I snorted. “Dad, I am no help whatsoever to Jane when it comes to getting good grades. She’s probably borderline genius.”
“Really?” he said, sounding genuinely surprised. As far as I knew, my father had never actually met Jane. Well, maybe when she’d been a baby and there was all the subterfuge, but certainly not in the past sixteen years. And yet I was willing to bet he knew her high school GPA. He probably knew mine too, but only to make sure I wasn’t letting down the family name like Alexis had in school. (I hadn’t. I did what was expected.)
“Well, that’s good to hear. And she’s staying out of trouble? Nothing embarrassing is going to show up online, is it?”
I thought about that night Stick pulled her out of the club in Chesney. Nothing had surfaced after that night—and I’d checked. Frequently. I didnotwant to get the call that my father had seen something about Jane before I had.
“Nope. Clean as a whistle. Just good old-fashioned college freshman fun.”
“Hmmm. I was a college freshman once too, Lily,” he said with a bit of humor in his voice.
He could be controlling and demanding, and lots of other negative “ing”s, but he also taught me to ride a bike and how to swim. And I loved him, even if I felt I could never truly please him.
But I was beginning to realize that was more on him than me.
“We’re being good, Dad,” I said.
“And you’ve become close? You and Jane? Would you say you’re friends as well as roommates?”
I slowed on the stairs. “Yes, I’d say Jane is my best friend here. We’re both close with our suitemate Sydney, but Jane and I are…tighter.”
I knew Jane and Syd were spending more nights together when I was with Lucas, but that wasn’t too often with him working third shifts. He had Friday and Saturday nights off every week, working Sundays through Thursday nights, but he didn’t like imposing on Mrs. Jankowski his nights off, so he stayed home with Andy.
Sometimes I’d come over, but we were still careful to not be too couple-y around Andy. And we never had sex when Andy was in the apartment.
But there was some major fully clothed humping that went on.
“Just how much influence do you have on Jane?” my father asked, pulling me back from my fond remembrances of being beneath Lucas on his couch.
“Not much. Jane’s kind of her own person.”
“Hmmm. Well then, she has more backbone than either of her parents.”
“I would guess that’s probably true.” I couldn’t see Jane messing around once she was married, or becoming involved with a married man either.
But seducing her Intro to Creative Writing prof? Um, hell yeah.
“Well, listen, a word or two from you about her standing in her sister’s wedding would—”
“Whoa, Dad, let me stop you right there. I don’t have much sway over Jane. There is no way she is going to stand in that wedding. Her heels are dug in on that, and once Jane digs in her heels…”
“Still, Lily, it wouldn’t hurt for you to mention it.”
This. This was why I was at Bribury and not Maryland. This was why I was Jane Winters’ roommate.
It wasn’t all just keeping tabs on Jane and trying to make sure no naked pictures of her ended up on myporn.com.
It was for moments like this when I would be asked to leverage my friendship with Jane for whatever reason my father—and hers—found imperative.
“Dad, no,” I said, the words together like that feeling strange on my tongue. I didn’t often combine them to form a sentence.
“Just think about it. It’s one day out of her life, and it would be important.”
I couldn’t figure out why, and neither could Jane, but I wasn’t going to ask my father. If I did, and he told me, I’d have to share that with Jane, and then she’d know I’d been talking about her with my father.
Even though she guessed I did.
“Dad, first of all, it wouldn’t do any good. And second, I think she would dig in even further if I asked her to think about it.” He started to say something, but I spoke over him (which was also new). “Plus then I’d lose all credibility with her.” Which was important to me, but I knew that would be the kicker for my father.
