Rites of Spring (Break) Page 7

  “It’s just that…” Okay, choose my words carefully here. “We’ve had such a rocky past. We don’t even know if what is going on between us now is a sexual, romantic kind of thing.”

  Lydia blinked. “It’s not sexual?”

  I ducked my head. “Well, no. It’s, uh—”

  “Don’t tell me. Complicated.”

  “Yes. For now.”

  “He’s not being fair to either of you. But especially not to Felicity.”

  “So now you’re the patron saint of girlfriends?” I said. Figures. Get a real relationship going and all of a sudden you have no sympathy for those of us on the outside. Wonder what the T.A.’s girlfriend would have said back when it was Lydia infringing upon her turf.

  “Someone here has to be. Don’t get me wrong: If you did want to steal some guy from his girlfriend, and I liked the guy and not the girl, I’d say go for it, as a friend. Ends and means and all’s fair in love and war and a thousand other aphorisms.” She shrugged. “But that’s not what we’re dealing with here. You’re not, apparently, trying for him, and he’s not, apparently, letting go of her. If you’re in a relationship, you have to be in it. If you’re unsure, then you have to be fair and end it. Really end it, Amy, not play two people off each other. Brandon, of all people, should know this behavior is unacceptable.” And she fixed me with a look that was impossible to mistake:

  Because it hurt him so much when you did it.

  “It’s not like what happened with us, Lyds.”

  “You’re right. It’s worse. Because Brandon and Felicity had a real relationship that you’re messing with. Amy, you’re the other woman. Things never end well for the other woman.”

  “I’m not! I told you, we’re not doing anything.” Not really.

  Lydia was just shaking her head at me, disbelief rolling off of her in waves. “Right. All those hours in there, bedroom door closed, lights off, no sounds. Bet you’re studying, huh? Bet whatever it is you’re doing, you’d do it in front of your mother, in front of his girlfriend, in front of anyone who cared to watch, and you wouldn’t think twice about it, it’s so aboveboard.”

  I swallowed. How had this turned from I’m worried about you to an indictment of my behavior? “There are a lot of things I wouldn’t do in front of my mother that are perfectly aboveboard.”

  But Lydia was on a roll. “Come on, Miss Digger. You of all people should know that the things you do in secret are private for a reason.”

  That was it. I stood, turned, and marched toward my bedroom.

  Lydia called after me. “Amy, come back!”

  I turned around on the threshold. “Please, Lydia. You of all people, with your well-researched secret society factoids, should know what happens when you drop the D-bomb in front of me.” Lydia knew everything about societies, enough to have convinced me all last semester that she was in one. And when you used the name of a society in front of a member, they had to leave the room.

  “Only when you feel like obeying that rule,” she replied. “You usually just thumb your nose at all of them.”

  Oh, now we were getting down to it. Not only was she appalled by my current romance, but she was also going to get all bitter about the way I chose to handle my society membership. Couldn’t I do anything right in Lydia’s eyes? Was I not so perfect as her darling Josh? He may have buffed up his relationship outlook for her benefit, but he wasn’t a better Digger than I was, yellow sneakers aside.

  “I really think that you should pick one thing at a time to be mad at me about.”

  “I’m not mad,” she practically shouted. “I’m concerned.”

  “You’re butting in is what you are,” I practically shouted back. How dare she say such awful things about Brandon? Of course he was going to break up with Felicity! She clearly didn’t know him at all.

  “Weren’t you storming out of the room in your little society huff?” my best friend said with a sneer. “Or should I help you along? Rose—”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  “Don’t think that this conversation is over. I’m not the only one who’s concerned about what’s been going on here.”

  “I really wish your boyfriend would stay out of my love life.”

  “Funny. I bet Felicity wishes her boyfriend would stay out of it, too.”

  I slammed the door between us.

  5.

  Parley

  * * *

  The next morning, there was an e-mail from Lydia in my in-box. (You know you and your roommate are in a fight when you get e-mails from the other side of the suite.)

  From: Lydia.Travinecek@eli.edu

  To: Amy.Haskel@eli.edu

  Subject: Last night

  Honey, I don’t know how everything deteriorated last night. I certainly wasn’t looking to pick a fight with you. I’m sorry if you took my attempts to be a good friend the wrong way, because that’s all I ever want to be for you. I love you and will always stand by you, even if I don’t agree with your choices and no matter what kind of petty squabbles we have.

  Love,

  Lydia :)

  Hmph. If she wants to be taken seriously in politics, she might consider nixing the smiley faces. And so like her to try to get the last word in, too!

  Though, true to form, the more I began to ruminate on Lydia’s words, the more I started to question the status quo with Brandon. I figured I was only being fair by not asking for clarification. After all, last year, when we’d actually been sleeping together, I’d kept Brandon on the hook for several months. What was a week, by comparison?

  Still, I couldn’t help running my mouth at our next get-together. Brandon was standing behind me, supposedly checking the essay I was editing but concentrating more on the neck massage I’d asked for. I’d even planted two spelling errors in the first paragraph, but he hadn’t noticed.

  “How’s Felicity?” I asked, apropos of nothing and in the most innocent tone I could muster.

