Breathless (28 page)

But I have some experience with college boys now; I’m not as freaked as I would have been, say, a year ago. When I look back at Stetson, intending to smile, he’s talking to Lindsey—he’s telling her she’s really “filled out in all the right places”—and everyone has turned around to head back to his room.

Stetson lives in a suite, which is as big as an apartment. The whole setup feels very grown-up. He and Jeremy live with another guy from Woodsdale whom I don’t know very well, John Whitaker.

When we get to the suite, the boys show us how they’ve taken all the shelves out of their refrigerator in order to make room for a keg. In the bathroom tub, several bags of ice have been spread out to hold the contents of the fridge that wouldn’t fit around the keg: a few gallons of whole milk, half a case of Schlitz, a package of American cheese, and what looks like a lifetime supply of ketchup and soy sauce packets from take-out restaurants.

Stetson sits down next to me on the sofa and gives me a tap on the shoulder “So . . . Katie,” he says while everybody else talks and drinks and looks around, “how do you like the place?”

“Are you kidding? It’s awesome.” I stare at the walls, plastered with band posters, the coffee table covered in ashtrays and beer bottles and college-level textbooks and a few porno DVDs. “It’s just so . . . man, it’s like you’re a real grown-up.”

“How’s the swimming coming?” he asks.

“Pretty good,” I say. I’m lying. We only took second place at OVACs this year, and since I’m the captain, everyone thinks it was my fault. They don’t understand that I can’t breathe, not even underwater anymore. They don’t know that I barely sleep at night, waiting for the phone to ring. Most mornings, my arms and legs are so achy from lack of sleep, I can barely force myself to move through the water.

“Do you know where you’re going to college yet?” Stetson asks.

I nod. “I think I’m going to Yale.”

His perfect mouth forms an O. “Yale. Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wow, that’s great. Did you apply early admission, or what?”

I try to give him a coy grin. “No. But I’m not worried.”

“Well, if you change your mind . . .” He kind of tilts his head to one side and grins. “You can always come here. I’ll swim with you.”

Is he trying to be sexy? Is Stetson trying to flirt with me?

“That would be fun,” I say.

Then he reaches over and puts his
hand
on my
leg.

“It sure would.” He doesn’t seem at all fazed by all the people around us—not even Drew, who is only a few feet away. Nobody is paying attention to our conversation—but even if they were, I don’t think he’d care. Guys like Stetson—they’re the kind of guys who could start their own religion if they wanted to.

I’m drinking a lukewarm beer—the keg still isn’t chilled—and my body has sunk deeply into the couch, which is probably several decades old and has more threadbare spots on the upholstery than I can count. “Good,” I say, “then we should do that sometime.” I have no idea why he’s paying so much attention to me, and I don’t really care. I already feel so out of control inside, I can’t help myself from wanting to get a little bit reckless. Besides, if Drew were paying any attention to me, I wouldn’t be talking to Stetson.

He nods, smiling some more. “Good.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

Drew and Mazzie are in the kitchenette. I think they’re talking about some type of biblical theory. I watch Drew drinking a beer and shaking his head, disagreeing with her about something. Mazzie looks bored. John Whitaker has decided that we should all watch
Beetlejuice
while we break into this half pound of reefer that he’s produced for us from underneath a sofa cushion.

“Do you want another beer?” Stetson asks me.

“Sure.”

“I’ll get you one.” He gets up and heads toward the kitchenette, then stops, twirls around, and points his finger at me. “Do you want a glass, too?”

What a gentleman. What a fox.
“That’s okay. Just a beer.” He didn’t ask anybody
else
if they wanted a beer. He just asked
me.
I light up a cigarette and cross my legs, exhaling delicately to showcase my sexy smoke.

I’ve been saying for a long time that I’m going to stop smoking cigarettes
now,
but the plan is constantly getting postponed. I can give them up for a few weeks, and then I start again. And every time I start telling people that I’m going to quit smoking for good, they all tell me that I can’t—that I won’t be me if I quit smoking. And everybody else smokes, so what would be the point, really? But most mornings when I jump in the water, I can feel my lungs getting full too soon. I know it isn’t just the stress of Will that’s been slowing me down. If I don’t quit smoking soon, I’ll have full-blown asthma. When I fall asleep above Mazzie, in our room, we are a two-woman symphony: she grinds her teeth, wearing through one mouth guard after another, while I wheeze. We have our rhythm:
crunch-phee, crunch-phee
—it goes like that all night. She pushes in and I push out, each separate noise competing for space, and in the morning she rubs her jaw in the mirror while I cough over the sink, and we both wonder what the hell is wrong with us. Why we can’t just relax, for once.

