Chapter Six
It was harder for Reaganto put Professor Clark out of her mind after the incident in his office. She felt raw, turned inside out and exposed; she felt like she was branded with his touch for all to see. It was rough in the first few days after their encounter. She considered skipping his class, but she just couldn't give him the satisfaction. She wasn't going to make it easy on him to forget about her. She remained in the back of the room, but she didn't hide herself or stay quiet any longer. If she had a thought about what they were studying, she spoke up. It was what she did in her other classes, and she was tired of being different in his. If he noticed the change, he didn't comment.
Reagan spent Tuesday evening studying with Luna. Davis wasn't around so they went to Luna’s place and spread out their homework on her coffee table.
“You seem . . . off,” Luna commented after they’d been at it for a few hours.
Reagan flushed but kept her head down and focused on her math. “In what way?”
“I don't know.” Luna tapped her pencil on the table a few times as she tried to put it into words. “Not quiet, necessarily, since you’re always quiet and we’re doing homework, anyway.”
“I feel like my usual self,” Reagan lied. She didn't want to confide in Luna what she’d done. She was sorely tempted to get the professor in trouble, but at the same time, she knew she would be judged for getting involved with him in the first place.
“Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m so used to Davis chattering that I don't know what to do with the relative silence.”
Reagan closed her textbook and moved on to the next assignment. “What is Davis doing, anyway? I thought the two of you were joined at the hip.”
Luna groaned and leaned back against the couch. “Why can’t guys be less complicated?”
Reagan didn't know what to say to that. She was pretty sure her complication was much worse than Luna’s, but she didn't want to reduce her friend’s struggle down to nothing, either. “I don't know. I wish they came with instructions. My brother always told me that men are easy creatures to understand, but he was wrong.”
“What did he have to say about it?” Luna looked up at Reagan with her long blonde ponytail and light makeup.
“He said the key to understanding them is remembering that they’re constantly hungry, horny, and not in the mood to talk. If only all of those traits applied to all men all the time. As far as I’ve noticed, it only applies to Grant.”
“That sucks. None of those things will help me with Davis, Reagan. He's not hungry, and if he is I'm not going to feed him. He’s horny, I’m sure, but I can't let go and go to that place with him. He’s too good a friend to cross that line. As for talking, well, Davis does enough of that for the both of us.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
“But I want him. I do. I just can’t reconcile his wasteful spending, or his disregard for the struggle to make ends meet because he’s never been in that position.”
“Luna, you make him sound like a horrible guy. How can he be your best friend if he's like that?”
“Okay, honestly, it’s me. It's not him. He’s willing to help, and he donates his stupid trust fund to charity. I just can’t do it. I’d feel like a kept woman. Like some high society bitch. I wouldn't fit into his social circle, much less his parents’ freaking circle. It's too exclusive. It's like, I convince myself I don't want him, but then . . .” She made a strangled noise with long, drawn-out syllables that somehow summed up everything Reagan was feeling.
“I get it. The way you explained it, it makes perfect sense. I wouldn't know what to do in a world like Davis’s. I’d be so out of place. We had nothing at all growing up. When my parents died, it was hard sometimes, not knowing if we were going to get to eat dinner. Luckily, I always had the chance to eat lunch at school, but sometimes Grant skipped lunch so we’d have food for dinner. I’ll never forget those days when we struggled so hard. The alternative was for me to go into foster care, and I refused to leave him. They would have taken him, but he was too old to be adopted, and he didn't want to be separated from me either. He only could have stayed in for a few months, honestly, and it wasn't worth it. He does okay at his job now, but he didn't at first.”
“That’s so much to have to deal with. I'm an only child, and my parents are consummate hippies. They worked, but it was at teaching pottery, selling handcrafted items; my mom taught looming occasionally. They refused to get jobs at actual companies, even the local college when my mom was offered a spot teaching something like home ec, I think. They didn't want to be indebted to anyone else. They wanted to be free spirits, I guess. I never wondered where my next meal was coming from, mostly because we had a huge garden, but sometimes I was worried the electricity would be cut off. That was back before my parents were able to afford a solar panel. Then they got a permit to dig a well. They honestly are off the grid now. They make what they can instead of buying it, unless they’re buying from their fellow hippy friends. I love them so much, and I do feel that I was taught so many valuable lessons, but just once I wanted to eat peanut butter and jelly on white bread instead of hummus on sprouted grain bread.”
Reagan giggled at that. “It actually sounds great.”
“Partly. It wasn't horrible. I thought they were going to keel over when I said I wanted to go to college and get a real job, as I called it. We got into a fight about what a real job is”—she rolled her eyes—“and I had to work hard to get the soccer scholarship.”
“You and me both. If not for my scholarship, I wouldn't be here. I guess I'd be bagging groceries at the Piggly Wiggly or something.”
“Where are you from?”
Reagan braced herself for the jokes. “Tuckahoe, Virginia.”
Luna was silent for a good long minute before she burst out laughing. “That’s really what it's called?”
“It’s named after the Tuckahoe Plantation. It’s real, you can Google it.”
“You poor thing.” Luna scraped her hair back away from her face. “Did any boys catch your eye in Tuckahoe?”
Reagan shook her head. “No, not really. I was friends with a few of them, but it was really slim pickings. Most of my friends hooked up with each other at one time or another. It made it awkward for me because I couldn't picture being with the same guy my classmate had been with.”
“There's a veritable sea of men here. Have you been asked out, yet? You’re cute.”