  His hands stilled on my nape. Rule broken. “Fine.”

  “Are you still dating her?” The words fell like bombs, shattering our arrangement to bits.

  He sat back on the bed. “I thought I wasn’t…that first night. You have to know that.”

  “And since then? How can you think you’re not?” I asked. “Aren’t you smart enough to determine something like that beyond a reasonable doubt?”

  “It’s not that simple, and you know it.”

  Hadn’t I just made this argument to Lydia? So then, why did it suddenly feel so hollow?

  “The day after…” He gestured to the bed. “She came and apologized. She loves me, Amy. She loves me. And I…care about her, too. So she made me promise. That I’d…think about it.”

  “Think about not breaking up with her?” I asked. “Or think about getting back together with her?” There was a subtle but important difference.

  He looked away.

  I joined him on the bed, sitting as close to him as our unspoken rules allowed. His hand rested on his thigh, and I covered it with my own, splaying my fingers so that their tips spilled over onto his jeans. “I’m sorry,” I said, softly, sweetly. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  But I wasn’t sorry. My fingers moved in a subtle caress of his leg, and I watched him carefully to see how he’d respond. His back stiffened, his gaze flew to my hand. It had been a mistake, I realized, not to press the issue. A mistake that Brandon himself had made with me last year when I’d been the one unsure of where I wanted our relationship to go. I’d learned something from his failure: Don’t take amorphous for an answer.

  “More than anything, I don’t want to put you in a tough position,” I went on, and slipped my arms around him. I dropped my head to his shoulder and snuggled into one of our new, almost-over-the-line hugs. I ran my hands up and down his back, wondering what he would do if I slipped them beneath the hem of his sweater to touch his bare skin.

  No, I didn’t want to make his choice difficult at all. I wanted it to be so
easy to pick me. And now I realized that if I wanted to, I could force a decision right here. I held him tighter. “This is so nice.”

  I felt his breath against my hair, and his lips brushed my temple. “Amy…”

  Am I evil? No. So he had a girlfriend, marginally. Temporarily. So what? I don’t know her. She’s not a friend of mine. I don’t owe her anything. I was with Brandon first, had known him far longer. And the way he says my name…no one says it like that. He could never say her name like that.

  I felt him put his arms around me, felt his fingertips trailing along the waistband of my jeans, into the gap between the top of my pants and the bottom of my sweater. I felt his hands at the base of my spine, covering the Rose & Grave tattoo I’d put there the weekend he’d broken up with me. As far as I knew, he’d never seen it.

  I wasn’t the same girl Brandon had known last spring. Now he was dealing with an Amy Haskel who ran with the big boys. I’d been around the block with George Harrison Prescott. I’d learned a thing or two about seduction.

  Wouldn’t he be surprised? I lifted my face, brought it close to his. I’d come so far, he could be the one to make that last step, to break the rules we’d never made explicit, but had followed nonetheless. “Brandon.” The word was a breath.

  “Amy, we should stop.” But he wasn’t meeting my eyes. He was looking at my mouth. His fingers tripped along my spine, beneath my shirt.

  “I missed you so much.” Another whisper, another murmur.

  “This is wrong.” Instead of pressing his lips to mine, he leaned in farther, rested his face against my jawline. Spoke the words into my cheek, into my neck. I could feel his mouth there, moving. But he was still only speaking. Not kissing. “We shouldn’t…”

  Hell yeah, we should. And we should have done it already. Man, if I were George, I’d already have my partner’s clothes off.

  If I were George…

  Inwardly, I reeled. Outwardly, I somehow managed to keep from shoving Brandon across the room in an effort to put distance between us. But I did draw away, and as I did, I saw twin expressions of disappointment and relief on Brandon’s face. What was I thinking? What had I turned into?

  “I should go,” Brandon said. “I have to—”

  “Don’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I have to think,” he finished. “Please let me think about this?”

  I shrugged, my eyes downcast. “Sure.”

  He cupped my face in his hands. “Amy, don’t be upset. God, you’re so amazing. I just have to think about how I’m going to…handle things. I want to be fair to her. She’s been so good to me.”

  “Of course.” Of course Brandon would think like that. He’s such a nice person. And look what I’d just tried to do to him. He didn’t need seduction and manipulation. He needed patience and understanding and to handle things in his own, gentlemanly way. I could give him that. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve just been so stressed recently.”

  “Applications?” he asked, sounding back on firmer footing.

  “And other stuff.” I laid my head on his shoulder. “I know we don’t talk about it, and that’s fine. I can’t even get into it now. You’ll just think it’s silly.”

  “What?”

  I laughed in self-recrimination. “It’s just…society nonsense.” I’m being targeted by Dragon’s Head as payback for the latest round of a fifty-year-old feud sounded way too silly to speak aloud.

  At the door, we held each other for a long time, breathing as one, doing everything that a kissing couple would do that didn’t actually involve mouths. It was hotter than a lot of the sex I’d had. Then he left, and I floated back to my desk, relieved that we’d finally worked things out between us.

  And then I didn’t hear from him for days.

