13. Q&A, Part II
Sex, Taylor thinks. Sex sex sex.
She had no idea it would be like this. She thought “losing her virginity” was a box to check—like finishing her college essay, asking for teacher recs, submitting her list of extracurriculars.
She had no idea she was stepping through a portal into a whole other universe where the only thing that mattered was her body and Hakeem’s body, connected.
The year before, in English class, Mr. Rivera taught the Anne Sexton poem “The Kiss.” Taylor had loved the first line: My mouth blooms like a cut, but the rest of the poem had eluded her, and everyone else in the class.
“What happens to the narrator over the course of the poem?” Mr. Rivera asked.
They had all stared at him. Olivia H-T pulled out her phone, presumably to google.
“Well, what’s the title of the poem?” Mr. Rivera asked with visible frustration.
“ ‘The Kiss’?” Royce Stringfellow said. He scanned the poem’s lines. “But I don’t see anything about kissing in here.”
“It’s about teenage sexual awakening,” Mr. Rivera said. “Desire.”
They weren’t mature enough to let this go without immediately quoting him in their private stories: Omg, Rivera just used the phrase “teenage sexual awakening.”
When Taylor reads the poem now, it sings to her, especially the last stanza. She takes a picture of the poem and makes it the wallpaper on her phone.
She loved Hakeem before, but now she smolders for him. She aches to be with him alone. She wants her hands on him, her mouth on him—and his on her. She wants him inside her.
They sneak out almost every night—to the Schoolhouse, to God’s Basement, to the beach at Jewel Pond (this will have to end, it’s getting too cold).
Once, when they both had a free period at the same time, they met at the Field House and had sex in the winter sports equipment closet among the basketballs and fencing foils.
Taylor used to be afraid of getting caught, but now she’s so addled by desire, she doesn’t care.
Desire: When Mr. Rivera said the word last year, she hadn’t known what it meant. Now, it consumes her.
… You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.
Charley has been so busy writing her college essay, “The Dinner Party,” that she’s let everything else slide.
She’s not as on top of her assignments as she likes to be (she likes to be so on top of them that she’s ahead), and she has no time for outside reading (the most recent Emma Straub novel taunts her from her nightstand).
However, the most egregious lapse is that she’s pushing against her own deadline for the interview with Mav.
Family Weekend is seventy-two hours away, the Bulletin deadline was, technically, the day before, but Charley has asked Grady to hold her inches, saying she’ll get the interview to him by the morning.
She has rescheduled with Mav twice, and he’s been super chill about it; however, Tuesday night during study hall is her last chance.
Charley feels extra pressure because Pippa handed in her interview with Dr. Coopersmith on time—and it was actually pretty good, though it focused so heavily on Coop’s romantic life that after Charley read it, she said to Pippa, “You should offer to write his Tinder profile.” Pippa laughed, which made Charley happier than it probably should have.
Charley and Mav meet in the Grille, and, as promised, Mav offers to buy Charley a milkshake, but Charley requests a coffee instead. She’s going to be up all night.
They sit opposite each other in the booth—Mav has clearly gone home to change, because he’s wearing track pants and a gray hooded Colbert School sweatshirt.
The hoodie makes him look younger—and, Charley can’t help thinking, hotter.
(But does Charley actually think Mav is hot, or has she simply been influenced by the girls on her floor saying he’s a DILF? She can’t tell.)
As Charley pulls out her laptop, she’s distracted by the sight of Olivia H-T at the Grille counter. The only Bulletin article later than Charley’s interview is Olivia H-T’s In and Out list. Charley is tempted to give Olivia a stern reminder, but that would be hypocritical.
Charley smiles at Mav. Oh, how she hopes he likes her college essay.
She privately considers it the best piece of writing she’s ever done—but what if he doesn’t agree?
What if he has… edits? Significant edits?
Charley has been scrolling college essay Instagram and TikTok accounts, reading lists of dos and don’ts. Some of the advice is contradictory.
She needs to focus.
“I already have some of your background information from our meeting in your office,” Charley says. “You went to Colgate, majored in art history, you were a Theta Chi.” She pauses. “Can you tell me a little bit about how you ended up working in boarding schools?”
