The Next Forever (3 page)

That is, if I got accepted.

“You seem cool, Joe,” Steve said, flicking my name tag. “Follow me.”

He led me through a cherry-wood-floored hallway and past a cherry-wood stairwell flanked by a library with so many books lining the shelves that if all the characters popped out suddenly it would have burst the walls. We went all the way to the back of the house and entered a kitchen with metal sinks as big as bathtubs filled with dirty dishes.

He pointed at a closed door in between the sinks. “Welcome to the real party.” Steve laughed and his teeth seemed even bigger.

I felt like I had taken drugs, even though I hadn’t drunk anything but that beer I had opened myself on the porch. If he’d slipped me something, it had happened when he flicked my name tag, and I was pretty sure that kind of drug didn’t exist yet.

I didn’t know much about frats, but I did know that it was way too early in the game for hazing to occur. I convinced myself of that as he opened the door and my heart started to knock against my chest.

If I ended up in my boxers on the quad, how would I explain that to Amy?

We walked down a set of cement stairs. There was a strobe light flashing, making it hard for me to find the next step, and the next. I held the railing. I smelled smoke, heard music—thumping, loud enough that the rest of my body was shaking along with my hands.

When we reached ground level I saw boobs everywhere, all sizes of boobs, all colors of boobs. There had to be ten girls in wet white T-shirts and underwear dancing in that slow motion way where they kind of look like zombies.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“
This
is why you’re here, Joe, right?” Steve asked, slapping my back.

My hands were still in my pockets, but they went completely still as I watched the girls writhe in front of me like fleshy seaweed.

“Best part of being a frat brother: the girls,” Steve said, making the thumbs-up sign.

I hadn’t even thought about the fact that there would be girls here—hot, half-naked girls.

My mouth was dry. I opened it, wishing in the little, dirty part of my brain that held all the porn I’d seen in my life that I could suck the water from each girl’s wet shirt one at a time.

If only life were a dream and Amy wasn’t in the picture.

Amy.

She would definitely
not
be okay with me being down here, with me even being in this house, with me even talking to Steve. This was not what committed boyfriends who had just asked their girlfriends to move in with them did.

I looked at the stairs. I could walk back up and out and pretend I’d never been here, but then a girl caught my eye.

She was thin, with legs that seemed to start at her chin, and she was pulling her blond hair over her chest each time it fell free and exposed her lemon-size breasts. It was obvious she was trying to cover herself, and her attempt at modesty against this backdrop of debauchery made my chest hurt.

A girl with curves like a guy had built her on a pottery-wheel nudged the thin girl with her hip and pointed at me. I saw the skinny blond-haired girl shake her head. I saw her look down. Then I saw her finger-beckon me over.

Crap. I definitely should have gone to the library.

Chapter Three

Amy

I sat in my dorm room, my covers over my head like a hood. I stared at the face of my phone, trying to decide what to do. It was nine p.m., early, but I could just fall asleep. I
should
just fall asleep.

I was too keyed up from Trevor. From freedom. From boredom. From Joe’s question echoing in my head and the way my stomach had constricted when I heard it. My thumb was hovering over the letters, ready to respond to Trevor’s text, but not knowing what to do.

I knew what my answer should be. But that didn’t make it any easier. His question was even harder to answer than Joe’s.

Joe and I had a good thing. I thought about his eyes, the way they would turn bright green when they were in just the right light—like rare emeralds that were mined from being in my presence. How could I even consider going to the party?

I needed advice, but I had no one to ask. Considering what had happened between my friends Lila, Cassie, and me in Collinsville after we got arrested on prom night for marijuana possession that wasn’t even ours, I wasn’t really big on friends or their advice. They usually only gave you guidance that was in their best interest or wanted to tell you about a time they went through what you were going through. It was never about you.

I was just about to put my phone back on the nightstand and burrow under my covers when I heard it
ding
—probably Joe texting, sending a funny picture from the library. Once he found someone sleeping on his open book, a long line of drool oozing from his mouth like a worm—
I think he fell asleep looking up the definition of obvious.
Once it was two people in the stacks doing it—
wish you were here
. I should have just gone to the library with him. Maybe someone else’s boyfriend could have sent his girlfriend a picture of us doing it in the stacks.

I looked at my phone.

It wasn’t Joe.

It was a response to the text Trevor had sent himself earlier:
Leaving in twenty. I’m not wearing my hat.

I wondered how much thought he’d put into the text. It exuded cool. I could tell Trevor was one of those guys who had so much confidence, the kind that covered him like hardened shellac so he could say and do whatever he wanted and didn’t care what people thought.

I knew a lot better than to get mixed up with a guy like that, but I still stood, looked in the mirror, and combed at my brown hair. It was matted from being under my covers, so I put it up in a high bun.

