Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [47]
“Hi.”
She looked me over. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m homesick.” It was the first thing that popped into my head, and it was, of course, ridiculous—we were seniors; we’d been away from home for four years. But Kimmie simply nodded. She held something out to me—a wad of paper towels, soaked in cold water. “Put this on the back of your neck,” she instructed, in her soft, lilting voice.
I did as she told me as more tears welled in my eyes. It’s the hormones, I told myself. It had to be. Kimmie’s hand was light as she patted my back once, twice, three times, like a mother burping a baby. I waited for her to ask the obvious questions, about why I was homesick and whether that was really what was making me cry like this, given all of the other, much more obvious reasons—I’d been dumped, I’d gotten a bad grade on my thesis, someone had called me ugly on the Internet, I’d found out that I was pregnant. That last one brought a bitter smile to my lips, and it was that bitterness that finally stopped the tears. I walked to the sink, splashed more cold water on my face, and finger-combed my hair. Kimmie watched all this silently, standing a polite distance away from me, the bumps of her vertebrae showing through the fabric of her T-shirt, a few freckles dotting each cheek.
“Want to go to Ivy? Chet and Dan are there.”
“I don’t know if I’m up for that.”
“Still life with oafs,” she said. I blinked, sure that I’d heard her wrong. She lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug and gave me a surprisingly sly smile. “That’s how I always think of it. Dinners there. Parties. These boys.”
“You think Chet’s an oaf?”
When she smiled, a dimple flashed in one of her cheeks. “He’s a sweet oaf. But an oaf, yes.”
“So it’s not true love.”
She shook her head, hair swishing. “I just wanted to have some fun before I graduated.”
I was startled at how closely what she’d said echoed what I’d been thinking, about how time was short and how I should have some fun, too. “And is he? Fun?”
She smiled, shrugging again. “If you like beer. He took me to the beach once. Atlantic City.” She hummed a few bars of the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name, surprising me. I’d have figured Kimmie with her violin as someone whose knowledge of contemporary music ended at around 1890. “And to Six Flags for my birthday.” This was interesting. Princeton students made trips to New York City, for parties, or off-Broadway experimental theater, or museum exhibits, but no one I knew would ever admit to visiting an amusement park, waiting in line with the teeming, sunburned, flabby masses, unless maybe they’d taken mushrooms first and gone as a joke.
Her smile widened, displaying small, even white teeth. “Chet’s afraid of roller coasters.”
“He is?”
She nodded. “Come on,” she said, and linked her arms with me, like we were schoolgirl chums. We walked through the soft spring night across the street to Ivy, Princeton’s oldest eating club, one that had always been home to the sons (and, since 1991, the daughters) of privilege, the future kings and queens of America, a club you had to go through a rush-like evaluation process called bicker to join. It was a gorgeous, blooming spring night, but I felt awful: my breasts ached so much I winced whenever my shirt touched them, and I had an acne cyst throbbing beneath the skin above my right eye, making me feel like my forehead was trying to give birth. The grand brick mansion halfway down Prospect Avenue, entering the dining room, with its wood paneling and high ceilings, the mellow gleam of lamplight on the tables brought me back to myself. I’d be done with the hormones soon enough, and besides, I was doing a good thing, a generous thing. All of this would work out: some poor infertile woman would get her baby; I’d get my money; my father would get another chance.
Dan and Chet were out back drinking. Dan pulled me close, squeezing me too hard. The first time we’d had sex, he’d fallen to his knees in front of me, his arms wrapped around my legs, his face buried between them. “God, you’re hot,” he’d groaned.