“You were almost late today,” Jenny remarked after Mrs. Silver passed on to the next pair, wanting to end the silence between them. She had an itch on her nose but didn’t want to scratch it because her fingers were black with charcoal.
“I was out with Credo. The weather’s been so sweet, I want to ride as much as possible.” Easy’s face always lit up when he talked about his horse. Jenny had grown up with lots of girls whose families had houses and stables out in Westchester and Connecticut and who talked about their prize jumpers as if they were in love with them or something. Maybe her anarchist dad had rubbed off on her, but she’d always found them, with their jodhpurs and sleek riding boots, way too pretentious. Or maybe she was just jealous.
“I’ve never been horseback riding,” she admitted, flipping to another page of newsprint and starting a new sketch. She traded her vine charcoal for a soft graphite pencil and set to work on the shape of his eyes so that she had an excuse to look right into them.
Easy’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding me?”
Jenny shrugged. “I’m from New York. I think I took a pony ride at a street fair once. A woman led me around in a circle. I don’t know if that counts.” Jenny cocked her head and grinned. “Actually, it might have been a donkey.”
Easy laughed. “There’s a pretty big difference.” He ran his hand through his hair, making his curls even more disheveled than usual. He looked at Jenny shyly. “Well, you can always come with me sometime. If you wanted.” He shrugged, like he wasn’t sure if she’d be interested. “Credo’s very gentle with beginners.”
Jenny concentrated on the charcoal-scrawled eyes on her paper instead of the ones on Easy’s face. Why was he
doing
this to her? “I’d like to …” She took a deep breath and looked up at him, lowering her voice a little so that everyone wouldn’t hear. “But, um, what’s going on with you and Callie? Are you together or not? Because …” She trailed off.
Easy looked surprised and flustered. “No, Callie and I aren’t really …” He paused, not knowing what they were. He picked up his kneaded eraser and started to play with it like it was Silly Putty, stretching it until it broke, then rolling it back together. “I think we both know that things are over. ... It’s just not, technically, official.”
Jenny felt her chest tighten in a combination of excitement at the possibility of being with Easy and dread over Callie finding out. “I just don’t think it’s the greatest idea for us to be spending a lot of time together before you guys are, you know, official,” Jenny surprised herself by saying. She even kept drawing as they talked, capturing the way his eyes crinkled when he was trying not to smile. “She’s my roommate, and I don’t want things to get weird.”
Weirder than they are,
she added silently.
“Hey, I totally understand.” Easy reached across their desks and pulled down the top of Jenny’s sketch pad so that she would look at him. “I didn’t mean to cause any problems for you.”
She lightly sketched in the loose curls that framed Easy’s face. “I know.” She noticed something stuck in his hair, and without thinking twice about it, she leaned across the desks toward him, making sure her boobs didn’t touch her paper and smear her drawings. He leaned toward her a little, and Jenny was sure she was blushing as she pulled a piece of leaf from one of his thick dark curls. She held it up for him to see.
“I wondered what you were doing,” Easy said, sounding a little disappointed, like he thought she was … what? Going to kiss him? Goose bumps covered Jenny’s bare arms, even though the art building was always a thousand degrees because of the kilns. “I was out in the woods this morning,” he said mysteriously.
“Really? How come?” She loved the idea that Easy was sort of a wild boy, like a woodland sprite or something, only not the gay tights-wearing kind. Jenny glanced up at the sound of the door closing. She’d kind of forgotten where she was. Kids were headed outside, armed with their sketches, to spray them with fixative. Class was almost over already? How did that happen? She looked down at her table and saw that she’d drawn a whole stack of sketches of Easy.
“I like to paint there. It’s quiet. I’ve got this great spot.” Easy yawned and stretched, glancing around the art room as the students started to move their drawing desks back to their original places, the metal feet squeaking across the wood floor. “I was going to go there again tomorrow. Maybe you’d like to come?” Easy’s piercing blue eyes met Jenny’s, and she tried to understand what he was asking. Tomorrow? Did that mean he would be breaking up with Callie—
today
? Suddenly it felt like everything was happening so fast. Was it too fast?
