Also, not for nothing, I didn’t love the way he was looking at Greer.
“Okay,” I said now, glancing in her direction, trying to gauge whether or not she was disappointed at the prospect of my leaving. “I’m going. Any kind of beer in particular?”
“You can use your judgment,” Hunter said generously. “Nothing cheap, though. We’re gentlemen around here, are we not?” He smiled again, his canines sharp and gleaming. “Greer, sweetheart. Good to see you.”
“Hunter.” She rolled her eyes indulgently. “Always a pleasure.”
“It is, right?” He reached out and squeezed her knee through her jeans, quick and casual. “I think so too.”
“I hate that dude,” I said once he was gone, sliding heavily off the counter and excavating my jacket from the pile on a kitchen chair.
“I suspect,” Greer said brightly, still sitting up on the counter, “that the feeling is mutual.”
“You’re picking that up too, right?” I asked. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not whining about getting hazed or whatever—”
“Aren’t you?” Greer teased.
“I’m not!” I insisted. “It just feels, like, personal, that’s all. Don’t you think that seemed kind of personal?”
Greer shook her head. “Hunter’s just like that.”
“I guess.” I looked down at her knee for a second, feeling my eyebrows crawl. “How well do you guys know each other?”
“I mean, not that well,” she said with a shrug. “Just enough to know he’s—”
“A real dick?”
“Exactly,” she said with a grin.
“Yeah.” I sighed, shrugging into my jacket. “Anyway. I’m gonna go take care of this. I’ll see you when I get back?”
But Greer shook her head. “I’m gonna go collect Bri and drag her out of here in a minute,” she said. “I’ve got a response paper due at midnight. I want to read it one more time before I send it in.”
I nodded, knowing better than to ask whether that was necessary. Greer’s first year at Harvard hadn’t gone super, from the sound of it. She’d told me bits and pieces of the story in passing—a stats teacher who’d had it in for her, a couple of big assignments she’d whiffed—but the upshot was that she was on academic probation this semester, which meant if she didn’t pull her grades up by Christmas she was done. “Tomorrow, then?”
Greer tilted her dark, glossy head to the side. “Maybe,” she agreed slowly. “What did you have in mind?”
“I mean, I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to sound as eager as I knew I probably did. “Walking tour of the Freedom Trail, maybe.”
“Take a ride on a duck boat.”
“Visit the USSConstitution,” I joked. Then, dropping my voice a little, not quite looking at her: “We could always blow off all our classes, go to the beach for the day.”
Greer snorted. “You realize it’s going to be like fifty degrees.”
“We’ll wear sweaters,” I countered easily—enjoying myself now, glad to have settled back into a rhythm with her and hoping she was glad about it too. We’d had fun together, a million years ago. It had been good, what we were. “Take our shoes off. It’ll be like a Nicholas Sparks movie, we can do the whole thing.”
That made her smile. “Tempting,” she admitted, “but not really an option for me at this particular academic juncture. I’m done at noon, though. Why don’t you come by the suite and I’ll swipe you into the dining hall at Hemlock?”
“You sort of lack a romantic imagination,” I informed her. “Do you know that about yourself?”
Greer nodded seriously. “I have been told that in the past, yes.”
“I guess I forgive you,” I decided.
“That’s very generous.”
“I’m a generous guy,” I told her, “as evidenced by the fact that I guess I am about to go buy beer for the entire Harvard University lacrosse team and fifty of their closest friends.” I gestured grandly toward the back door of the lax house. “Wish me luck.”
