tragic story, one about a woman who jumped from the top of Somerville college’s accommodation building and down onto the stone pathway in the Darbeshire Quad. She’d committed suicide, but the article did not have a theory about why. The article instead, focuses on the investigation that ultimately found no probable cause for foul play, but simply stated that women often found the rigors of Oxford hard to deal with. I want to scream that there’s not actual discussion about mental health in this article, but the writing, done in the 60’s, focuses instead on the potential ill-fit of women in other colleges given their emotional states. It’s not until I get to the end of the article that my grandfather is mentioned. “Edwina Backhurst was unfortunately discovered by another student, Jonathan Eades, as he walked a companion home after choir practice.” And then, that’s it. That’s the most contentious thing I can find out about my grandfather.
I feel badly for him, having to find another student like that, but…I’d expected something worse. Cheating. Sleeping with a teacher. Faking exam results. Streaking. Something that would hint at the scandal Kendall mentioned. I screenshot the article, and remind myself to look up Edwina Backhurst another time. Maybe there’s something I missed. Suddenly tired, I close my book and put my head into my hands.
“I thought I might find you here.”
I snap my head up at the man’s voice, the chair across from me screeching a little as it’s pulled out.
My eyes widen as I take in Dominic’s tall form, folding itself into the chair. Li follows, pulling out the chair next to Dom’s after shaking fresh snow from the shoulders of her coat.
“It’s snowing?” I ask stupidly, blinking up at her.
“Since seven,” she replies.
My gaze darts to Dominic. He’s studying me across the table.
“You look tired. I brought coffee for all of us,” he says as he slings his satchel down by his feet and rummages around inside of it.
“Better not let anyone see you with coffee in here,” Li hisses.
This is all normal and lovely but it’s been weeks since I’ve seen them.
“I….” I trail off and rub my eyes. “How are you?”
Dominic pauses and looks up at me. So many things flash there. “I’ve been better. Class work is shit right now. But, I’m doing okay. How are you ?”
I’m not even sure what to say. I’m fine, except I’m up to my eyeballs in final papers, embroiled in a secret society that wants to auction my virtuous nature off and bind me with a life full of favors owed? Or fine, except for how I can’t get the night I spent with Kendall out of my mind, and I can only admit I miss his solid presence in my bed to myself in the middle of the night. My eyes dart around, expecting Kendall to emerge from the stacks, his ever present ghost materializing always at the most inopportune moments.
Dominic takes my silence as a hesitation. He and Li exchange glances. He leans forward, encouraging me to do the same. “That guy came to see me.”
I’m stricken. “Again? Kendall?”
Dominic presses his lips together. I gather there’s still no love lost between the two of them. “Kendall. Yeah. But not what you think—he apologized. He said that he’d been very drunk. He paid my medical bills and everything.”
I squint. “He. Apologized.” The words Kendall and apology don’t belong in the same sentence.
“Yeah.” Dominic sits back, still a little wary. “And he also said that you didn’t deserve to lose your friends just because he’s a terrible drunk.”
Something loosens in my chest. I blink rapidly, because now I think I might cry?
Li sits forward. “And since he apologized and promised to leave us all alone from here on out…”
She and Dominic exchange another look. He inclines his head, and she turns back to me like we’re making a real estate deal. “We don’t think his actions should cost you friends, either. Especially when he made it clear you aren’t involved with him.”
Something flutters in my stomach, and I refuse to analyze it. This is what I’ve wanted. We’re not involved, we’re not friends. I’ve made it clear every time I ignore him at meetings and out in the quad. Every time I run into him in the library.
“What do you think?” My gaze flies to Dominic next. I can see him thawing. He means more than just what I think about being friends. I think I see hope behind his eyes, and it kicks me in the ribs right behind my heart. This sweet man, this is the sort of thing I need in my life. He’s never been confusing. He’s never threatened or drugged me. At the very least, I need that sort of energy in my life, even if I’m not allowed to date him. I can’t get him hurt again.
