The Fifteenth Minute (8 page)

Maybe it’s a good thing DJ did not come upstairs with me. Casual conversation is a lot trickier when you’re chatting over the sounds of escalating sex in the next room. I would probably combust with embarrassment.

Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker” begins to echo off the walls of my tiny room. So I sing along with all I’ve got, especially the high-pitched bit that DJ’d sung in the press box. I try to recapture the silly fun I had earlier, but it’s harder alone. It’s nine-thirty on a Friday night, and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one on campus who’s alone tonight.

It doesn’t help that Pat Benatar’s “We Belong” comes on next. I’ve always loved the heavy-on-the-reverb opening riff, and the devastation in her voice. And just like that I’m a cliché, singing about loneliness in my dorm room.

Yikes.

By the time the song is over, it’s quiet next door. So I shut everything off and get into bed with my copy of the Scottish play.

DJ had said he’d read this sucker with me, and I’m totally holding him to it. Watch me.

I
don’t see
Bella and Rafe until the next morning. I’m on my third cup of coffee—and Act Three of the Scottish play—when they put their trays down at my table in the dining hall.

“Hey,
pequeña
,” Rafe says. “A little light reading?”

“Sure.” I clap the book shut as Bella sits down. “How about that win last night?”

“Wasn’t it awesome? Aren’t you glad you went?” She nudges Rafe. “Baby’s first hockey game.”

“Soccer is where it’s at, Lianne.” Rafe winks at me.

“Hush, hottie. That’s not funny,” Bella whispers, and her hand moves so I know she’s touching him under the table.

The cloud of affection between them is so thick I can hardly draw breath, even from the other side of the table.

Bella must notice this, because she stops mauling her boyfriend and frowns at me. “Who walked you home?”

“Uh, DJ.”

Her face lights up. “
Really
. Did he come upstairs?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean,
why?
”

Her eyes bug out. “Why didn’t you invite him upstairs to see your collection?”

“My collection of what?”

“Oh, honey.” She gives me an eye roll. “It doesn’t matter what. Just invite him upstairs.”

“I did!” I squeak. “He turned me down.”

Her forehead creases. “Really? Are you sure?”

“Did you
see
him up there?” God, I know my game needs work. But does she really think I could get this wrong?

“Okay,
how
did you ask him?”

I sit back in my chair. “Really? You’re going to make me relive it?”

“Yes I am,” she says, cutting up a piece of sausage. “Something just doesn’t compute.”

My sigh sounds more diva-like than I’d wish. But it’s extra-embarrassing to describe my pathetic life with Rafe listening, too. “I said, ‘Want to come in?’ And he said, ‘This is as far as I go.’”

Bella squints at me, as if there must be something I’m missing. “And then?”

“He kissed me on the forehead, like you do with your little sister.”

Bella doesn’t bother to hide her cringe. “Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

She’s quiet for a few seconds. “I don’t get it. You two are totally into each other.”

Oh, the mortification
. I drop a hand over my eyes. “Apparently that’s not the case.”

Bella snorts. “Honey, I
saw
the way that boy looked at you the other night. Like he wanted to have you for dessert. Just watching the two of you size each other up got me all hot and bothered. I had to stop in Rafe’s room on the way home and strip him naked and…”

I hold up a hand for silence at the same time that Rafe does, too. “I get it.” No need to hear the details. And whatever Bella thought she saw at Capri’s, it wasn’t there. If it had been, I wouldn’t be alone right now. Or, at the very least, I would have gotten a real kiss.

Damn it.

“Something is wrong with this picture,” Bella muses, lifting her coffee cup.

I’m tired of thinking about it. “Obviously.” Into my own coffee cup, I add, “I’m totally unfuckable.”

“What?” she asks.

As it happens, three cups of coffee makes me really tetchy. “I
said
, I’m obviously totally unfuckable!”

Several heads turn in our direction, and Rafe claps a hand over his mouth and tries to stifle his laughter.

And all I can think is:
Thanks, January. Thanks a lot
.

H
ockey players are good roommates
, but they aren’t tidy. I’m doing laps around the house I share with four other guys, cleaning up. This weekend the team has two away games—Brown last night and RPI tonight.