I guess moving in with Joe was something I had to test if I really wanted. Being with him had been an easy decision, but being in an apartment with him next year was something else. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be, but I felt like I’d gone from the shadow of Lila and Cassie to the shadow of Joe. Not that Joe ever made me feel like I was in his shadow.

He made me feel like the sun.

But I was still measuring my significance because he was in my orbit. If I said yes to him, would I ever stand on my own?

That was worth a few hours with Trevor and his friends.

I touched up my smoky gray eyeliner and tried to make that thought stick. Unfortunately, watching the pencil move back and forth like a head shaking no wasn’t helping to convince me, so I went to putting on blush, the brush going up and down from my chin to my cheekbone—a head nodding up and down,
yes, yes, yes
. I moved on to mascara, up and down from the base of my lashes to the top,
yes, sure, I can go.
I’ll be back in plenty of time to sit on my bed and wait for Joe. He won’t even know I was gone.

I pulled a tight black T-shirt over my head, careful to avoid the fresh makeup.

I won’t even drink or smoke or do any drugs
,
I thought, knowing how that more than anything was what would have upset Joe. I mean, going to the party wasn’t even about Trevor; I was testing myself. Wasn’t that what college was all about?

A series of tests.

It isn’t even about Trevor
,
I told myself again as I struggled to keep my bullshit meter from going off. I texted Trevor back that I’d meet him out front. If things got weird, I could always leave. I could always surprise Joe at the library with a roll in the stacks.

I ducked into the common bathroom to check my makeup one more time before heading downstairs.

I stood at the mirror. I knew I was stalling. Maybe if I waited long enough, Trevor would leave, so I wouldn’t have to deal with my decision. So I could go back into my room and lock the door and act like I hadn’t even thought about going in the first place.

One of the girls who lived on my floor stood next to me. I think her name was Jen. She had a roommate named Marni. I knew because their door still had the cutout construction-paper letters that spelled their names the RA put up the day we moved in. I’d ripped mine off and tossed them as soon as my parents left.

If people wanted to know my name, they could ask me.

Not that anyone besides Trevor had.

Jen was short, squat, had a gymnast’s body—all muscle and spit.

“Where’s your shadow?” she asked, wiping something from the side of her eye.

“Huh?” I turned to her. I was surprised she’d noticed me enough to see I had a shadow, though I knew she was talking about Joe.

“Your boyfriend,” she said, confirming it.

“I’m in the girls’ bathroom,” I said. Even if he was “my shadow,” there were rules, and also,
sick
.

She shrugged. “He’s usually around somewhere.”

“I guess,” I said, knowing she was right.

“You meet him here?” she asked

“Home,” I said. “We know each other from home.” Even though I hadn’t been back to visit yet, it was home. I also knew that description did not in the least do justice to the way Joe and I knew each other. Joe knew all my secrets, and I knew all of his. Maybe that was part of what was starting to scare me.

“He’s cute, even if he is always around,” Jen said, reaching into her pocket for lip gloss and slathering it on. It made her look like she’d just eaten a steak, sort of greasy.

“Thanks,” I said, in that way you say it when you really want to say,
screw you
.

“I don’t mean anything by it,” she said. “I would kill for a shadow, you know?”

“Sure,” I said. There was my proof. I should have just left the bathroom and gone back to my room and waited for Joe. I should have called him right then and told him, forget about moving in, I would marry him. I would have his honest, smart babies. People would kill for him, for his attention. What was I doing?

Figuring out if I wanted him to be my shadow?

If I wanted to be his sun?

Of course, I knew that being someone’s shadow all depended on how you were looking at it; I clung to Joe just as much, if not more, than he did to me.

Maybe he was my sun.

When I got downstairs, Trevor was leaning against the front of the dorm, his legs crossed at the ankles, one black leather boot on top of the other. “Did you have second thoughts or something?” he asked.

“What?”

“It took you long enough to get down here,” he said, looking at his phone to let me know he had been timing me. The part of my brain that kept track of things like that lit up at the realization that he had been
waiting
for me.

“I had to stop in the bathroom,” I said and immediately regretted it. You didn’t want any guy, whether you were trying your best to pretend you didn’t like him or not, to picture you on the toilet. “To brush my teeth,” I added quickly.

“Fresh breath is important,” he said, getting close enough to my face that I could smell his—smoke and alcohol.

I stepped back. “So no hat, huh?” Regardless of my bathroom slip, I felt a lot more comfortable with my face fully made up and us in the dark. It could have also been that he had waited for me.

“It’s back in my room. Hopefully I’ll get to put it on for you later,” he said, stepping closer to me, “and then take it off for you.”