“I’m going to be really busy for the rest of the term with scholarship stuff,” I say slowly, not sure how much Li has intuited about Dominic and I.
Dominic nods. Li’s eyes dart back and forth between us.
“But after this term, I’m hoping to stay at Oxford without the, er, overwhelming restrictions that come with my scholarship, which will make things so much less weird. I’d love to be friends.” Until then , I silently add. I think Dominic understands me though, because after a moment’s pause, he nods again as if satisfied with my proposal. A small smile graces his lips. “Friends, then. Agreed.”
And he shrugs off his coat, draping it over the empty wooden chair next to him. Our agreement settled, it’s on to business. And in Oxford, business is always studying.
“My philosophy prof is being such a wanker about this reading,” Li grumbles, pulling out her tablet. The e-book that loads that is so marked up with highlighting, it would be easier to pick out words that weren’t highlighted. She looks at the empty table in font of me. “How’s your English class going, still having trouble with the papers?”
“My T.A. is helping me by reviewing them early. Still hard, but I’m doing okay, thanks.” Suddenly, my soul is a little less weary. My friends. I might just pull it off—get to stay here at Oxford. I have found what I think is a true life passion, singing in chapel choir. I’m passing my coursework. I have a lecture class with Margaret Dusberry next term. Despite all the absolute bonkers weirdness going on with Kendall, I’m thriving. And now, I’ll have my friends back.
Dominic passes around his little thermos of coffee, and Li and I both take a sip. We sit and study for an hour in companionable silence. And if Dominic’s knees seem to bump into mine a little more often than is normal under the table, I don’t care at all. I do hope this tiny little glow that I feel when he is near will survive until spring. Gods, how nice it would be to date someone like a normal person. To slowly get to know someone. To hold hands. To tell jokes. To study together. This is what normal people do.
Not shove people into walls. Or grind together against a library wall. No duct taping boobs in a cocktail dress for nefarious personal reasons. Lust is not love. Say it again for those in the back.
Being around Kendall muddied this clarity. Continuing avoiding him is the correct path forward. I can almost taste that final check. I can see my future stretching before me like a comfortable chair in front of a fire…a future with Dominic and Li. A future without All Saints. This will all be over soon.
When I get back to my room, I open the door and flick on the light to reveal Kendall sitting at my desk. Snow spirals in around my feet, and it takes me a moment before I remember to shut the door against the fresh arctic bite of the air.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I hiss, grabbing at my chest. It’s as if he’s been summoned by my peace surrounding my decision to avoid him. “Again.”
Kendall rises from the chair and holds out an envelope.
I take it, eyeing him like he’s a shark about to bite. I don’t drop my gaze, even as I slide my finger under the flap of the thick linen envelope to open it. More money? Already?
“I thought you’d be back earlier. You have exams starting tomorrow, right?”
I roll my eyes, just giving up on grilling him about how he knows so much about my schedule. Odds are it’s his job. “Don’t you have exams too?” I fire back instead.
I drop my eyes to the paper inside the envelope. It’s not a check. It’s an itine ra ry for our trip to Ireland, and a list of things I’m required to pack. Kendall clears his throat. “A car will pick you up for the airport three hours before your flight. Clara will be sharing the car and the row on the plane with you. I hope that’s okay.”
“Yes, that’s great.”
We stand there.
I turn to taking off my coat, hoping he’ll get the hint that I’m ready to wind down for the night. It’s wet, so I drape it over my chair, and shove it near to the radiator. Hopefully it dries before my review tomorrow.
He coughs. “Uh, so. Did Li and Dominic find you?”
What does he want? A cookie? “Yeah, yeah they did.” I will not thank him for apologizing. It was the right thing to do as a human being.
Silence reigns again.
He rubs the back of his neck. “Good. Okay. Yeah, well, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. To you too. About that whole thing.”
I pull off my boots and then stand to face him. I feel more vulnerable now, in my stockings, and wish I’d stayed armored up in my coat and boots. “Yeah, well. Thanks.”
