The Wild One (14 page)

I nod, not trusting myself to speak without crying. He's going to force me to move back to Rochester?

My dad notices and puts his hand on mine. “You know I'd be happy for you to do a secretarial course, if you like. Or you could take a cooking course. You love to bake.”

I look down at my plate. I don't want to be a secretary or a baker. I just … I know I don't. But if I say something right now, I'm pretty sure I'll burst into noisy sobs, and then Topher will think I'm even more of a loser than he probably already does.

“Don't stress, Cuckoo,” says Julia. “We'll find you a job that you'll love.”

Who is “we”? I suddenly wonder. Is she even including me in that “we”? Or does she just mean that she and Dad will decide?

She reaches over to grab my other hand. “Don't worry, okay?”

I hope that Topher can't see the tears filling my eyes. My dad and Julia are pinning my hands to the table, literally trapping me with their support.

The conversation tumbles on, but now I'm stuck inside my head. I can barely even eat. My dad and Julia think I'm incapable of determining my own path in life. They think I'm a loser. That I can't do anything by myself. And they know me better than anyone. So they're probably right.

My dad and Topher are talking about internships when Julia looks at her watch and jumps up so fast her chair falls over.

“Shi—I mean, yikes! I have to get back to the office.”

“You just love saying ‘I have to get back to the office,' don't you?” says Topher, laughing.

I crack up at this too. He's right. She does love it.

“Very funny,” says Julia, hugging everyone good-bye. “See you at home tonight, Coco!”

“My flight back to Rochester is at four, so I better get going too,” says Dad. “Coco, think about moving home. I'll start looking around for local jobs. It's really a good option for you.”

He pays the bill, and no one objects. I wonder at what point you start paying for lunch instead of your parents. If I tried, my father would probably laugh at me.

Dad gets a taxi the moment we get outside, and I'm trying to think how to get away from Topher before he has to get away from me, a sort of preemptive good-bye, when he turns to me.

“Are you busy this afternoon? Come with me to my class. It's Russian Literature. You said you were reading
Anna Karenina,
right? You'll love it! And no one would even notice since it's a summer course for extra credit. You could just come and sit in—wait, why are you giving me that look?”

“I would love that!” I squeak.
Oh, God, Coco, be cool.
“I mean, that sounds great. Thanks!”

Topher smiles. “It's a date.”

 

CHAPTER
15

“It took me awhile to get through
War and Peace,
but it was worth it,” says Topher as we take the subway down to NYU. “We're also reading Pushkin, Gogol, Herzen, Gorky, Turgenev, Dostoevsky…”

I've never heard of any of those writers, except maybe Dostoevsky, but I'm not even sure I could pronounce his name if I tried, let alone spell it.

I am so sick of not knowing anything.

I never knew Topher was so chatty … like seriously, he never shuts up. He talks about classes he took last year, the problems he had, his apartment, his brothers, and even how much he's looking forward to working with my dad's company (though he hopes he doesn't have to just get everyone coffee all day).

It's kind of nice. Topher's monologuing means I don't have to stress about what I should say. I don't have to say anything at all: I just try to laugh at the right parts. Every time I look at him, I feel like my stomach is twisting into a tightrope. Wow, I must really like this guy.

Eventually, we get down to NYU. His Russian Literature class is in a big building just across from Washington Square Park. We take our seats—in the middle, to the side, the don't-look-at-me seats. I glance around the room. It's only about twenty percent full, I guess because it's just a summer class, and to my intense surprise, the other students all look extremely normal. They aren't at all the intimidatingly intellectual, cooler-than-cool types I had expected NYU students to be. And they aren't sitting in cliques like high school. Instead, everyone sits alone quietly, with laptops or notebooks, looking like they're just here to listen and think. They're dressed kind of dorky.

They're kind of like me.

But there is
something
unique about them, and it takes me a moment to figure out what it is.

They all seem very independent.

Then again, I guess they're living and studying in the middle of New York goddamn City. They
are
self-sufficient and independent. My roommates have that look too. I don't think I do.