I could have asked them to put their shit away before they left on Friday, but I didn’t want anyone to question my motives. So I’ve taken it upon myself to throw books and gym bags into bedrooms. I take a pair of dirty socks out from between two couch cushions and toss them into Orsen’s room, though they may or may not belong to him. I stack up all the video game paraphernalia and wash every glass I find in the public areas of the house.

Lianne Challice is coming over. To my house.

Crazy.

When I texted her two days ago asking if she still wanted help reading MacBeth, she said she did. I’d suggested the library, but she’d pointed out that you’re not supposed to perform Shakespeare at the library where people are trying to study.

But we’re going to be really good at it
, I’d teased.

Naturally
, she’d replied.
But I’m not giving a free show. Come over here
?

I couldn’t do that, of course. And I didn’t want to explain. So I invited her over to my place instead. And since I needed a plausible excuse to switch the venue to my place—other than the truth, which is that I’m not allowed into her dorm—I’d added,
I’ll make dinner
.

My heart palpitated after I hit send on that one. Because it sounded like a date. And I owed her a date.

But I can’t fucking date. I can’t.

That sounds great
, she’d replied.

That had settled it. I would make her dinner just this once. So it had better be awesome.

My family is Italian, and I make a good lasagna. So I’d spent my morning picking up supplies at the grocery store, then making two lasagnas. My mom has a saying: never make just one lasagna. “It’s an amazing dish, but it’s a pain in the backside,” she always says. “Only a fool makes one of them. Always make two. You can eat twice for the effort of cooking once.”

So I did. One of them I wrapped up and froze. The other is in the oven now, making the house smell awesome. Lianne is due in ten minutes, so I’m spending that time panic-cleaning. The living room looks decent enough after my attentions so I head into my room and make my bed. Lianne won’t be setting foot in my bedroom tonight, of course, but if she sticks her head in here I don’t want her to think I’m a slob.

This year I seem to spend ninety percent of my time worrying about what other people think of me. It’s exhausting.

From my back pocket, my phone rings. “Hello?” I answer, wishing I didn’t sound winded. I might clean my house to impress a girl, but I sure didn’t want her to know.

“Daniel? It’s Jack.”

Jack is the lawyer, and the last person I want to talk to right now. “It’s Saturday night,” I blurt out. Why the hell would he call now?

“I know,” he chuckles. “But I’m having one of
those
weeks. I was in court all day yesterday and didn’t get a chance to tell you that the college gave us the meeting I asked for.”

That stops me cold. “They did? The other lawyer couldn’t get them to do that.”

Jack chuckles again. “I told them we would sue for discrimination and slander if they didn’t give you a forum to tell your side of the story.”

Fuck
. “But I don’t want to sue anyone.” I just want it to all go away.

“I know that. But the college needed a reminder that the rest of your life hangs in the balance. And threat of a countersuit was the best way for me to make that point.”

This whole thing is such a fucking disaster. Who sues their own college and then later holds out his hand for a diploma?

“Daniel, look—they understand that I’m the bad guy here. My role is to be the one who agitates. They don’t think you’re sitting in your dorm room plotting a revolution.”

“I don’t have a dorm room,” I mutter.

“
Exactly
. And I’m the one whose job it is to point out that they’ve been unfair.”

“Okay,” I say, my chest tightening with misery. I hate this, but I’ll hate being kicked out of school more.

“They gave us February twelfth. That’s in less than a month.”

My gut clenches. This is just like scheduling surgery. You’re supposed to be glad to get it over with, but who wants to be cut open in the first place? “June would be better,” I say. If I could just get one more semester under my belt…

“The girl will sue if they put off her case until June.”

Of course she will.

“You and I need to meet next weekend. I’m going to ask you questions and give you some tips. We’re going to rehearse your testimony. I know you’re a busy guy. We can do this on either Saturday or Sunday. Which one works best for you?”

“Uh…” I close my eyes and think of the hockey schedule. Luckily, the men’s hockey team has another road trip planned. “I guess Saturday is okay.”

“All right—I’m putting you in for Saturday the twenty-fifth. You’ll get an email from my assistant confirming the location and time. And let me say one more thing—you need to be very careful for the next couple of weeks. Squeaky clean. No complaints against you for anything, no matter how trivial.”

