A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [88]
“We all need help,” Harrison said.
“I’m serious. I’m worried about him. Last night. Last night, he was so drunk I honestly don’t think he even knew I was there.”
“Where were you?”
“On the beach.”
Harrison didn’t want to think about Stephen and Nora on the beach. He forced himself not to glance at the inside of Nora’s thigh, perfectly visible to him. “I don’t know,” Harrison said. “I don’t think he’d listen. I’m just amazed he hasn’t gotten caught more often than he has. Truthfully, I can’t believe he’s still in school.”
“He’s doing better with his grades.”
“You’re helping him with that.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I guess it’s good you’re doing that, because otherwise he’s going to blow his scholarship to Stanford,” Harrison said. Stephen, whose grades were only average, had been recruited by the school’s baseball coach. No one else at Kidd had gotten into Stanford. Harrison would go to Northeastern, Nora to New York University.
“He’ll drown at Stanford,” Harrison said.
(Harrison, with a heart-stopping pause in the library, checked himself. Had he really used the word “drown”?)
Nora rolled her neck in a lazy, sensuous way.
“Hey, listen,” Harrison said, putting his hand on Nora’s shoulder, fulfilling a monthslong ache simply to touch her. “If you want to help Stephen, I’m with you.”
Nora shrieked, and Harrison let go of her shoulder as if his fingers had been singed. Nora grabbed the sides of her waist where Stephen had goosed her. It had not been a gentle goosing. The pokes, Harrison thought, had been more like jabs. Stephen lifted Nora to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed Nora on her neck, a long and demonstrably possessive kiss, something Stephen seldom did in front of Harrison. Harrison had, in fact, appreciated the couple’s previous restraint in his presence. Their threesome would have been impossible without it.
“So, Branch, what are you going to help Nora out with?” Stephen asked.
Nora pulled slightly away from Stephen.
“We’ll be late for practice,” Harrison said, checking his watch. He saw Stephen’s sports bag twenty feet behind the rock on which Harrison and Nora had been sitting. Had Stephen intended to sneak up on them?
“So, hey,” Stephen said with a winning smile that revealed perfectly white teeth, “party Friday!” He smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. “Binder’s beach house.”
“Stephen,” Nora said quietly.
“We have a game early Saturday,” Harrison pointed out.
“Actually,” Nora said to Stephen, “if you want to know the truth.” She paused. “We were talking about your drinking.”
“What?”
Stephen put his hands in the pockets of his pants and stood immobile for a long moment.
“My drinking?” he asked finally. “Really? What about it?”
“We’re worried about you,” Nora said.
Stephen nodded, as if slowly taking in the new information. “You and Harrison are worried about me.” Harrison watched as Stephen’s bewilderment turned to something harder. “Well, nice to know my friends are looking out for me,” he said. “Um, Harrison? Did you mention to Nora that you were plastered Saturday night?”
“That’s different, Stephen,” Nora said.
“Oh, really? Cause Harrison couldn’t find the toilet and took a piss against Hodgkins, which, as all present know, is the freshman girls’ dorm.”
This was a fact, one Harrison had hoped to forget.
“Maybe the both of you,” Nora said. “Maybe both of you should get some help.”
“It’s not like we’re doing drugs,” Stephen said, and Harrison heard, for the first time since Stephen had snuck up on them, a thickness in Stephen’s voice. Had he been drinking already?
Harrison walked to the place where he’d dropped his backpack and sports bag and hoisted them over his shoulder.
“So, Harrison, you in for Friday?” Stephen called after him. “Forbes needs five bucks from each of us by Thursday.”
And Harrison had felt then an inexplicable kind of helplessness, a desire not to be left out of a party at which Stephen and Nora would be present.
“Sure,” Harrison had said, starting off in the direction of the baseball diamond. “Count me in.