Not that she cared. “Yes. I’d like that.”
Instant Message Inbox
From:
[email protected]
Date:
Wednesday, September 11, 3:55 p.m.
Subject:
Re: Stables
Did you get my last email? See you at 5!
Kisses and maybe more …
Xxx,
C
Easy stretched out on his bed and listened to the sounds of guys returning from sports practice, their adrenaline-pumped voices echoing through the dorm as they headed for the showers to get cleaned up for dinner. Alan, his roommate, was out having dinner at The Petit Coq with his parents, probably getting drunk with them on the red table wine. Easy turned the volume up on his iPod and let the sound of the White Stripes fill his ears. He was excused from mandatory team sports because of Credo, and he would have been out riding her this afternoon if he hadn’t been avoiding Callie. He didn’t know what it was that had changed between them exactly, but a year ago he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her. He would have jumped at the chance to spend some quality time before dinner snuggling in the privacy of the stables; now he couldn’t even face answering her emails or messages. What the fuck was his problem? Why was he being such a shithead?
Because he’d met Jenny. Easy smiled to himself at the thought of her. It was inevitable that he’d tell Callie, but couldn’t he put it off just a little longer?
The sound of high heels dinging up the dorm’s marble stairs could be heard over the sound of Jack White’s wicked guitar playing. “Damn,” Easy murmured under his breath. It was time. He shut off the music.
The door flew open and there stood Callie, in all her fury, looking beautiful and slightly deranged, like a debutante scorned. “What are you
doing
here? Did you not get my messages?” Her left eyelid twitched a little, like it always did when Easy pissed her off enough. He tried not to smile. He still loved her. Always would. Especially when she was mad. “I skipped out of field hockey early so I could meet up with you, and you don’t even bother to
show
?” Callie’s hair was pulled back in a clip, and she had clearly taken time to clean up for him after practice. She looked a little too neat and polished in her short gray wool skirt, black tights, and black leather kitten-heel riding boots. As far as Easy knew, she had given up riding when she was seven, even though he had tried, many times, to get her on Credo. The smell of her shampoo reminded Easy of the salons where his mother and all her girlfriends spent entire afternoons getting their hair and faces molded into something completely unrecognizable.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” he said lamely. He sat up, noticing how out of place Callie looked in his disaster of a room. Crumpled boxer shorts and jeans covered the floor and a banana peel lay on top of his eight-drawer dresser, level with Callie’s face.
She saw it but ignored it. “That’s all you can say? You’re
sorry
?” Callie pulled the clip out of her hair and shook her head so that her strawberry blond locks fell in thick waves around her shoulders, something that usually drove Easy wild. She gazed at his familiar blue eyes, trying to figure out what was different about them. Maybe the way he was looking back at her?
“Wait. You’re sorry about blowing me off or …” Callie’s heart started to pound so hard it felt like it would break free of her chest. Running from the stables to his dorm, she’d been furious, ready to punch Easy in his beautiful face but also ready to accept his explanations or excuses, provided they came sweetly enough, and with plenty of kisses to smooth it over. Now it sounded like smoothing it over was the last thing on his mind.
“I can’t do this anymore, Callie,” he murmured softly at the wall.
“You can’t do
what
? Be with me?” She choked back a sob. She was not going to cry. This was
not
over. “What are you
talking
about?” If she could just find the right thing to say, she knew she could make it better. In a few minutes they’d kiss and make up.
“You know things haven’t been right with us,” he faltered. Fuck, what had he gotten himself into?
“That’s not true. We’re great together.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and kept her voice light. “It’s just—it’s the beginning of the year. Things are stressful. It’ll get better, I promise.”
Easy shook his head slowly. Callie could tell he was trying not to look at her. “It’s just not working,” he said in a low voice, playing with the buttons on his iPod. “Don’t pretend like you haven’t noticed. If everything was great, you wouldn’t have been making out with Heath fucking Ferro on Saturday.”