My phone buzzes. Joe:
Can you pick up a dozen limes on your way in, sweetcheeks? We're out.

I reply quickly:
You got it.

Topher glances over. “That your boyfriend?”

“What? Oh! No! Joe. My boss.”

My boss with whom I had casual no-strings-attached sex the other night, in a totally wild and out-of-character move. Just like coming to a college literature class that I'm not even enrolled in, with the most popular guy from my high school. Wow. New Coco has so much more fun.

I glance at Topher. He has a perfect profile. Like, just perfect.

He turns and meets my eyes. And gives me a smile of such easy reassurance that I nearly melt and explode at the same time. And then I realize that I am basically, in fact, entirely, probably, crushing on Topher Amies harder than anyone has crushed on anyone in the history of the earth.

“Good morning, everyone!” a voice booms.

An older woman with short black hair is standing at the podium, her deep voice carried throughout the room by the microphone. (Though really, I'm not sure it'd make much difference if it were turned off.)

“That's Professor Guffey,” Topher whispers, nodding in her direction.

“Today we're talking about
Anna Karenina
and the depictions of women in Russian literature through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries…” she continues.

I smile. I think I'm going to like this.

Her lecture zips around, touching on different novels and events and politicians I've never heard of, but everything sounds interesting, everything sounds like it matters. I've never heard anyone talk about literature like this, as though it were an essential component of the world, a mirror that shows us who we really are, not just who we want to be.

For a second I have a small fizz of panic. I'm not smart enough to understand this. I'm just … I'm not.

Then she dives into discussing
Anna Karenina.
And what it meant to be a mother in the time before women had rights, what value love held when the law decreed that the husband was god, how Tolstoy presents the situation and the problem in a way that tears us apart, how Levin's love provides a purer, colder alternative, how we judge Anna compared to how contemporary Russian readers would have judged her.

Something inside me is waking up.

I want this to last forever. I want to ask questions, I want to say what I'm thinking, I want to find out more. I want Professor Guffey to keep talking all day, and I want to read everything Tolstoy ever wrote, I want to move to Russia, I want—I want—

“Who do you think Tolstoy sees as the true heroine of this book? Anna or Kitty?”

“Kitty!” pipes up a girl in front, one of those intimidating popular Connecticut types with perfect honey hair. “Anna dies. She makes a bad choice, loses her kid, and then dies. But Kitty ends up happy with Levin.”

“I, like, totally agree?” says the girl next to her, the ubiquitous sycophant that popular girls need for reassurance when mirrors aren't available. “Anna never thinks about consequences. She's a loser.”

“Bullshit!” I exclaim, and then clap my hand over my mouth.

Everyone in the entire class turns to look at me.

“Bull … shit?” repeats Professor Guffey.

“I'm sorry, I just, I think, um, I think … she just fell in love. But she didn't have independence, Russian law at the time gave women no rights…” My cheeks are burning. “Um, so, the cost of her adultery, falling in love with Vronksy, was that she loses access to her child, and to her newfound happiness, and then…”

I trail off. Why did I speak up? I'm not even supposed to be here. The professor is probably about to kick me out.

“
Exactly!
” booms Professor Guffey, pointing at me.

Everyone jumps.

“Independence!” she exclaims. “That's right. Exactly. Female emancipation. The desire, the right, to make your own decisions, to follow your instincts, to not just do what your father tells you, what your husband tells you … that's what Anna wanted. But she couldn't have it. Eighteenth-century Russian society wouldn't allow it. So Tolstoy didn't allow it either. Instead, he made the novel into a warning against love. Fall in love, he says, and lose everything. Your family, your happiness … Even your life.”

Topher looks at me and winks. “Teacher's pet.”

 

CHAPTER
16

“Nothing attracts a twenty-something like a two-dollar drink,” says Joe, surveying the crowd at Potstill.

“If there's one thing I know, it's how to save cash in New York City,” I say proudly. I put Potstill's happy hour on a couple of ‘Broke in Brooklyn'–type blogs. And it worked. “People will go anywhere for a cut-price buzz.”

