Chapter 6
If Acronym purred, 31 Atwood roared.
The hockey house resided in the middle of Senior Housing, a cluster of streets on the east edge of campus. The micro-village included two rows of identical prewar houses bought by the university during an admissions boom. The houses were renovated to allow groups of students to live together comfortably; the bedrooms were spacious, with actual plaster walls and hardwood floors. They had no air conditioning, but that didn’t matter for most of the year—seniors lucky enough to win placement on Atwood or Steele Street threw their windows open and let the babble of their lives pour out onto the road.
A hard bass line shook the windows tonight. Charlotte stood on the sidewalk in front of 31 Atwood and willed herself to breathe. No matter how hard she tried, her feet would not move toward the party.
The time warp of the reunion seized her in its disorienting grip again. She couldn’t count how many nights she stood right here, gathering her courage to walk up the concrete path and meet Reece. He lived in 31 Atwood as a senior in a spacious bedroom on the second floor. Charlotte never found out what insider hack the hockey bros used to pass the house down among themselves from year to year. The tradition drove Jackie nuts, especially when they compared 31 Atwood to their dated two-bedroom apartment in Rawls Tower, the other on-campus option for upperclassmen.
Fear seized her lungs as she remembered Ben stalking through 31 Atwood as he sought out the night’s It Party. When they were together, he dragged her in and out of raucous houses and dorm rooms as he searched for a gathering where he’d be treated like a campus celebrity. He got frustrated as the night went on, often blaming Charlotte as if her shyness were the reason he was never satisfied.
She never felt the same way about crowds after that: too many bodies, too much noise.
Ben didn’t have friends on the hockey team, and even if he did show up at 31 Atwood tonight, it wasn’t hard to hide behind a tall jock or duck into a side room. Still, Charlotte never felt safe in this corner of campus. Not then and not now.
My name is Charlotte Thorne,she reminded herself. I am twenty-seven years old and I have not had sex in fourteen months.
She reapplied her lip balm and shook out her hair. Then, having run out of excuses, she thrust her shoulders back and walked up the path.
The heat hit her as soon as she opened the door. Undergrads surrounded her, their faces a dark blur. Boys wore polo shirts and Hein tank tops, while girls favored crop tops and tight skirts. Athletic pennants from other colleges hung upside down on the wall in a display of disrespect.
It couldn’t be further from Acronym’s bright color palette of gender expression. Charlotte could smell the heterosexuality and white privilege.
The hostile vibe brought back old insecurities. At a school as small as Hein, cliques bled into each other by necessity. There just weren’t enough students to create rigid rivalries between the hipsters and the jocks and the nerds. Charlotte didn’t feel unwelcome at the hockey house, per se. But at a party like this, she could never be sure if she was the hunter or the hunted. The boys grossly outnumbered the girls. It was a space owned and controlled by the men of the house. She shivered as she remembered desperately searching so many rooms for someone she recognized.
Charlotte knew she was being paranoid—none of these kids would hassle an alumna—but she couldn’t shrug off the party’s menace. The scene felt so different now that she looked at it with adult eyes. Just entering this house as a woman meant consenting to being cornered and hit on or grabbed from behind under the guise of dancing.
The social rules that never seemed strange to her as an undergrad now seemed arcane and rude. For all of Hein University’s talk about progressive values and good citizenship, its hookup culture sucked.
Maybe she should turn around and go back to the disco. She should have asked Reece to meet her there instead.
Her phone vibrated. She clung to it, grateful for the excuse to lean against the wall and not talk to anyone.
TEXT MESSAGE FROM REECE KRUEGER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 11:21 PM:We’re out back!
Charlotte muscled her way to the back door and stepped out onto the deck. A group of bros she didn’t recognize hovered around lines of coke on the glass patio table. She turned away quickly and headed for the stairs to the grass below.
The homes on Atwood and Steele Street backed up onto a communal yard. Students moved in packs between parties, the yard a single, pulsing organism with pockets of different music. She was in the belly of the jock beast at 31 Atwood. A dance party hosted by kids from the African Studies program shook the house next door. Hein’s swim team barbecued on the other side.
