“I’m not sure.” Greer looks toward one of the students, who’s tipped a plastic bottle into a deflated balloon and is filling it slowly, a bright smile on her face, three tiny hoop earrings piercing her right eyebrow, long braids on either side of her head, reaching almost to the ground. She’s got a smudge of bright yellow paint across her right cheekbone.
“You have your camera?” I ask Greer, without thinking.
“In my car.” She points up ahead, where her silver crossover is about a half block away. She takes a step forward, and I immediately, instinctively, move to follow. “Excuse me.” Her cheeks flush immediately at the way she’s said it—a little overloud, maybe. The streak of yellow paint has nothing on Greer’s flush. I feel like a magnet’s drawing me to her car to get thatfucking camera.
The girl with the braids looks up, and Greer speaks again, more quietly this time. “I was just wondering what y’all are doing?”
I must make a small noise, part surprise, part delight, and when Greer looks over her shoulder at me, I smile at her and mouthy’all?It’s the first time I’ve ever heard a little of the South in her accent, the native lilt I sometimes hear in Barden, and it sends a shot of heat right through me. She gives me a small shrug in return.
Another student from the group stands, brushes his hands across the sides of his jeans, and sticks one out to Greer. “Hey, I’m Tarek,” he says, his eyes on her bright and interested. I’d be jealous, but I fucking get it. Who wouldn’t look interested, that’s the thing. He uses his other hand to gesture down to the girl in the braids. “This is Britt.”
“This is our senior project,” Britt says, staying crouched on her haunches while she ties off the balloon she’d been filling. “Guerrilla art, except of course we had to get ten thousand kinds of permission first.”
“So it’s not really guerrilla,” Tarek says. “But it’s still cool.”
“You’re going to—” Greer says, looking down toward the baskets, then toward the tarps spreading ever wider over by the wall. “Paint balloon it?”
“Yep,” says Britt. “That’s the backdrop. Tarek and I will add more later. But like, this is perfect! Because the whole thing is to have a bunch of people participate? You guys can go in on this! We don’t have as big a crowd as we wanted because we weren’t allowed to do it during regular business hours. And like, we don’t want idiot people who just want to come by and draw a dick and balls, you know?”
“Uh,” Greer says. “I—would not draw that. Those.”
I bite my tongue to keepfrom laughing.
“Great!” Tarek says. His eyes slide toward me, maybe noticing me here for the first time. “We’re going to start in a few minutes, so hang out if you and your...”—he breaks off, a tiny pause—“friend want to join us.”
“Sure,” Greer says, watching him walk toward the tarps, her hand squeezing and releasing that strap on her bag.
I clear my throat, feeling awkward. Should’ve offered to carry her books, I guess. “I could go get the camera, if you want. You probably need to talk to him about permission to photograph.” Tarek looks like the kind of guy who wouldn’t have a panic attack when he’s a hair’s breadth from kissing her. He looks young, light, easy, free.
For long seconds, she’s staring ahead—after Tarek, at the wall, I’m not sure which, though I know what my preference is. Then she turns and looks up at me, and I have a memory of her outside the tent last weekend. I like Greer in this light, twilight. I like what it does to her skin, like the light curl that twists the short hair by her ears and along the nape of her neck. I like that she seems different at this time of day—looser, closerto the surface.
I shove my hands in my pockets, wait for her to tell me what to do next. Get the camera, get on home to Kit’s, get bent.
“I don’t want to photograph it,” she says, finally. She smiles. Close-to-the-surface Greer. “I don’t want to watch it. I want todoit.”
Chapter 9
Greer
I don’t know what’sgotten into me.
I’d come to tonight’s lecture determined to maintain the distance from Alex I’ve committed to in the days since our—ourmomentat The Meltdown. OurPress Playmoment, the one that had almost made me forget the Greer I need to be for the next month—focused, steadfast, serious.
When I’d left Alex on Friday, skin still flushed and tight, lips still sparking in anticipation, I’d driven straight home and marched right past Doug and Ava up to my bedroom, where Kenneth was lying like a gray loaf of bread in the center of my comforter, slitting his eyes open in welcome or in knowing censure. From the same wooden chair that had been in my childhood bedroom, I’d stared down at the surface of my desk, looking to set my eyes on things that would remind me of what’s important. My degree application, currently declined, waiting for the exception I need from Hiltunen. My contract to Holy Cross, signed in Dennise’slooping script.
My passports to freedom.
What I need, I’d told myself, is to graduate and do well at my job. To stop daydreaming, afternoon dreaming, early-evening dreaming, all-night dreaming about a man who’s here to help himself as much as he’s here to help me. A man who’ll be gone even before I hold that diploma in my hand. A man who might, given the look on his face when we’d parted, already be gone.
For the rest of the weekend, I’d stayed focused. Each time I’d held my camera, I’d thought of Alex, but I’d worked hard to push those thoughts away. I’d read the boring manual about my camera online; I’d studied all of Hiltunen’s future assignments. In between, I’d worked on minor tasks related to my thesis, caught up on emails, finished patient notes from work on Friday. I’d had dinner at my parents’ house, had gone to brunch with Zoe and Aiden, had taken a long walk through the city streets, quietly pocketing brochures for apartments for rent.
I was stickingwith the plan.
Of course, for as long as he’s in town, Alex is part of the plan—so when he’d texted to let me know about tonight’s lecture, there’d been no doubt that I’d attend. All morning at work I’d thought about it, had told myself that nothing about what had happened Friday had to change the plan. We’re friends; he’s my best friend’s brother. He’s a professional who’s doing me amassive favor.
But then.
Seeing Alex up there tonight, twelve-foot-tall projections of his genius behind him, his manner easy and graceful, his answers thoughtful and funny and sometimes sad, his sea-glass eyes occasionally seeking mine—something had shifted inside of me. That Alex up there, that was a real and true Alex. But it wasn’t the whole Alex, the Alex I’d been getting to know over the last week—the one who gets heroic over a condescending professor, the one who refolds his sister’s towels, the one who says,We cantry a ladybug.