By three a.m., everybody in the suite has fallen asleep. Mazzie is out on the sofa, a trickle of drool working its way into the foam upholstery, her forehead sweaty. Lindsey lies bowed over an armchair, and Drew is asleep facedown on the floor in a sleeping bag, which I’m supposed to be sharing with him. Estella is in Jeremy’s bedroom. There are Schlitz cans covering the countertops in the kitchen and the living room coffee table. There are ashtrays overflowing everywhere. Cigarette butts are ground into the hardwood floor. The ceiling is cloaked in fat gray swabs of smoke.

Stetson and I are the only ones still awake, determined to drink all the beer in the keg.

“It was a plan to save money,” he explains, referring to the keg. “We figured that, if we invested in the keg, it would last us a lot longer than a case or two of beer. As it is, our alcohol budget pretty much breaks us.”

The keg is almost kicked; a few more drinks and it will be gone. “How long ago did you get the keg?” I ask.

He grins. “Yesterday.”

I can feel myself growing more and more dehydrated; when I wake up in the morning I’ll go into the bathroom and my pee will come out like dark yellow syrup, no matter how much water I drink tonight.

We both fall silent. It’s strange to be the only two people awake in the room, trying to have a conversation while everyone around us is unconscious. We both watch as, in her sleep, Mazzie rubs a finger back and forth across the bottom of her nose. I know it’s probably the smoke bothering her. Finally she sneezes. The sneeze sets off a small chain of motion in the room: Lindsey opens her eyes for a moment, looks around in suspended panic before falling back asleep almost immediately. Drew rolls onto his back, kicking over several empty beer cans in the process. One of them rolls along the uneven hardwood floor, across the room, coming to a halt when it makes contact with Stetson’s foot.

He turns his head, looking at me. “Are you tired?”

I am. I am so, so tired. “Not really.”

“Me neither.” He licks his lips. “We should go somewhere else and talk. I don’t want to wake everyone up.”

The common area of the suite is big, big enough that we can move to the other side of the room, behind the sofa, and it’s almost like we’re somewhere else entirely. I don’t know why we don’t go into his bedroom. The thought crosses my mind that I’ve completely misunderstood his intentions. Maybe he really does just want to talk.

I figure out soon enough that I haven’t misunderstood at all. We sit in a corner of the room, where Stetson moves close enough that his head is almost touching mine. “Shh,” he whispers, putting a finger to his lips. “We should still be quiet, okay? Quiet like mice.” He pauses. “It’s really hot in here, isn’t it?”

Before I can respond, he reaches behind his head and pulls his shirt off. Then he leans over and tugs off his socks.

He leans against the wall, takes a long sip of beer, and smiles. “There. That’s better.” He doesn’t have any chest hair. His hair is just long enough so that it’s growing into small yellow curls, just below his neck. I give the curls a little tug and his shoulders go up. He elbows me and says, “Hey, that tickles,” so I do it some more.

We’re positioned in such a way that I can see Drew’s sleeping form—at least, from the shoulders down—from where I’m sitting. His free hand reaches outward, in my direction, palm up. His fingers are callused from building houses all year for Habitat.

In contrast, Stetson’s fingers are smooth and boyish. They’re sweaty on my neck. We start kissing and I feel tingles in my whole body, partly because it feels good to kiss him, and partly because I’ve got one eye open, looking at Drew, trying to figure out how it feels to hurt him. It feels awful, worse than I could have imagined, but I don’t stop.

“Let’s go into the bathroom,” Stetson whispers.

I hesitate. But only for a second. I’m so tired of being the one trying to convince someone—my own
boyfriend,
for godsakes—to want me. I missed my opportunity with Eddie. I’m not going to miss it again. What does it matter? Drew already thinks I’m going to hell. Right now, I feel like he’s probably right, and I don’t even care. At least I’ll get to see my brother.

As soon as the door is closed, Stetson pushes his hands up my shirt, down my pants, rubbing against me, tugging my clothes off.