Charlotte watched, hypnotized, as a woman in a one-piece swimsuit and gym shorts flipped a burger. The senior had a portrait of David Bowie tattooed on her shoulder blade, pink ink illustrating the lightning bolt across his face. With a dash of lust, Charlotte wondered if she’d ever been that cool during college.
“Charlie! Over here!”
She peeled her eyes from the girl at the grill and wheeled around. Reece waved at her from underneath a beech tree. He’d changed since dinner. Now he wore jeans and a white T-shirt that clung to his chest and shoulders. His hair crested in a perfect pompadour. The real difference was the open delight on his face, flushed and beautiful. Party Reece had arrived.
His friends Garrett and Liam perched on lower branches of the tree clutching tall boys of beer. Liam waved, while Garrett ignored her.
She ignored his prickly reception. Reece had invited her here. Garrett could deal with it.
Party Charlotte was in attendance too. Party Charlotte took no shit.
“How was the disco?” Reece asked. His voice scratched—he’d been yelling over the noise all night.
“Fabulous as ever. Lots of sequins.”
“Is that where this came from?” He took one of the flowers on her lei between his thumb and index finger and rubbed its fabric petals. His knuckle brushed the skin of her throat.
“Yes.” Charlotte swallowed. “But I think you need it more than I do.” She took off the lei. Reece obediently tilted his head down so that she could guide it over his head. “There you go. Now you’re properly dressed.”
“Hey, Reece,” Liam yelled from the tree. “You got lei’d!”
“Ha ha,” Reece replied with good humor. “Very original.”
Garrett’s glare caught her eye again. She gave him her best who, me? eyelash flutter. He scowled before taking a swig of his beer.
Reece, sweet summer child that he was, remained oblivious to the cold war between his two friends. “I think this brings out the color in my eyes,” he said, examining the lei’s petals.
Charlotte looked around hopefully. “Where’s Misty?”
“She’s back at the dorm. The noise is too much for her,” Reece answered. “Plus we didn’t want some asshole to steal her. That kind of shit happens during RC weekend.”
She snorted. Reece had a point. Theft became an issue at the end of term when seniors got drunk and reckless. Most students limited their petty larceny to borrowing a university golf cart for a joyride and then dumping it somewhere random on campus. But occasionally the property theft tilted toward the severe. She recalled watching from a distance, horrified, as Ben and Thomas dragged someone’s La-Z-Boy back to their frat house during finals week.
But Ben was not at this party. She was at this party. She’d been personally invited, and she would enjoy it, goddamn it.
“You mentioned pong?” Charlotte reminded Reece.
“Oh right! Yeah, over here.” He led her to the patio underneath the porch, where an abandoned pong table sat in disarray. “There was a whole tournament, but people went inside.” He stacked up the dirty cups. Charlotte found new ones in a bag on the ground and set up two new pyramids. “I got my ass handed to me by some juniors working the reunion. Gen Z is ruthless.”
“Think you can take me?” she asked. “Or should we invite Garrett and Liam to play doubles?”
“Let’s play a round just us and then challenge someone.”
Maybe he had noticed the rift between her and Garrett after all.
Reece fished a pair of plastic water bottles from a pack under the table. “Mind if we play with water?”
“Not at all.” Charlotte took the one he extended to her. “I’ve had enough to drink. Do we have a ball?”
“Oh no!” Reece’s mouth dropped open in panic, but his green eyes sparkled with mischief. He grinned as he plucked a Ping-Pong ball from his pocket.
“Very funny.”
“Ladies first.”
He tossed the ball to her. Charlotte dunked it in the rinsing cup before lining up her shot. The ball sailed neatly into the center cup on Reece’s side of the table. She smirked and blew on her fingertips.
“Nice.” Reece retrieved the ball and rinsed it. He splashed it around while he drank his punishment cup.
“They didn’t play Carly Rae, by the way,” Charlotte said. “Your heart is safely unbroken.”
Reece raised an eyebrow. “I’m not so sure about that.”
She gave him a funny look. Weren’t they mutually pretending that they were in a suspended time zone where the events of graduation day had never happened?
“Oh?” she asked, keeping her voice neutral. “Why is that?”
