“We were thinking about leaving,” Abby said. “I don’t feel great.” I looked at her, and she indeed seemed flushed with her hair a little damp against her forehead. It was warm in the house, but not that warm.
“Drink too much?” I asked. “Feel like you need to throw up?”
“No, didn’t drink too much, and yes, I feel like I need to puke,” Abby said. “I think it was the sandwich I had earlier. The tuna smelled a little off.”
“I can get her back to the dorm if you want to stay,” Chloe said.
“I can get myself back to the dorm if you both want to stay,” Abby declared.
Chloe and I both rolled our eyes at her. “Yeah, right, we’re going to let you puke your way back to Creyts,” I said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Chloe added.
We left our first college party. Our first hockey party. I didn’t look back to see if Logan had extricated himself from Ches. It didn’t matter.
Abby ended up puking in the bushes on the walk home, some of it splattering on my dress as I held back her hair.
That seemed to sum up the whole night.
Chapter5
“Is this him?”Emily asked, turning her iPad to show me a picture of Logan. I took the tablet from her where she sat next to me on my bed, our backs against the cinder-block wall that was painted beige, not able to disguise the fact that it was the same basic material as in a prison.
“That’s him,” I confirmed. “Logan Fields. Sophomore. Defenseman. From Red Wing, Minnesota. Hmm. They called him Straw at the party. I assumed that was his last name.”
“Six-three, two hundred and ten pounds,” Emily said, reading further down the stats.
“They embellish those a lot,” I said, knowing that from my father’s comments on the Nebraska football roster every year.
“Isit embellished a lot?” Emily asked.
I thought about looking up at Logan when I’d slid off my barstool and stood next to him. And feeling the strength and bulk of his arms as I moved my hands up them to grasp his neck. “Not a lot, no. Maybe an inch or a few pounds, but not a lot.”
“And is this pic pretty accurate?” she asked.
I stared at it again. He wasn’t smiling, this being for the media guide and him wanting to look like a big, tough hockey player. But the dimple in his chin showed and the brown of his eyes seemed deep and smoky, even in a headshot. “Yeah, it is.”
“And why didn’t you stay, again? After he was fobbing the drunk girl off on her friend?”
I dropped my head against the wall. What had seemed like self-preservation (or at least pride-preservation) at the time, now seemed like a dumb decision. “I don’t really know. At the time it seemed…”
I sighed, and Emily just nodded. She spread her fingers on the screen, making Logan Fields’ handsome face larger, taking up most of the iPad’s screen. “Hmm. Not sure about that decision,” she said.
“Yeah, me neither,” I said.
I stared at the pic another minute, remembering the heat coming off him as he leaned his body over mine, not quite touching.
Enough.I may have blown it by not staying, but it was my first party at Bribury. Of many. There would be many opportunities beyond Logan Fields.
Just as I was drifting off to sleep, it hit me. And in my head, I hummed along to a song my Beatles fan grandfather used to sing.
Strawberry Fields Forever.
Straw.
* * *
We wentto another party on Saturday night, this one in a dorm that was across the quad from Creyts. I flirted with a couple of guys, but none of us hooked up with anyone. The guys were fine, but I was seriously questioning why I hadn’t stayed at Logan Fields’ house. The guys at the dorm couldn’t compare with his ruggedness. They seemed like boys, which they were. And Logan was only a year older than my fellow freshmen, but his body was worlds apart.