I am leaning against the wall, self-conscious as Stetson stands a few feet away, gazing down at my body. All that’s left are my underwear. He nods at them. They are pink with tiny images of Tweetie Bird printed on them. “Take those off.”

Drew would never tell me what to do like this. But that’s why I’m here: I don’t
want
Drew. “Why?” I ask. Even as the word leaves my lips, I can see the mildest hint of annoyance in Stetson’s expression. Before it has a chance to surface, though, he covers it up with his usual, easygoing smile, as though he’s amused by my naiveté.

“You’re still a virgin. Aren’t you, Katie?”

I nod.

He stands so close to me that our lips are touching. “Drew doesn’t deserve you. He’s going to end up in a monastery someday, and you’ll be left with a bunch of memories that don’t mean a damn thing.”

I flinch, so imperceptibly that Stetson doesn’t even notice. I can’t believe what he’s doing to his best friend. What we’re
both
doing.

I could walk away now and everything would be okay. But I don’t. I just stand there, almost unable to move, and whisper, “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

It seems to last forever, but I know it hasn’t been more than five or ten minutes at most. We’re sitting on the floor next to each other when Stetson cups my chin, tilts my face upward, and looks into my eyes. “Hey,” he whispers, giving me a kiss on the tip of my nose, “this is our secret. Right?”

I nod. “Sure. Sure it is.”

He smiles at me. “You’re a great girl, Katie. You should visit again sometime.”

And then he shimmies back into his boxer shorts and stands up, handing me my shirt.

I feel hollow and sick. I can’t wait for Stetson to leave the room so that I can gag into the sink.

We are both almost dressed when someone knocks lightly at the door. “Stetson? Hey, hurry up, I have to pee.”

We stand perfectly still. Stetson holds up a finger. “Hold on, Estella.” He stares at me while I hurry to finish getting dressed.

But Estella can’t wait, and we have forgotten to lock the door. All of a sudden she’s just there, staring at us. She chews on the inside of her cheek, taking in the whole grisly sight.

“What’s going on in here?” she asks. Her voice is soft, beautiful rage.

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

Before I have a chance to continue—God, what can I possibly even say?—Stetson interrupts. “We were just talking. We didn’t want to wake anyone up.”

Estella nods. “Just talking,” she murmurs. “Right.” And then, without any warning, her voice rises to a screech.
“Drew!”

Suddenly we have an audience. Everyone stands around us, staring at me and Stetson in the bathroom. We are both fully dressed, but I’m sure we look tousled. Stetson is relaxed, sitting on the closed toilet seat, his arms crossed behind his head.

“Estella, cut the drama. We were just having a conversation”—he points to Drew—“about you, man.”

Drew is looking at me in a way that I’ve never seen before. It’s a combination of hurt and hopefulness and wariness and contempt, all at once. “Katie,” he says, his voice trembling and hopeful, “is that true?”

“Yes.” I go to Drew, take his hands in mine, and kiss him. “Of course it’s true.” I still feel sick to my stomach, and I know it’s not the beer.

“What were you saying about me?”

I shrug. “Lots of things. I’m going to graduate soon. We were talking about you and me and the future . . .”

“And you didn’t think to have that conversation with
me
?” Drew sounds bitter, doubtful.

“Man, you were asleep. Katie just wanted some advice.” Stetson stands up, walks over to Drew, and puts both hands on his shoulders. “I swear to you, nothing happened. I would never do that to you.”

Estella is furious. “I know what I saw,” she says. “You two were in here for a long time, and you sure as hell weren’t
talking.
” She glares at everyone.

“Would you shut up?” Stetson snaps. “Just because you’re jealous doesn’t make it okay for you to go making things up.”

“Jealous?” she sputters. “What exactly am I jealous of, Stetson? I dumped
you,
remember?”

“Not me—Katie,” Stetson says simply. “You’re jealous of Katie.”

“Oh, don’t make me laugh. Little miss small-town Pennsylvania here, with her magical gift for swimming and absolutely nothing else?”

“Shut up, Estella!” Drew says. “I’m so tired of hearing you
talk.
Nobody believes you. Katie and Stetson—my girlfriend and my best friend—fooling around ten feet away from me?” Drew shakes his head and glares at her. “Even for you, that’s ridiculous.”