In the end we took the bus to Castle Island, eating paper cups of French fries from Sully’s and dodging seagulls so big and mean they looked like omens. The wind was freezing cold against my face. It was nearly dark by the time we got back to Cambridge, Greer’s chilly hand slipping into mine as we made our way across campus toward Hemlock. I could hear an old Lorde song drifting out somebody’s open window, the tinkling ring of a bell on a passing bike.
“You have plans for tonight?” Greer asked, our index fingers still hooked together even as she walked backward up the wide stone steps in front of the building. “Or do you maybe want to come up for a bit?”
“I can come up,” I said a beat too quickly, my heart turning over once inside my chest. “Yeah, of course I can come up.”
“Okay,” Greer said, and the smile that spread across her face was slow and knowing. “Well then. Come up.”
I followed her through the lobby of Hemlock and up the winding staircase, breathing in the cold city smell coming off her, the ends of her hair just brushing against my face. I was imagining the two of us alone in her room, her bare skin golden in the glow of the Christmas lights tacked up above the windows, but when she opened the door to her suite, all five of her suitemates were sprawled like sirens across the furniture in the common room—the TV blaring, the smell of nail polish sharp in the air.
“Oh!” I said before I could stop myself, unable to keep the disappointment out of my voice. Margot was eating Cup Noodles while Celine painted little yellow happy faces onto her toenails;Bri tapped away on her laptop as Keiko scrolled industriously through her phone. “Uh. Hey, guys.”
Dagny looked at me from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a blanket over her shoulders like a cape, her lips quirking faintly. “Hey yourself.” She raised an eyebrow at Greer. “Please tell me you didn’t bring a dude to Richard Gere pregame.”
“I mean, not justanydude,” Greer protested, shrugging out of her jacket and draping it playfully over Dagny’s head. “It’s Linden. He barely counts.”
“Uh, hang on,” I said. “Putting a pin inthatcharming bit of personal description for a minute: What’s Richard Gere pregame?”
“Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, Big Harvard,” Greer explained with a grin. She crossed the common room to the kitchenette and pulled a couple of clementines and a bag of Halloween candy down off the shelf before wriggling onto the love seat next to Bri. “Every Friday night we pregame to a different Richard Gere movie—”
“Although sometimes we don’t actually make it out after,” Bri explained, “because the act of participating in Richard Gere pregame reminds us that we don’t actually like most people besides each other and Richard Gere.”
“I like Richard Gere more than I like you guys,” Celine piped up. “To be clear.”
“Understood,” Greer promised.
“Entered into the record,” Margot agreed.
“Anyway,” Greer continued, her expression all mischief when she looked back in my direction, “we’re doingAn Officer and aGentlemantonight, though I guess it’s possible I forgot to mention that when I invited you up here? I can’t really remember. Of course, if it doesn’t sound like a good time to you…” She trailedoff.
“Uh-huh.” I nodded slowly, gazing at the six of them for a moment, their sweatpants and their ponytails and their barely contained amusement. They looked like sisters from a fairy tale. They looked like a flock of dangerous birds. “Richard Gere pregame sounds great.”
Greer smiled at that, holding a clementine out in my direction. “It does, doesn’t it?” she asked, scooting closer to Bri to make room for me. I sat down beside her, wedging myself into the corner of the too-small love seat. Taking the fruit from her hand.
3
Saturday, 10/26/24
I went for a long run most Saturday mornings that fall, looping my way through the quiet streets of Cambridge or over the BU bridge and down into the crowded pedestrian bustle of Back Bay. It was the weekend before Halloween, and Harvard Square was full and festive, cotton cobwebs hanging in the store windows and little kids wandering around dressed as superheroes and spies. There were hundreds of jack-o’-lanterns stacked on risers on Cambridge Common, ready to be lit as part of a festival that night.
My stomach growled as I turned off Mass Ave and back onto campus—I usually ate with my roommates on the weekends, the three of us jostling each other in line for the waffle maker in the dining hall downstairs. I liked Dave and Duncan a lot, generally, though I knew they were both angling for an invitation to the lax house one of these nights and were starting to wonder why I hadn’t delivered. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed by them, though back at Bartley I probably would have been: the earnestness of them, theirjokey T-shirts and Axe body spray and utter lack of guile. None of that felt like it mattered nearly as much here as it had in high school, in general, but still every time I opened my mouth to ask them to tag along I imagined Hunter catching sight of them across the room like a poacher snagging a pair of baby elephants in the crosshairs of his rifle, and figured I was doing them both a favor by acting like I didn’t know they wanted to come.
“Hey,” I said now, pushing the door of our room open. “Do you guys want to—”
I broke off, stopping short: Holiday Proctor was sitting in my desk chair, her feet up on my desk like the villain in a James Bond movie.
“Shit,” I said, my shoulders dropping.
“You forgot,” she accused.
“I didn’t forget,” I protested.
“Uh-huh.” Holiday wasn’t buying. “You know, I literally thought,Just this once,I’m not going to send Michael a reminder that we made plans to hang out, and he is fully going to blank it.”
“Does it get exhausting, being right all the time?”
“You’d think so,” she said sweetly, “but actually I find it quite invigorating.”
“I forgot a little,” I admitted, guilt prickling warmly at the back of my neck. “But I’m really happy you’re here.”
