She nods in acknowledgement, grabbing the pitcher and spinning away.
Daan is right; she is graceful in a strangely elegant way. Is that what drew Carter’s attention to her in their shared class last year?
Jesus, Jo, get a grip. It was a class. Is he not supposed to know her name?
I lean forward over the bar. “And a shot of Jäger, please,” I call after Dove.
She holds up a finger in acknowledgement, and I lower myself back down.
“Jäger. Must be serious,” a familiar voice says behind me.
Carter.
I stiffen, gripping the edge of the bar. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
I sense more than see Carter’s shrug as he moves up next to me to rest his elbows on the bar. He’s careful, though, to keep facing forward, like we’re just two people who happened to bump into each other here. “I ran into Lennie in the hallway. She invited me,” he says.
“Bullshit.” I turn toward him. “Last week, you wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence, and now you’re here, hanging out with my friends?” The same ones we’ve been trying to hide this…whateverfrom for over a year. “What happened to ‘this is a mistake we can’t keep making’?”
A mistake that has generally landed us with our hands and mouths all over each other in whatever enclosed space was nearby: a closet in Lennie’s apartment the first time, before we knew ourprofessional connection, but then also a balcony, a study room on the third floor of P. Edgars, the tiny overheated bathroom in the union by the bowling lanes, I can’t even remember them all.
Carter’s shoulder is dangerously close to me; he smells like pine and something citrus. An insane part of my brain is whispering at me to shift nearer to him, to press my chest against him, to make that heat flare in his expression once more. It makes me feel powerful, alive, in a way that even feeding does not. He’s brilliant, observant, kind, and extremely restrained. But I can rile him. I can make him suck in a sharp breath and demand more, even when doing so is against both of our best interests.
It’s addicting and utterly terrifying at the same time.
“I saw your paperwork in Stephens’s inbox,” he says quietly, still not looking at me.
I freeze. Dr. Stephens is the Psychology Department chairperson, my advisor, and Carter’s boss.
“If you change your major now, you’ll be stuck here for at least another year. Maybe two,” Carter says.
He’s wrong—if I play my cards right and go to grad school here, it’ll befourmore years. Which is exactly the plan. Beecher is the only place I’ve ever felt safe, the only place that has ever felt like home. Not that he would understand that. Not that hecan. At Beecher, I can be normal. Or, as normal as it’s possible for me to ever be.
“I’m not changing my major,” I say. “I’m adding one. Psychology and sociology.” Because God help me, if I can learn to understand people—that is, full-blooded humans—it’ll all be worth it.
“It has nearly the same effect, Jocasta,” Carter says in that dark disapproving tone that sends a blade of heat through me, despite his use of my full name. Or maybe because of it.
“And Beecher won’t be the same without your friends here. You know that. Why are you working so hard to stay?” he asks, leaning forward on the bar. “You’re smart. And the smart move is not sticking around here for more undergrad.”
I clear my throat—it feels like I can never speak clearly around him. “I believe this is considered—what is it, again?—oh yeah, none of your business. I have an advisor, thank you very much.”
Dove returns with my Jägermeister and a full pitcher. I slide my credit card out of my pocket and pass it over.
“Listen, I know what I said last time,” Carter says tightly, his eyes fixed on the line of liquor bottles behind the bar. “I screwed up, and I’m sorry.”
I shoot the Jäger, wincing at the bite. “And?” I ask, my eyes watering from the shot and only the shot. I hope.
“What do you mean ‘and’?” he asks, turning toward me with wariness.
“What do you want, Carter?” I say, enunciating each word carefully. I can already feel the pleasant heat from the liqueur spreading through me.
Dove returns with my card and the bill. I stuff the card back into my pocket and scrawl my name and a generous tip that I probably can’t really afford across the bottom of the receipt.
Carter makes a soft, frustrated noise. “I don’t know. Can’t we be… friends? For now? There are no rules against that.”
Technically, since I’m no longer in his class, we’re not doing anything wrong. But we’re still in the same department. People, including possibly Dr. Stephens, will assume anything going on now was going on before. And those rumors might well follow Carter elsewhere, tainting his career before it even has a chance to start.
In other words, the same problems that have plagued us from the beginning, from that party—the one where he didn’t know I was an undergrad, the one where I had no clue he was a TA, let alone scheduled to bemyTA—are still present and accounted for.