He blows out a breath. I get the impression he wants to ask something else. I raise my eyebrow as the silence stretches and stretches, and finally I throw up my hands. “I’m getting ready for bed, so figure out what you’re going to say while I brush my teeth.”
I cannot even with this man. I set out my books for tomorrow, make sure I set my alarm for my first review, and head into my bathroom. In a scene reminiscent of one a few weeks ago, I brush my teeth and get into whatever pajamas I can find in my clothes hamper. How dare Kendall kick me out of my own room. Again. It’s my room. I can just tell him to leave. In fact, I spend a few moments practicing in the mirror doing just that.
All pumped up on my own charisma—I can do this shit. I can be a badass!—it stops me a bit in my tracks when I open my door and my lights are off. I peek around the door. Maybe Kendall is planning some sort of jump scare? There’s a rustling of my bedding and I freeze, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the lighting. It’s not fully dark. The nightlight I leave plugged in under my desk is on, washing the floor between the desk and my bed in a comforting orange glow. Beyond my window, snow falls in soft sheets. If I wasn’t scared of being abducted again, it would be cozy. Peaceful.
“Kendall?” I ask tentatively into the dark. Maybe he left and was polite enough to switch off the lights.
There’s a rustling again, and a tired “yeah,” from the direction of my bed, behind the bathroom door. Frowning, I move into the room and close the bathroom door. He’s sitting on my bed, up against the wall, his head tipped back, and I think his eyes are closed.
“I think I fell asleep waiting for you,” he said. And I’m pretty sure his eyes remain closed as he says it. “Sorry.”
I huff, even as I make my way to the bed. Most of my fire for excusing him has gone out of me. The orange light accentuates the pronounced circles under his eyes, and the shadows under his cheekbones. He looks exhausted. And oddly young, with tousled hair and eyes closed.
“I haven’t been sleeping well since…well, for a while.” He says, as if he’s reading my thoughts. Why are we always on the same wavelength?
I don’t doubt All Saints stuff makes all of us sleep poorly, but I get the feeling he’s talking about more than that. About maybe how I’ve treated him since his declaration. He looks completely harmless right now, so I pad to my bed, pull open the top of the comforter and slide in cross-legged, sitting on my pillows.
He pries open one eye and looks at me. “I was hoping it would stop snowing, but it looks like it’s going to continue. I should g?—”
“I owe you maybe an apology, too.” I chew on my lip. Goddamn Kendall and these moments where he looks like a real human instead of a caricature of a villain. “I’ve said some not-nice things. And maybe I treated you badly afterward.” There. That should cover it without specifics. I’m not ready to look at my tenderness toward the human version of Kendall too closely right now, much less declare it out loud.
His eye closes again, and he gives a small nod. “Thanks.”
The ticking of the radiator in the corner fills the room, and my own eyes droop. It’s quiet and Kendall’s presence—this version of him at least—is somehow comforting. Human. Familiar. Like how I felt as a kid, knowing my parents were just down the hall. I feel less alone. I watch as his breathing evens out, taking some sort of weird pleasure in knowing he feels safe enough to fall asleep here. In getting to watch the way his fingers twitch slightly on his knees. He’s completely unguarded. I can’t bring myself to move him.
I slide down in my covers and fluff my pillow. Eventually, my eyes drift closed. And when about an hour later, he sits up, pulls off his vest and shirt, and stretches out between me and the wall…I let him. I’ll blame my sleep-addled brain, high on the endorphins of having a shirtless man in my bed. I blame the exhaustion from studying. I blame the part of me that doesn’t want him to leave, that enjoys having another person here with me. We don’t talk about it. I just wiggle over so that he has room for his broad shoulders, and let my eyes flutter closed. I know in the morning we’ll have to talk about it. About how this can’t keep happening, but secretly, I enjoy it too much to kick him out. I nestle my head into his chest, he drops his chin to the top of my head, and we’re out.
In the morning, when my alarm goes off, he’s gone.