He gestured to her face. “Looks like you found love at the disco.” She gave him a blank look until he explained. “You have a lipstick kiss on your cheek.”
“What? Oh!” Charlotte touched the lip print, her fingers coming away red. “I forgot that was there. That’s just Jackie.”
Reece smiled as he lined up his shot, keeping his eyes on her cups. “I’m happy for you both. What an exciting new chapter in your relationship.” The ball bounced off a rim and she caught it on the rebound.
“Two queer women can be friends and not bang,” Charlotte said. “I’m not her type anyway. She says I’m too bony.”
Reece snorted. “That girl does not mince words.”
Charlotte missed her shot. She watched Reece decide his next move, his face half in darkness underneath the porch. Stripes of light fell through the floorboards, catching his profile whenever he shifted to examine the field of play. Time had been kind to him, Charlotte decided: His skin had cleared up and his face was filled out in the right places. Even the way he stood was more grounded, less haphazard.
Stress kept his shoulders tight—his student debt, grad school, worry for his mom—but he seemed less ruled by it. He carried the pressure instead of staggering under its weight.
During college they had nothing in common: He majored in biology while she studied sociology and art; he came from a loving, tight-knit family, and she would have spent Thanksgiving break on campus alone if Jackie hadn’t dragged her to the Slaughters’ house. Reece had seemed like the kind of guy who would expect nothing from her beyond the obvious. Bros usually didn’t get attached. She wrote him off as a useful, attractive distraction. A partner in crime to blow off steam, to fool around, to drink too much and shield her from Ben’s shadow. The noise in her head got so loud when she was alone.
Charlotte should have known better. It was obvious to her now. In college she saw only what she wanted to see: his handsome face and broad chest, and how his eyes narrowed into lust-drunk slits before she kissed him.
“Gotcha,” Reece bragged as the ball splashed into one of her cups. He grinned at her, joy dancing in his eyes. “Drink up, Charlie.”
She drank her water. She sank a few more shots.
“You’re quiet tonight.” Reece rearranged the cups into a diamond for her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” And she was fine. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in the right place with the right person at the wrong time. “This weekend is intense.”
“It’s weird being back.” Reece caught the ball when she threw it too far. “Nothing and everything has changed.”
Charlotte nodded, grateful that he understood. “I keep thinking I’m in a time warp.”
“I got the worst case of déjà vu when I checked in yesterday,” he said. “They put me in my freshman hall. I’m like two doors down from my old room.”
“Weird.”
Reece sank the ball again. “It’s not like I want to go back to college, my time here was brutal. I was so messed up over my dad.” He raked his hand through his hair. “But living with your best friends? Sleeping until noon? Shit, I miss that.”
“The real world is lonely.” Charlotte bit her bottom lip as she calculated the angle of her toss.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Reece said. “But everyone is so busy. And I’m exhausted at the end of the day.” He winced as her throw landed perfectly in one of his last remaining cups. She only needed one more shot to win. “Jeez, how are you so good at this?”
She chuckled as he fished the ball out of the cup. “I always loved beer pong. It gave me something to focus on at parties other than the noise.”
He hummed in understanding as he brought the cup to his lips. She watched his throat move as he took a deep sip, his eyes never leaving her face.
Reece set the empty cup in the growing stack beside him. “Should I stop talking?” he teased. “Am I distracting you?”
Yes.
“You wish.” Charlotte drummed her fingers on the edge of the table. He laughed, a stomach-deep chuckle that made her want to curl her fingers around the collar of his shirt. “I like talking to you,” she said before she could think the words through.
The humor vanished from Reece’s face at her rare confession. He palmed the ball as he stared at her, momentarily at a loss for words. Finally, just as she felt like she might die from humiliation, a quiet smile flitted across his mouth. “I like talking to you too,” he said.
A comfortable silence fell between them as Reece lined up his next shot. He chewed the corner of his mouth and flexed his wrist back and forth. Just before he let the ball sail from his grasp, he said, “I think you just don’t want people to know how fun you are.”
Charlotte gulped. There was something sinful in his pronunciation of the word fun.