That just makes me ornery. “I never had a single complaint against me.”
Just this one enormous one
.

“Of course you haven’t.” My lawyer’s voice is low and quiet. “Just be mindful that you can’t afford to be part of anything questionable. If your friends are stirring up trouble, just remove yourself from the situation.”

“Okay.”

“Hang in there, Daniel. This is progress.”

Too bad progress feels like being run over by a Zamboni. “Thank you. I’ll look for that email.”

We disconnect, and I kick one of the old armchairs that Orsen and his teammates found to furnish the house.

I do
not
want to tell a room full of college administrators what happened in my bedroom on a random night last April. How I had sex with my neighbor (and lab partner) even though I wasn’t very attracted to her. Even though it was all her idea, and we weren’t drunk. It was perfectly consensual and perfectly legal and still not a moment I’m looking forward to describing.

I’ll have to admit to the whole world that I’d been kind of a shit, even if it wasn’t the kind she’d accused me of being. In the interest of defending myself, I was
still
going to sound like the world’s biggest asshole. It was just a hookup. My family will be sitting there listening to me describe who removed whose clothes, and who first brought up the idea of a condom.

Afterward, I never called this girl. Didn’t ask her out. Didn’t bring up that night again. It wasn’t my proudest moment, and everyone I love will know all about it.

Even if I win, I’ll lose.

My phone rings again. I take it out of my pocket warily. If it’s the lawyer, I’m not answering again. Let him leave a voicemail if there’s something he forgot to say.

LIANNE the display reads. And goddamn, I’d forgotten she was on her way over. I’d actually forgotten. “Hello?”

“Can you do me a favor?” She’s breathing hard like someone who’s been running. “Open your door in about sixty seconds. But don’t show your face.”

“Why?”

“Photographer.”

Five seconds later my hands are on the deadbolt. I pull the door open a crack and wait.

“Thank you,” her voice says into my ear. Then, “Go fuck yourself,” she says a little louder, to someone else.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” a male voice asks.

“My mother? Why don’t you go stalk her? She likes attention, even from assholes.”

I want to look out the door, but she told me not to. And there’s no peep hole.

Lianne has ended our call, but now I hear feet on the front steps. A small hand pushes the door open. She steps into the room and slams the door behind herself. “Fucker,” she grumbles.

I try a joke. “Aw, but I think so highly of
you
.”

She gives a little frustrated shriek. “Sometimes I hate my life.”

“Sing it to me, sister.” I cross the room to the picture window. The guy outside is studying the house, but for the moment his camera hangs loosely on his chest. “What does he want?”

Lianne shakes her head. “Just pictures. He’ll sell them to a tabloid, and they’ll write a fake story. Princess Vindi’s near-death experience. Her bout with bulimia. Her alien love child. Whatever. I’m not very interesting so they have to make their own news.”

“Should you call the police?”

She shakes her head. “He’s not on private property. These guys know their rights and they’re really good at making sure they can’t get into any real trouble.”

Out the window, the photographer just stands there, a patient expression on his face. “So what do we do?”

“We read the Scottish play,” Lianne says, peeling off her coat. “He’ll get bored and cold eventually.”

“Okay. But dinner first, right? I made lasagna.”

Lianne’s face lights up. “Is that what smells so good?”

“Yeah, I think it’s done, too.” She follows me into the kitchen, where I peek into the oven. The cheese is bubbling everywhere, and the top has browned. “My mother made sure that my brother and I knew how to make three dishes.”

“What are the other two?” Lianne asks, coming to stand beside me. Because of the dramatic entrance she’d made, I hadn’t gotten a good look at her yet. Every time I see Lianne she looks better than the last. Tonight she’s wearing skinny jeans that make her waist look tiny, and a sweater that feels ridiculously soft when she brushes up against me.

I have to fight the urge to measure both the sweater’s softness and the size of her waist with my hands. “Um…” What was the question? “I make a nice frittata, and I can do roast chicken.”

“I can’t cook at all,” she confesses. “But I suppose if you want to live off campus, it’s handy to learn.”

I never wanted to live off campus, but I’m not going to bring that up. “Want a soda? I have Coke and diet.”