  After the first day, I sent Brandon an e-mail, and then another two days later. In between, I left two messages on his answering machine. No response. There was no way the ball could be construed as being in my court.

  When it came, his volley took an interesting form. On Wednesday, as I was working, a tiny IM window popped up on my screen.

  B_Weared: Tell me about the “society nonsense.”

  AmyHaskel: Hey! Where have u been?

  B_Weared: What’s been happening to u?

  Way to answer a question with another question. And happening to me? What was that about? He had no way of knowing I was being stalked.

  AmyHaskel: Can’t really talk about it, of course.

  B_Weared: Does it have to do with the time in the dining hall? That guy who spilled the drinks on u?

  AmyHaskel: Yes.

  After that, he typed nothing for a good long while. And then:

  B_Weared: I gotta go.

  I typed a response, but it was too late, and bold red lettering told me Brandon had signed off. How odd was that? Three days of nothing and then random questions about my society feud? I skipped dinner, waiting by the computer for him to sign back on, but he didn’t. Nor did he call, e-mail, or drop by my suite.

  The following day, I went to class like a good little student. I did all my homework by myself, worked on my last few applications—and did a load of laundry, to boot. February was ending, and I could no longer afford to pretend this semester was going to last forever. When the sun set, I bundled up, as interested in protecting myself from the weather as I was in disguising myself from any roving Dragon’s Head members, and plunged into the night.

  Hale met me at the door of the tomb, before I could meet the other knights in the Firefly Room for dinner. “Miss,” he said. “A note arrived for you this afternoon.”

  “Just for me?”

  “From the caretaker of Dragon’s Head.” He must have noticed my quizzical look, for he went on. “I suspect it is an offer of parley.”

  “But why to me? Why not to the whole club?” And why would they want to strike a deal? They were totally getting the better of me and they couldn’t need some crummy statue they’d been keeping in their storage room that badly.

  “Couldn’t say, miss. But I suggest you let the Secretary know about it.”

  I tore into the letter, which had been sealed with a dollop of golden wax pressed with a reptilian face.

  To the Thief Amy Haskel, so-called Knight of Persephone:

  We issue an Offer of Parley. Meet with our Representative, alone, at Midnight in the Center Courtyard of the Library, and there endeavor to come to an Agreement over our Differences. In keeping with the long-standing Association between our Societies, no Harm shall come to you there.

  If you do not come, it will not end.

  If you bring a Companion, our Offer becomes Void and they shall share your Fate.

  I shot a glance at the entrance to the Firefly Room, where I could just glimpse the other knights poring over the latest scandal sheets for news of Gehry. But who could care about one disgraced politico with all the drama going on in my life? I had a boy who couldn’t seem to get back to me and a society that was dying to get back at me. Kurt Gehry was the least of my problems.

  “Bugaboo!” Thorndike exclaimed, spotting me through the doorway. “Check this out!”

  I shook my head. “No, check this out.” I waved the letter at her, but she’d already refocused her attention on the computer screen. From across the room, all I could hear was snippets of the newscast that had my fellow knights so enthralled.

  “For the past four years…Could be considered the new ‘Nannygate’…Always a proponent of tough immigration laws…Though a federal crime…Claims the employees were hired through an agency that handled all financial transactions and paperwork…”

  I drew closer and saw a montage of images of Kurt Gehry and the President walking across the White House lawn, a shot of a suburban home, its yard covered in news trucks and federal agents, the latter of which led two women and a man down the path. The footage gave way to a live shot of Gehry, in a coat and carrying a briefcase, pointedly ignoring the camer
as and microphones being shoved in his face.

  “Well, I guess we know why he resigned,” Soze said. “You can’t be a federal employee and break federal immigration laws.”

  Juno shook her head, and her curls bounced on her shoulders. “Let’s not get out the tar and feathers just yet. Could be, the employment agency’s to blame.”

  Bond cast her a skeptical look. “Easy enough to determine that, don’t you think? Ring up the employment agency. ‘Hello, agency, can you provide the correct documentation for your staff? Thanks ever so.’ No. If the agency is still an issue, it’s because the Gehry camp is spinning it that way.”

  “Soze—” I started, but then was promptly shushed as Gehry turned to answer a reporter.

  “My wife and children are currently visiting family abroad,” he said, then spun on his heel and strode rather quickly inside the nearest building.

  “Poor kids,” Lucky said. “I don’t feel bad for him, but those children…”

  “Hey, Soze…” I tried again, but he was glued to the monitor as the talking heads started doing their thing.

  “This is really big news, guys,” Thorndike went on. “Gehry could end up in jail.”

  “Josh!” I cried. He turned to me at last.

  “Two dollars, Bugaboo,” Angel said.

  “I need to talk to you. Now.”

  Soze followed me into the library, and I was pleased to see that Angel and Lucky could manage to tear themselves away from the news for five minutes as well. I showed them all the note.

  “Well, this is good news,” Angel said.

  Lucky snorted. “You can’t actually be considering this. After everything they’ve done to you, you want to go over there alone?”

  “Well, that’s what I was wondering,” I said. “Does it have to be, like, alone alone? I mean, couldn’t you guys just come and lurk in the shadows or something?”