Reece kept staring at her, unconcerned as his ball bounced off the rim of a cup. “Am I wrong?”
Instead of answering, Charlotte kneeled to find the ball. It gave her a moment out of his eyeshot to hide the blush spreading across her cheeks.
Funcould mean a lot of things. For example, fun like him littering her thighs with bite marks when they should both be in class. Fun like sucking him off in the stairwell at the art studio when she needed a break from her thesis.
She pulled the ball from the crevice between tiles on the patio floor. When she stood up, she avoided his eyes. “I’m not all that fun anymore.”
But she wanted to be.
Reece tutted like a daytime television therapist. “Charlie Thorne, all grown-up.”
She intentionally missed her next shot, enjoying the game too much to bring it to an end. “Hard to feel grown-up here, though,” she said as she watched him crouch down in pursuit of the ball, his ass delightfully firm in his jeans.
When he popped back up, he gave her a smug look that made it clear he knew she’d been staring. “What, is mediocre trap music not good enough for Miss Brooklyn?”
She stuck out her tongue instead of dignifying that with a response.
“Real mature.” Reece gave her that dizzying smile again, lined with just a hint of mischief. “You know what I think?”
“What?” she asked, her voice breathy.
He stood still on the other side of the table, his palms pressed against the surface. “I think you’re overdue for some grade-A collegiate fun.”
Charlotte could only stand there, stunned, as Reece threw the ball in a perfect arc. It landed neatly in her second-to-last cup, splashing water onto the table. The next person to score would win.
His joke was an offer. There was no mistaking it. She knew the way he flirted, she knew this lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry. She’d stuffed the memory of it in some neglected corner of her mind under her blue cap and gown and her absurdly expensive textbooks. But it was back like a hot shock, a searing burn. She didn’t know how this kind of attraction could exist with someone she hadn’t touched in years.
She took the Ping-Pong ball out of the cup and whiffed the shot badly, hitting the rim of her last cup.
Reece groaned. “You’re letting me win!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice shaking.
He squatted down, his eyes even with the table. “Just making sure it’s level,” he explained as she rolled her eyes.
Reece pressed down on the corner and watched the cups for any wobble. Satisfied, he stood up and cracked his knuckles. “Okay, are you ready for this? Reece’s revenge? Are you watching?”
Charlotte waited patiently, her hands on her hips. “I’m ready.”
She’d never felt less ready in her goddamn life.
Reece took a few steadying breaths. He feinted a throw before stepping back to recalculate his angle.
“Reece!”
“I’m going, I’m going.”
After giving his arm a few experimental flexes, the ball cradled between his thumb and index finger, Reece let it go. It soared across the table before bouncing off the rim of the cup.
The ball disappeared into the grass behind her. Charlotte groaned as she lost sight of it in the darkness.
“I think that’s a home run!” Reece declared.
He rounded the table to help her look for it. They wandered through the overgrown backyard, dodging partygoers and gently kicking over empty cardboard cases of beer. She struggled to keep her focus on the grass when Reece’s body was suddenly so much closer to hers, the long table no longer between them.
The ball was nowhere to be found, absorbed into the chaos of someone else’s party.
“Does this mean you win?” he asked.
“That’s no fun.” Charlotte pulled out her cell phone and turned on the flashlight. She shined the bright light at the ground and saw nothing but her loafers and Reece’s sneakers.
Reece waved her concern away. “Forget it, it’s just a ball.”
“I want to beat you fair and square, Krueger.”
“Oh, last names! Spicy.”
She shoved him in the shoulder, smiling against her better judgment. He snickered, never losing his balance. He probably had fifty pounds on her. “Such aggression.”
“I’m annoyed!” she cried as she turned off the light, her grin giving her away.
“No, you’re not,” Reece teased. He stepped closer.
All six feet of him demanded her absolute attention. The impulse to back up flared through her mind. She wasn’t used to standing this close to anyone.
Was it only last night that Reece clung to her body in a smoldering hug?
But that had been unplanned, a sudden crush of limbs when they couldn’t help themselves. This felt intentional. All their interactions since then had been a careful dance, a steady give-and-take.