She opens the refrigerator and grabs a can of diet. “Thanks!”

Shot scored
. I bought those just for her.

I plate up two big squares of lasagna. There’s Caesar salad, too, though I bought it at Gino’s on my way home. I divide that onto our two plates. It’s a nice meal. I let this girl down once already, and I need her to know that it’s not personal.

Nobody ever wants to hear, “It’s not you, baby, it’s me.” But in this case, that’s one hundred percent true.

Our plates are ready, but now I don’t know where we should sit. The kitchen table is tiny and wedged into the corner. We rarely sit there.

But the couch is right in front of the window, where the asshole photographer probably still waits. We don’t have curtains or blinds. My roommates walk around in their underwear all the time anyway—they just don’t care. Although there’s a curtain rod hanging at the ready. “Hang on a second, okay? I want to cover the living room window.”

I duck into Orsen’s room. He’s got a banner tacked up to his wall. CONGRATULATIONS HARKNESS HOCKEY, CONFERENCE CHAMPS, it reads. The college hung one in each of the houses’ dining halls last spring after his team made it all the way to the national championships.

It only takes me a second to pull it down. After carrying it into the living room, I stand on the back of the sofa and drape it over the lonely curtain rod. “There.”

When I climb down, Lianne is watching me, her plate in her hands, her face turning red. “I’m sorry, DJ. I shouldn’t have come. This is so…” She shakes her head, and her exasperated expression makes my heart give a tug. “One wonders why I don’t have any friends, right?”

“Come on, now,” I whisper, taking the plate out of her hands. I carry it over to the coffee table. “Forget about the asshole with the telephoto.
He’s
the pathetic one, right?”

She plops down on our couch with a groan. “I guess.”

“Eat up. We have a play to read.” I dash into the kitchen again for my own plate and a Coke. When I return, Lianne is tucking in to her dinner. “This is awesome. I didn’t eat pasta for about ten years, and now I don’t know how I survived.”

I sit down beside her on the sofa. “You didn’t eat pasta?” Was that even possible? “My family would starve if it wasn’t for pasta.”

“Yeah? I’ve met your brother. Are there more of you?”

I nod my head and swallow a mouthful of lasagna. “We have a little sister, too. Still in high school.”

“Who does she look like?” Lianne tilts her head and studies me, and warmth creeps across my face under the heat of her gaze. “You don’t look much like your brother. I mean, I can see it in the shape of your face, a little…”

I give her a grin. “You’re seeing things then, smalls. I’m adopted.”

“Oh, geez.” She sets her fork down on her plate. “Sorry! I’m such an idiot.”

“Why? People have been saying that to me my whole life.”

She’s studying me now. “You must get sick of hearing it, though.”

I shrug it off. I don’t like anyone knowing that it gets to me. I wasn’t adopted until I was two. My adoptive parents knew my birth mother from church. She was struggling on Long Island, away from her family back in Colombia. I don’t know all the details, but she gave me up and then moved back to her country.

I don’t remember her at all.

Time to change the subject. “Do you have siblings?”

“Sort of. Not really.” Lianne uses her fork to cut another bite of my lasagna. I’m happy to see that it’s disappearing from her plate.

“Sort of? Not really?”

“I have two half brothers. They’re in their thirties. The last time I saw them was ten years ago. I’m not even on the Christmas card list.”

It’s my turn to stare. “Jesus. Sorry.”

She lifts her perfect chin to took at me. “Don’t be. My father was on his fourth marriage. I was born when he was sixty-five. My brothers were teenagers before I could talk. And my mom made sure that they weren’t ever invited to be with us. She didn’t like competition of any kind.”

“And your dad just put up with that?”

She tilts her head to the side, considering the question. “I think he did whatever he wanted. My family was
never
normal. My dad had acting jobs all over the world, and my mom was a costume designer. So my parents never spent much time together in the same house. I’m pretty sure my father saw at least as much of my brothers as he saw of me…” Her eyes go soft. “He was a lot of fun, my dad. The life of the party. I always knew he was interested in me, but only up to a point. Nobody ever got more than a tiny fraction of his attention, but when it was your turn, there was nobody better.”