“Where is the party?” I asked. I couldn’t even begin to let myself think about what he’d just said, even though my face and stomach filled with waves of heat—the two of us in his room later. Alone. Him in just his hat.

“I don’t know; some dude’s house.” He pulled a flask out of his pocket. “You want any?” he asked, the metal shining in the dorm’s porch light.

“No thanks,” I said, passing my first test, though I doubted I would do so well when a red plastic cup was shoved in my face. Hard liquor made it easy to say no. A cold beer with foam like a rolling waterfall would be harder, especially when a red plastic cup was sometimes the only thing that reminded you that you were where you were supposed to be.

“More for me.” Trevor shrugged, taking a long drink and pretending to wipe his mouth to keep from hacking it back up.

I recognized Trevor as the kind of tough guy who wanted you to know he was tough. It usually meant he wasn’t very tough on the inside. It usually meant there was something he was hiding.

I knew this from my attempts to be a tough girl.

“Let’s go.” He started down the porch. His blond hair shone like the flask had in the porch light, then went out like a spent match as he stepped off.

“I thought your friends were coming with us,” I said, feeling my pulse start to beat in my neck. Not that he’d said anything like that, but I had assumed. I had used it to quiet my bullshit meter. A group of kids going to a party together was one thing. Just the two of us was a date.

I had a boyfriend. I couldn’t go on a date. It was bad enough I’d accepted Trevor’s invitation at all.

“You want someone else to come with us?” he asked, cocking his head like he was surprised.

I did—preferably twenty nuns who could stand between us the whole night and slap me with rulers if I got too close. But I was already down here, already dressed. I’d already said yes.

We walked away from the dorm toward the quad. I felt like I needed to say something. I needed to fill our silence, and it needed to be with talk. It could
not
be filled with anything else.

I noticed immediately that silence with Trevor wasn’t the warm, flowing thing it was between Joe and me. With Joe it seemed like we were under bathwater together floating with no one else near us; with Trevor it was like a pot of boiling water that I was trying desperately to keep from bubbling over.

“I’ll take some of that flask now,” I said.

“Doing your best to ignore your bad deeds, huh?” Trevor asked, focusing his eyes on mine and holding them there, creating parallel lines of fiery want between us. “Bad girl.”

“Oh, now you think I’m bad,” I said. I couldn’t help but smile.

“I think you’re whatever you want to be,” he said, swinging the flask back and forth.

“Right now, I want to be drunk,” I said.

“Good choice.” He handed the flask to me.

I took a drink, tentative at first.

“Chug. Chug. Chug,” he chanted. “You got a lot of catching up to do, bad girl.”

I took three long swigs, didn’t think about anything but liquor hitting lips. Hoping that each shot would make the steps I was taking come easier, would help me forget that I was actually walking with this other boy, talking with this other boy, flirting with this other boy, this other boy who was not Joe.

Joe.

…

Joe

I turned to Steve so I didn’t have to look at the perky boobs staring me in the face like just-Botoxed eyes. Amy had great breasts, too, don’t get me wrong, but these were different breasts. New ones I was invited to stare at, to visit with. To dance next to, I guess.

But I just kept staring at Steve, at his teeth that in the dim light of the basement seemed to glow as if he were lit on the inside like a jack-o’-lantern.

“Wow, it’s crazy down here,” I said. I was squinting as I scanned back to the thin girl’s boobs, like I was literally staring into two headlights.

“You have your pick of the litter,” he said, his lips quivering over his big, big teeth and trying to stifle a laugh. “But I think Legs has a thing for you.”

“I have a girlfriend,” I said, almost like I was trying to remind myself.

“I won’t tell,” he whispered. “What happens at TKE stays at TKE. Like Vegas but you don’t lose your shirt.” He put his hand to the side of his mouth like he was about to tell me a secret. “As long as you’re not a girl, anyway.”

“I think I’d like to meet some of the other frat brothers,” I said, even though I knew that was a one-way ticket to the reject pile. I knew if I spent much more time in this basement, joining a frat would be the least of the things I might do that Amy would be pissed about.

“They are not at all as interesting as what is going on in this basement,” Steve said, seeming like he was trying to frown but his lips wouldn’t fit. He slapped my back. “I brought you down here for a reason, Joe. Don’t make me regret it.”

He walked away from me and chuckled as he took the vase-shaped girl around the waist. He pulled her close, twirled her around, and dipped her. She screamed that girl-scream they do when they’re acting like they are scared but really are having fun.

The thin girl with the perky boobs looked around like she didn’t know what to do. I felt bad for her, but I knew I couldn’t walk over even if that was why Steve had brought me down here. There was no way I could dance with her with her boobs out like that. There was no way I could dance with her even without Amy. The way my hands were shaking, if I took her into my arms, she was liable to get a concussion.