Chapter Fourteen
“Yo, Porter, sit down and relax. It’s spring break and you’re trippin’. You got the rest of us geeked too,” Charles chided, tipping his sunglasses down from the top of his head and shifting his hips to get comfortable in his lounge chair, prepping for a day of being horizontal.
“What do you expect from him?” Quinn teased from the chaise next to Charles, and then blew Porter a kiss before chucking a plush, rolled white towel at him.
I spared Porter further ribbing from these two by keeping it quiet that I saw him out the window of my hotel room that morning reserving chairs at the pool for the four of us and my parents after what, I can only guess, was a long sunrise run on the beach.
Catching the towel with one arm and pivoting like he’s going to run with it, Porter asked, “Anyone need something to drink?” Unless it was to read or study, sitting still was one talent Porter did not possess.
“Sure, I’ll take a rum and Coke,” I said.
“No, thanks,” Quinn answered. “Callie, it’s only eleven thirty in the morning!”
I shrugged. “Like Charles said, it’s spring break. What else do we have to do all day?” I rolled onto my left side to face Quinn and Charles.
“You see? Callie and I know how to vacation,” Charles said, siding with me. “I’ll take one too.”
“Okay, me too,” Quinn caved before pulling a couple of Marie Claire’s and an Architectural Digest out of her beach bag. “And if you can manage it, water also. I need to pound some before starting in on the cocktails. Gotta stay hydrated.”
Charles lifted his sunglasses to give Quinn a quizzical look.
“Okay, and to pace myself. It’s not even afternoon yet!” Quinn defended her request. Porter gave Quinn the A-OK sign. My boyfriend rarely refused a wish from Quinn or me. We were two lucky women to be cared for by my man.
“Callie, after I get the drinks, let’s go for a swim. Beach or pool, you choose,” Porter suggested, kissing the top of my head before jogging backward off to the bar, staying in perpetual motion despite Charles’s admonishment.
“Okay, babe,” I agreed, though I didn’t really want to get my hair wet, and I hated having kelp wrapped around my legs. “Let’s do the pool.” What I wanted to do was quietly lie on my lounge and read Quinn’s magazines to distract myself from the thoughts swirling through my mind.
Once Porter was out of earshot, Quinn looked over her shoulder at Charles and said his name.
She then said it one more time a little louder to make sure the headphones he now wore were working.
Still no response. Though Charles couldn’t hear Quinn, we both could hear the beat of the recently dropped Tribe Called Quest album pounding through his Walkman.
Rolling over so we were inches away, face-to-face, Quinn’s smile went slack. “So?”
I knew what she was asking, but I played dumb anyway. “So, what?”
“So did you get your period this morning?” Worry was written all over Quinn’s face.
I was seven days late, and I officially started freaking out to Quinn on day four.
Then she began asking me every day for the last three if I needed a tampon.
I swore her to secrecy because I didn’t want to jump to worst-case conclusions and wreck the trip that my parents had so generously invited the four of us to join them on.
Before we flew out of JFK forty-eight hours ago, my mother had pulled me aside and informed me, for the fourteenth time, that Quinn and I would be sharing one room, and Charles and Porter would be sharing another one clear on the other end of the Ocean Club.
I assured my mother yes, of course, Quinn and I totally understood.
I spared informing her that her gender-separation efforts might be a little too late, seeing as Porter and I had spent only a handful of nights apart at Princeton for the last two years.
“No, not yet.” I grabbed the towel Porter tossed on his chair when he hustled off to get us four rum and Cokes and covered my face, not wanting to look at Quinn, only wanting the whole Am I pregnant? question to go away.
“Well, you had your first draft of your junior paper due right before we left; I’m sure the stress of it threw you off your cycle for a couple of days. It happens all the time.” Quinn nodded her head once to convince us both that this was the most logical answer.
“Your first draft was due too, and your period wasn’t late.” Since freshman year, Quinn and I have roomed together, and thus by January each school year, our cycles are pretty much synced.
“You overanalyze and freak out about things way more than I do. It has to mess with your body clock. Plus, I don’t think the pack of cigarettes and all-nighter you pulled last Thursday helped matters any.”
I bugged my eyes out at Quinn. No one other than her suspects I smoke when I’m stressed, not even Porter.
