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By Root 469 0

Looking down at him, his broad, muscled chest, his penis, moist and sticky at the tip, jerking in the air like a hitchhiker’s spastic thumb, a wave of something surged through me, a feeling that felt nothing like desire and a lot like nausea. I’d had to peel his hands off the backs of my thighs and run to the bathroom, where I’d bent over the sink, positive I was going to throw up, even though all I’d had that night were two glasses of Champagne. Once the urge had passed, I’d lifted my head, looking at myself in the mirror and thought, What am I doing? I don’t want to sleep with him. He’s a dolt. Of course I’d slept with him anyhow—at that point, it would have been rude not to—but as I’d felt him push his way inside me (“Tight,” he’d announced, like he was paying me an enormous compliment), I’d felt sick to my stomach, disgusted with him and disgusted with myself.

We’d slept together a few times a week since then, and Dan had been polite and accommodating each time. He was, I had to admit, nothing if not well-mannered. “Can I come on your tits?” he’d ask, in the same solicitous tone as a waiter asking if I wanted fresh-ground pepper on my pasta. He’d go down on me until I was sure his tongue was numb and his jaw was aching; he’d try his best to please me, and tell me I was beautiful . . . but it never felt right, and I’d never been able to figure out why. He just wasn’t the guy for me, I’d eventually decided, and when he headed out west after graduation, I didn’t think he’d miss me much.

I took a seat next to Kimmie, knowing how the evening would unfold. There’d be a game of pool, or croquet on the back lawn, with more plastic cups of beer. I could wander down to Witherspoon Street for an ice-cream cone, or go to the movies or a lecture or a concert. Eventually, most of the students would find their way back to Prospect Avenue. They would make their way from club basement to club basement, a subterranean version of the John Cheever story where a man traverses his neighborhood by way of the backyard swimming pools.

I thought I could feel Kimmie watching me as the night went on—during the croquet game, when she sat on a plastic lawn chair and clapped as Chet smacked his ball through the wickets, then later, in the basement, where we shouted toward each other over the music. Maybe she was trying to figure out why I’d been having a breakdown in the bathroom, but she didn’t say anything. I made myself wait until eleven. Then I told Dan that I had an awful headache and was going home.

“Do you need anything?” Chet asked. One of his muscled arms was slung loosely over Kimmie’s shoulders, and as he pulled her close, I felt a stab of something I couldn’t name.

“Just some rest.”

“I’ll walk back with you,” said Kimmie, slipping out from under Chet’s grasp and looping her arm through mine again.

We crossed Witherspoon Street and passed the great gothic pile of Firestone Library, heading along a wide slate path. A sliver of moon hung above us. The sounds of an a capella group singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” underneath Blair Arch echoed through the night.

“We should take a picture for the website,” Kimmie said, and I nodded, surprised because, again, I’d been thinking the exact same thing—how the night looked like a recruiting poster for Princeton, how there was no way you could stroll through campus on a soft spring evening like this and not believe that this was the most beautiful school ever imagined, that the students here were the luckiest, happiest ones in the world.

“You want anything? Advil? Excedrin?” She gave me a coy smile, one I’d never seen in the admissions office. “Something stronger?”

I must have looked shocked, because Kimmie laughed out loud and clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, come on, Jules. Don’t look so surprised.”

“I thought you were a nice girl,” I blurted, which made her clap again, before asking, “So what can I get you?”

I shook my head regretfully, thinking of my appointment at the clinic the next morning. “I better not.”

“You don’t drink,” Kimmie observed.

Surprised again, I answered, “I