“Yeah, must be real hard to save cash in the giant brownstone you inherited.” Joe reaches out to pull my hair. I shriek and throw a piece of ice at him.

I can't believe how totally nonweird it was seeing Joe back at the bar tonight.

Considering all the things we did to each other's naked bodies, I should be all shy or embarrassed or
something.
But I'm not. I was a million times shyer around Topher today. Around Joe, I just feel totally normal.

I feel almost happy.

Maybe this is exactly what I need. I'll hang out with Topher at lectures all day and work in the bar with Joe all night. I'll be buddies with Topher, and fuckbuddies with Joe.

“What are you thinking so seriously about?” says Joe. “You're all frowny and adorable. Like a stoned kitten.”

“How many kittens have you seen stoned?”

“Hundreds! Thousands. There's a real feline drug problem in Ireland. No, don't laugh, it's a nightmare.”

I laugh so hard that he picks up half a lemon.

“Stop laughing at me, or I'll make you eat this.”

“You will not!” I back away from him as he advances. For a petrifying—and, to be honest, thrilling—second, I think he's going to pounce on me.

“Calm down, lovers,” says a voice. I look up. Angie! I feel like I haven't seen her in ages! Okay, it's only been one day … but I guess since I now work nights, and she works days, we'll be missing each other a lot. Which kind of sucks.

“Angie! How was your day?”

“Fun, tiring, bitchy, degrading, badly paid. You know, the usual lament of the junior fashion employee.” Angie takes a seat at the bar. “Line me up some cheap drinks, bitches. Two for one, right? I will literally go anywhere for a cut-price buzz.”

Joe and I exchange glances and start laughing again. That's exactly what I said.

Angie takes out her cell, assuming her default position. “God, you two really are in love.”

“We are
not,
” I say, shocked out of my hilarity.

“Actually, we are,” says Joe. I glance at him in horror. “In fact, we're getting married. And we're going to have litters of children, like all good Irish immigrants.”

“Gnarly.” Angie arches her eyebrow at me, and I look away. I know she thinks there's something more going on between Joe and me, but we're just friends. With benefits.

“Pia and Julia are on their way. We're having an emergency house meeting about Pia's, shall we say, complicated love life, so we wanted to have it here so you could be a part of it.”

“Thanks!” I'm so surprised and flattered.

“I texted Madeleine too, but she's rehearsing with Spector tonight.” Angie pauses. “Something is up with that chick. Something more than usual. I can feel it.”

Joe pours us all a shot of Lagavulin, which burns my throat like delicious fire. It still feels naughty to be drinking behind the bar, but I'm getting over it.

Imagine if Topher just turned up here right this second.

I must really have a crush on him if I'm already imagining him turning up, by surprise, to random moments in my life. If Topher was here right now, he'd make everyone laugh and pay special attention to me.

Pia arrives, and rather than parting the crowd at the bar with her confident stride like normal, she apologetically shuffles around people, like she just wants to be ignored.

“Is Pia sick?” asks Joe.

“Yes. Guilt is a sickness,” says Angie. “It'll fucking kill you if you let it.”

“Hi, guys,” Pia's voice is a whisper. “Can I have a drink, please? Something strong. Very strong.”

“For fuck's sake, put some makeup on,” says Angie. “You look like a smallpox victim.”

“Please, don't be mean to me. I can't take it right now.” Pia reaches into her enormous bag and pulls out an entire box of Kleenex.

“Wow, you came prepared,” says Joe, handing Pia a very large glass of whiskey.

Pia blows her nose and then takes a slug of whiskey.

“I did it,” she says. “I told Aidan I cheated on him.”

“And?”

There's a long pause. Then Pia looks at us, her eyes brimming with tears. “We. Broke. Up.”

“Oh, shit!” Angie reaches out to give Pia a hug. Angie's become a big hugger since she met Sam. Love has made her all squishy. And yet she's still kind of scary. “Drink up. It'll help numb the pain.”