Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [32]
“It’ll be fun!” my roommate, Vanessa, had told me, slipping into her own tight low-riding jeans and the inevitable silk tank top, with a down coat on top, because it was January and freezing. I let her drag me along, in my skirt and tights, my sweater set and my loafers, even though I truly didn’t see the point of parties. If I wanted to be hot and uncomfortable in the presence of drunk people yelling at one another, it would be easy enough to arrange those conditions, but why would I ever want to?
In the dorm room, I’d stood in the corner next to the stereo speakers, sneaking glances at my watch and wondering how soon I could feign a headache and get back to my room. There was a girl I recognized from my art history seminar lying on her back on one of the desks, giggling as a boy poured tequila into her navel, then bent down to slurp it out. Maybe it was supposed to be sexy, but all I could think was germs! and disease! and belly-button lint! At another desk, a half dozen of my classmates stood in front of a computer, watching porn. That was a big thing at Vassar: girls watching dirty movies with their boyfriends to show that they were progressive and evolved. I turned away as, onscreen, a naked man with a six-pack and tribal tattoos pulled his penis out of the woman he’d been hunched over and smacked it, over and over, into her cheeks.
I must have been making a face, because when I looked up, a guy I didn’t know was staring at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
He pointed. “Church lady!” he hollered. His friends started laughing, and then the girl with tequila all over her belly sat up and started laughing, too. Even after the guy who’d first said it had wandered away, probably to poop into the host’s rice cooker, then post a picture on Facebook, people were still saying it and laughing. Of course, Vanessa had overheard, and she’d hustled me over to the porn computer so she could show me YouTube videos of a man dressed as a woman with a sour face and a blue tweed suit and eyeglasses on a chain acting offended about everything. The guy had undoubtedly meant it as a devastating insult. I was not insulted. Given a choice between being a church lady or one of my female classmates who’d have to wake up the next morning wondering whether her nipples were now online, I’d take the church lady every time.
“Bettina Croft?”
I got to my feet. A woman was standing in the doorway of an office. Through the open door I could see bright art on the walls, and a dozen framed photographs on a side table. The woman had a friendly-looking face, brown hair in a ponytail, and a white short-sleeved T-shirt on top of a pair of loose-fitting cropped linen pants the color of raspberries. She wore flip-flops and a necklace of brightly colored glass beads as her only accessory. “Pleasure to meet you,” she said, shaking my hand and leading me inside. “Now. Before we get started, one quick question, and you have to tell me the truth,” she said, after I’d taken the chair across from her desk and settled my purse beside me. “Are these pajamas?” She stood, pointing at her pants. I stared.
“Excuse me?”
“I know you’re not here to talk about my pants,” she said. “We’ll get started in a sec. It’s just, I’m so distracted! I bought them—it was this ungodly hot day, and everything was at the dry cleaner’s, so I was wearing a wool skirt, and I thought I was going to melt, so I just ran in and grabbed them off the rack. They’re really comfortable, and I liked them so much I went online to buy another pair, and they were listed under ‘loungewear’ instead of pants, and I’m worried that I’m actually out in public in my PJs.” She made a face. “If that’s true, my partner