Quinn rolls her eyes back at me. “Anyway, your whole body is out of whack. A few more mornings sleeping in and I’m sure your period will show up.
” Quinn’s rationale may have worked for most girls, and she was right—I became more anxious over school assignments than she did.
But I wasn’t convinced that explained why, up until this month, my body had operated on a tight twenty-eight-day cycle.
I didn’t want to ruin Quinn’s vacation, so I responded as neutrally as I could, with “You’re probably right,” but she wasn’t buying my terrible turn at acting.
Quinn reached out her left hand to grab mine. “It’s gonna be alright, Callie. I promise.”
“Do you think I should tell Porter?” I squeaked out, squeezing her hand to emphasize my fear at the idea of being pregnant coupled with the idea of telling Porter.
“No!” Quinn yelped, and Charles looked over at us with a curious expression. Quinn waved him back into his one-man hip-hop concert. I subtly pointed my finger across the pool to let Quinn know that Porter was coming our way with water and rum and Cokes for all of us.
Quinn lowered her tone. “You do not need to tell Porter.”
“But Porter and I tell each other everything.”
“Oh, please, you do not. Porter doesn’t tell you much about home, and you don’t tell him about that pack of Marlboro Lights you keep in your scrunchies bin. There is zero reason to ruin both your lives.” She’s right. Keeping this secret for the sake of our futures is worth my silence.
“Listen.” Quinn’s tone softens. “Let’s just have a great week together, the four of us, and if we need to deal with the situation when we get back to campus, we will. And by we, I mean you and me.”
“You and me.” My voice cracked to articulate over the lump caught in my throat, the fear I had been keeping at bay rising from my stomach into my heart.
“You and me, Callie. Always.”
We polished off our appetizers and waited for our third round of evening cocktails to come with our entrées, when my parents seized the opportunity to grill Charles and Porter on their future plans.
According to Rhodes Steele, spring of junior year was the perfect time to start mapping out post-college life.
If it was to be law or medical school, one could never study too early for the requisite exams. If it was to be a training program in finance or banking, it was imperative to visit the career counseling center and research alumni working in that area quickly, followed by making connections now for internships this summer that would hopefully turn into permanent employment come fall after graduation.
For anything else, well, to Rhodes Steele, there was nothing else.
I didn’t know if it was because I had expressed my interest in journalism that was not exactly embraced by my parents over Christmas that left them focusing the conversation on Charles and Porter, but Quinn picked up on my annoyance by how forcefully I was sucking up rum and Coke through my straw.
My best friend jumped in to share with the table that she was planning on attending law school.
She claimed that an art degree wouldn’t lead to much of a financially secure career path, and since I hoped to go to Columbia School of Journalism, she was crossing her fingers that if she got into Columbia Law, we might be able to continue rooming together. Quinn indeed had my back.
“Porter, are you planning on returning to the South?” my mom asked before delicately sipping her gimlet.
I gestured to the waiter to hurry and bring my next drink.
Leisurely service was not going to work for me in this instance.
My mom often spoke reverently of Porter, asking after him, wondering if he wanted to join us for long weekends in New York when we had a break from school.
But the way she semi-sneered “back to the South” left me wondering if she was only tolerating him as what she considered a passing college fancy of mine.
Was her hope that Porter would head back home after graduation, as I planned to do, and therefore our relationship would have no chance of surviving the distance?
“Or maybe you would like to try out New York for a while? We’ve wanted you to visit us in the city.
Living there would be even better, right, Rhodes?
” My dad gave an enthusiastic nod while shaking the ice in his tumbler.
An alcohol-induced sense of relief washed over me that Helen and Rhodes’s crushes on Porter were still intact.
“Maybe you and Rhodes can sit down together this week and talk about job opportunities.”
“Mom!” I barked louder than I meant to. Perhaps the rum heightened my boldness as well as my volume. “Porter can figure out his own life. And he’s here to hang out with me, Charles, and Quinn this week, not you and Dad,” I reprimanded my mother as a loud hiccup escaped, with my emphasis on Dad.
“There’s no reason he can’t do both,” my mom responded, raising her eyebrows at me, a not-so-subtle reminder who was paying for this trip. Her receipts meant that if my dad wanted to hang out with Porter, he most certainly could.