“When I graduated from Colgate, I needed a job,” Mav says. “I did what everyone else was doing—I moved to the city, lived in an apartment on the Upper East Side with two other guys. I got an entry-level position at a headhunting firm.”
“Headhunting,” Charley says. “Sounds violent.”
“Executive search,” Mav says.
“Yes, I know,” Charley says. “Did you enjoy it?”
“I did, actually. I liked learning about people’s backgrounds and then matching them up with potential jobs. It’s a skill I use as a college counselor.”
Yes, Charley can see that.
Charley’s phone buzzes with a text. It’s probably her best friend from home, Beatrix.
Beatrix is now more accurately Charley’s best friend emerita; they barely saw each other over the summer because Charley quit her job at Towson Hot Bagels and worked at the Enoch Pratt Public Library instead.
But Beatrix reached out a couple weeks ago asking if Charley would look at her college essay.
I’d really love your input, Beatrix said. You’re way smarter than Mr. Kearney.
Charley agreed to read the essay, not because of the flattery but because she felt guilty that she has a dedicated college counselor while Beatrix is stuck with Mr. Kearney, who also deals with freshman boy bullying and kids with divorcing parents.
Unfortunately, Beatrix had written about the trope every college coach account says to avoid: overcoming a sports injury.
Beatrix described how she missed three lacrosse games due to a sprained wrist, an event she felt taught her everything she needed to know about confronting adversity and building character.
Charley wasn’t sure what to suggest other than: Pick a different topic! She’d been ghosting Beatrix since she read the essay.
Forget the essay, the topic, Beatrix—Charley needs to lock in here.
“Headhunting in New York… and then?”
“My roommates and I got a summer share in the Hamptons. Do you know what that is?”
“I was in East Hampton this summer,” Charley says. She nearly adds that she was visiting her boyfriend’s father’s house, but she finds herself unwilling to mention East. Is that weird? If Mav has been paying attention to campus life at all, then he already knows Charley and East are together.
“Well, it’s a thing—or it used to be a thing—for groups of twenty-somethings to rent a house together. We all took a bus called the Hampton Jitney on Friday afternoons.”
Charley types the words Hampton Jitney. Is she spelling it right?
“My first time on the Jitney, I was running so late that there was only one seat left on the bus—next to a young woman named Amanda Morris.”
Charley waits. Should she know who “Amanda Morris” is?
“Amanda and her friends were renting a house half a mile from ours, and so we had a summer romance that turned into a regular romance.”
Mav pauses, and when Charley looks up, she can see his expression is giving nostalgia, which she can understand.
The night before East arrived in Baltimore to take Charley back to school, Charley and her mother went to dinner—to Sabatino’s, their usual place—and Fran Hicks said, “You’re living out a very romantic time of your life. Enjoy it now, because it doesn’t last.”
Charley had, obviously, rolled her eyes at this—her mother was jaded because her marriage to Joey was in peril, they went to counseling every week, Fran couldn’t leave him alone, it was amazing she was even at the dinner—but also, Charley recognized a glimmer of wisdom in Fran’s words.
This was a romantic time in Charley’s life, and it would come to an end—or at least change—when Charley graduated from Tiffin and went to college, and East…
did whatever he planned to do next. Charley knew she had to prepare herself for their inevitable breakup. But not yet.
She needs to focus.
“Then Amanda got a teaching job at Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire,” Mav says. “We probably should have broken up, but we were deeply in love, and love has a magical power all its own.”
Charley types this line into her document, not because she would ever use it in the interview, but because it’s something she would like to believe is true.
She and East are deeply in love. On the one hand, Charley can see herself meeting someone in college who is more like her, but there’s no chance she’ll ever love someone the same way she loves Andrew Eastman.
And doesn’t that count for something? Isn’t it possible that the strength of their emotions will endure and they’ll be part of the 2 percent (or whatever) of people who have a long, happy life together after starting out as high school sweethearts?
Jon Bon Jovi did it (Charley has googled the topic), so why can’t Charley and East?