Charlotte stood still, blinking up at him as he studied her face. That smile still played at his lips. He raised his hand and rubbed at her cheek with his thumb.
“Your kiss is smearing,” he said. “We can’t have you looking sloppy.”
His touch was gentle, the softest pressure, a flower petal in an open palm. She held her breath as Reece examined her cheek. Then his eyes moved to her lips, parted in surprise. For a heartbeat Charlotte thought he was about to kiss her, his hand moving to cup her jaw. He looked spellbound, giving her that same look of wonder that used to make her so nervous.
His eyes met hers. “There you go,” he said, licking the lipstick off his thumb. “All better.”
He stepped back, just a careful foot or so. Just enough for Charlotte to mourn the loss of his heat, her mind blank. She couldn’t think of anything but how he touched her with such reverence.
How long had it been since someone soothed her burning skin with their fingertips? Had anyone ever brushed their thumb against her cheek like she was something fragile, something precious?
Reece held out his hand, a muted smile on his face. “Dance with me.”
Charlotte guffawed. The noise escaped her throat before she could stop it. In that instant she wanted so badly to roll her eyes and hated herself for the impulse. Five years in New York City had hardened her against public displays of earnestness. Five years of being alone hadn’t helped.
The dissonance of what they felt and where they were hit her just after her cynicism. Sweaty, screaming bodies surrounded them. Students shoved each other and yelled and cried and made out like it was the end of the world, probably because it was for them. In two days they would graduate from college and be thrown into adulthood, whether or not they were ready for it.
She couldn’t separate the soon-to-be-graduates from the young alumni—everyone had that same glaze of drunk mania on their faces, the same desperation to pretend that this was all there was. Two kinds of alumni returned for RC weekend: the adults, and the adults who wanted to pretend they were twenty-one again. She could hear Liam giving a drunken TED Talk about Frank Ocean somewhere behind them, his voice growing hoarse. Bro, seriously. He’s a genius. How can you discount Blonde? What’s wrong with you?
Rihanna blasted from the nearest porch, clashing with 31 Atwood’s trap music. Charlotte couldn’t imagine anything less appropriate for this shockingly intimate moment.
“Here?” she asked, her voice nearly drowned out by the snarl of competing bass lines. “To this?”
Reece was undaunted. Charlotte marveled at his lack of self-consciousness, how unafraid he was of his feelings. The real world hadn’t changed him: Reece did whatever he wanted, no matter how much it might hurt. He turned his face toward the sun and grew in the direction of happiness.
How had he learned to do that, in spite of everything he’d gone through? Reece had experienced the worst kind of loss that Charlotte could imagine and yet he remained an open soul. Beaten up and flawed, sure, but brave.
Reece had walked away from her last night in the hallway, guarded and hungry. But here he was again, leaning into the déjà vu, one hand extended to her in the middle of so much chaos.
“Yeah, to this,” Reece said. He waggled his fingers. His smile contained a promise and a question: I will take your hand when you are ready, and only then.
Was it just a dance? She’d come to the party thinking they might hook up, sure, but she hadn’t let herself think about what that meant. What might happen after.
She didn’t know if she could trust herself with him. Didn’t he understand how much this might hurt when Sunday turned into Monday and they resumed their nine-to-five existence? This could only be a temporary slow dance down memory lane.
Her head hurt. Her heart hurt.
It was too loud here.
Temporary. This was temporary and impulsive and not real. It couldn’t be anything more than a hookup.
This couldn’t mean anything. This weekend was all that they would have.
At twenty-one, she wouldn’t have hesitated for a second. Even last night in the hallway, she would have mauled him, bitten his lip, and drunk his desire in deep. But where she was once wild and reactive, she now only felt exhaustion.
“Are you teasing me?” she asked. Her voice quivered, betraying her nerves.
Fine, it was true: She was scared shitless, and she knew he could tell. He could read her like a damn paperback.
“Wouldn’t dream of it. I’m a very serious person.” His smile widened.
She reminded herself: Reece had texted her to come to the party, Reece had waved her over in the backyard. Maybe he’d even blown the game on purpose. At some point between last night and today, Reece had decided that this was what he wanted. That she was what he wanted.