“We were
not
making out,” Callie protested, her mind whirring, already trying to decide on what tactic to take here. How much had he
really
seen? Maybe she should just play dumb. But part of her swelled with anger—yes, she’d been drunk and playing spin the bottle, but the
reason
she was drunk in the first place was because she was upset about Easy, so he should really be more understanding. “It was just a
game
.”
Easy stared at her. “That’s no excuse.” He ran a single, paint-splattered hand through his messy curls.
“Easy, look, I know things have been rough, since, well, since Spain and everything.” She thought back to the night in Spain when she’d told him she loved him and he had practically asked what they were having for dinner. “But we can
fix
it.” Callie sat down next to him on the bed, put her hand on his knee, and tried to look as persuasive as possible. She stuck out her lower lip in the way that always made her stern father cave and give her whatever she wanted.
Easy sighed heavily, like he was about to say something he knew Callie wouldn’t want to hear.
So don’t say it,
Callie thought. “That’s the thing,” he began. “I don’t want to fix it.” He stared at her hand on his knee as if wishing it would go away. Then he looked straight at her, his blue eyes cold and serious.
She moved her hand and jumped abruptly to her feet. “This is about Jenny, isn’t it?” she practically shouted.
“Not really,” he replied slowly. “It’s about us.”
Not really?
Not really?
As in,
kind of?
“I cannot believe you are breaking up with me to go out with that little … that little …
pimple
!” Callie shrieked. “How dare you!”
“It’s not like that, Callie.” Easy kept his voice level and slow in response to her increasing hysteria. He knew this was going to get messy. Callie had a tendency to melt down like a five-year-old when she didn’t want to face something.
Callie narrowed her hazel eyes at him. “So, are you, like,
into
her now?”
“Stop it.” Easy pressed his fists to his temples. This wasn’t part of his breaking-up-with-Callie conversation. Whatever his feelings were for Jenny, they didn’t have anything to do with Callie. “This isn’t about anyone but you and me.”
Callie nodded violently. “Oh, sure. Of course not. Like eager little Jenny throwing herself all over you had nothing to do with it.” She clenched her fists. “That
bitch!
”
Easy stood up. Talk about being a bitch. “How can you start flinging names at people like that? Do you even
remember
how you and I got together, or did you block that out?”
Easy saw from the way her face froze that it wasn’t a good move to remind Callie how she’d dropped Brandon like a dead-weight to go out with him. He’d always been ashamed of the shady way they’d gotten together behind Brandon’s back and in front of the rest of the Waverly population. At the time, he and Callie just had so much natural chemistry that it all seemed okay and even sort of romantic. But now, it was just another thing that bothered him about their relationship.
“You were certainly trying hard enough to get your hands up my skirt that night!” Callie screamed.
Easy tried to lower his voice, noticing, for the first time, that the door was still open. “I
know
.” He shrugged, wishing he could just hug Callie and make it all okay. “I’m sorry I brought it up. We were both wrong. Let’s just leave everyone else out of it, okay?” Fuck, this was why he hated confrontation. Everything became a jumble in his head and he ended up spitting out the things that were least important and forgetting about the things that counted. “I just don’t think we work together anymore. We’ve changed. That’s all.”
Callie’s whole body was shaking now, and Easy thought for a moment that she was about to start sobbing, which he couldn’t take. Yeah, Callie had manipulated him and Jenny both. But he didn’t … couldn’t … hurt her. He just wished he could make her understand. But maybe that was asking too much since he didn’t really understand it himself.
But instead of bursting into tears, Callie fluffed up her hair and turned her body toward the door. “Sure. Okay.
Fine
. I get it.” Her voice was chirpy and mock cheerful now, like the children’s activities director on the one cruise Easy’s parents had ever been able to drag him on. “It’s over. No problem.”
Callie glanced over her shoulder and flashed Easy, the only boy she’d ever really loved, a withering smile. Holding her breath as she sprinted down the stairs, she dashed out of Richards before collapsing into tears on the grassy quad.