Her self-control wavered, her fingers flexing by her side.
What about her? What did she, Charlotte Thorne, actually want?
She wanted to take his hand. She wanted to stop thinking about Sunday and how it would feel to stand alone on the train platform, duffle bag at her feet. She wanted to stop judging herself for mistakes she made on this campus years and years ago.
She wanted to just stop. Stop worrying about the future. Stop numbing her feelings. Stop denying herself happiness.
She wanted to have some goddamn fun.
“Come here,” Reece said, soft but firm. She could see no trace of uncertainty on his face now, no shadow of the past in his eyes. There hadn’t been all day, now that she thought about it.
Reece wasn’t the boy she’d run away from anymore. He was a man who held his hand outstretched to her, sturdy and open. “Please dance with me, Charlie.”
His please was a delicate key. She felt the tumblers turn and fall as she stepped forward and took his hand. His palm was warm and smooth against hers.
Reece guided her into a gentle one-two. They eased from side to side amid the roar of clashing party playlists. Their dance was not graceful but they moved together easily, muscle memory helping them read each other’s movement. He lifted their hands and led her into a spin.
Joy caught her unaware, her eyes closing as she twirled and returned to his solid ground. If people were watching, she didn’t notice. She didn’t care.
Reece hummed a tune under his breath, the melody drowned out by the blaring music. She would have given anything to hear it.
Charlotte stepped on an empty can and stumbled. Reece steadied her, laughing as he caught her hip in his hand. His grin softened into that dangerous, tender awe once again. It scared her a little and she stepped closer to him, hiding her warm face under his chin. For a moment he stilled, his breath hiking, but then his arms wrapped around her waist. They resumed rocking from foot to foot, the slow dance an excuse to stay this close.
Her loose fists rested against his chest and she clenched her eyes shut, waves of unfamiliar emotion cascading over her. There was want, yes, need, yes, relief, yes. Shock that he would ever want her, ever let her this close to him again. Desire to make herself at home in his warmth. Crimson and teal and that beautiful jade green.
Desperate to compartmentalize, she struggled not to fall into the saturated emotional depths for a boy—a man—she might not see again for another five years.
Charlotte wanted to ask what they were doing. Were they like the kids screaming and colliding around them, desperate for distraction at the end of the world? Or was this something more personal than that, something true?
Like he’d read her mind, Reece whispered her name into the softness of her hair. “Charlie?”
“Hmm?” She bit her lip, nuzzling her face into his chest. His body radiated heat. She wanted to crawl into every nook and cranny of him and absorb each degree.
Reece didn’t answer right away, he just kept rocking them, one of his hands pressed flat against her back. She could feel the pressure of each finger through her blouse and longed for his touch against her skin.
Finally, he let out a puzzled laugh. “What are we doing?”
The question sounded simple. Her answer would be simple too, if this were a different time. Charlotte was realizing she’d made a mistake letting Reece go, all those years ago. For some unknown reason, she’d been given a second chance to appreciate him and soak him up, to set things right between them. She couldn’t let that second chance pass her by.
But she knew she couldn’t take Reece’s heart home with her on Sunday. “I don’t know yet,” she said carefully. “I’m trying to just…be here.”
Reece ended their dance and looked down at her, still cradled in his arms.
“Is that okay with you?” she asked, unsettled by his silence. Her hands loosened from their fists and flattened across his chest.
For a second she thought he might protest. She almost wanted him to.
They’d been granted a temporary stay, removed and far away from their real adult lives, and that was wonderful. But it was little more than a memory in the making, the kind to press between the pages of a scrapbook and keep safe. That could be enough for her.
Reece’s beautiful mouth pulled into a frown. Whether he was disappointed in her or with the circumstances in which they’d found themselves, she had no idea.
Heat rushed to her face. He brushed his thumb across her cheek to capture an errant curl.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “We’re having fun.” He then tightened his arms around her waist.
She knew in the moment before he kissed her that this would be difficult. She also knew that she didn’t care. Charlotte had spent so much time punishing herself for not always knowing the right thing to do or the right way to express how she felt. She allowed herself this one victory, because for once she had gotten it perfectly, exactly right.