The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 27. Sophomore Year - Chapter 5

I spent the next week going back and forth on whether I would pitch my idea to Kevin: that I could, conceivably, go with him to Paris. That we could not be apart for a whole semester.

But I hadn’t, even though I was running out of time because the paperwork deadline was on Sunday at six o’clock. I had seen Kevin exactly twice in the intervening week, and we managed to avoid the topic of Paris altogether, because I didn’t want to give him an answer and he was maybe nervous that my answer wouldn’t be the one he wanted.

I finally screwed up the courage on Friday, when we were finishing up lunch at Cafe Nino on Carrollton Avenue.

“Huh,” he said, with a smile. I watched as his mind turned over the scenario, slowly and methodically, wading into the finer details. “Could you even go as a sophomore? Would they let you?”

“I came in with 18 credits from AP classes,” I told him. “After this semester, I’m technically already a junior. So I could do it. It would count.”

His smile grew a bit larger. “You’d really come?”

“I mean, I’m thinking about it,” I said. “There’s details, obviously. But I’m thinking about it.”

“It’s be great if you could,” he said. “It’d be like when we were in New York. We’ll just go to Paris, and be like, ‘This is my boyfriend,’ and no one will think anything of it. I’ve Facebook-stalked the people going, and there’s like a handful of other Tulane gays going.”

I had the sudden, sinking realization that Kevin was misinterpreting exactly what I was saying, and I thought for a second how to steady myself, how to communicate that us being in Paris wasn’t a major step forward; it would be an easier way of maintaining the status quo.

Because it was a Tulane-sponsored trip, after all, and the people we met there would not be strangers. This wasn’t New York, with Carver and Lizzie and Jesse; people who existed in a parallel universe, who I never had to encounter again, who never would encounter anyone from Tulane or Iota Chi. The people in Paris would be tentacles of Tulane, stretching across the Atlantic and feeding gossip to the hungry people of New Orleans.

Be like, ‘This is my boyfriend.’

So I tempered expectations, just slightly: “Well, like I said, I don’t even know if it’s feasible,” I said. “I don’t even know if my parents would go for it. Or how it’d affect my course load.”

“Well, go into Advising before they close today,” he said. “Sunday’s the deadline. See if you can work it out.”

I had already gone into Advising, earlier in the week. The woman I spoke with was not altogether than encouraging for sophomores going abroad, even with junior status, but it was begrudgingly possible and she gave me the paperwork. It was sitting on my desk at my room in Mayer, face down.

“Yeah,” I said, “though now that I’m saying it, it sounds like a colossal undertaking on such short notice.”

“I know, I know,” he agreed. “I promise I won’t get my hopes up. But it’d be fun if you could.” He paused. “The paperwork and deposit is due at six on Sunday.” He stressed the final word again: “Sunday.”

“I know, I know.”

“It’s Friday right now.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

“So, even if you’re not going,” he said, “I’m submitting mine on Sunday. Unless you tell literally and explicitly me otherwise.” He smiled. “Because I know you, and I know you’d rather the entire conversation just disappear without you actually having to decide anything. So I decided to put the burden on you to tell me not to go.”

“I don’t know if I appreciate that assessment.”

“Don’t blame the messenger,” he replied, with a smirk. “Sunday.”

“But, like, Monday or Tuesday’s okay though?”

His smile broadened, and he gave me the finger.

“Yes,” I promised. “I’ve got it.” In a mocking, overdramatic voice, I added, “Sunday.”

And what else could I say? In the back of my mind, I had considered the possibility that the conversation would, in fact, just disappear without me having to decide anything, without me having to choose between being the bad guy or risk losing Kevin for an entire semester.

Kevin, however, seemed unconcerned with my ongoing dilemma, and he took a final sip of his soda. “Ready to go?”

I nodded, and we headed outside to Kevin’s Tercel. He turned the key in the ignition and, looking behind him as he backed the car out of the space, he told me: “Don’t think I didn’t see how you bristled at the thought of being out in Paris.”

“I didn’t bristle,” I said, and I really didn’t have any other defense than an outright denial because I, of course, had bristled, but I didn’t think it had been that obvious to a layperson.

But, apparently, whether or not I had bristled was just a launchpad to the topic Kevin actually had in mind, because his next question was: “Do you ever think about us telling people? About us?”

That question came out of nowhere, rattled off as he was backing the car out of the Cafe Nino parking lot, as casually as if he had asked me to turn on the radio.

And I did think about it, certainly, but I also thought about how things were, and how nice things were right now, and how we didn’t need anyone else intruding on our business. When you were ready to come out on such a grand scale, I figured you’d know it; you’d feel it in your gut. That something in you was different, that something in you couldn’t live with the weight of secrecy any longer.

But I did not mind being an enigma. I was not going to apologize for wanting my privacy. Kevin and I were happy with the way things were, and we were in love, and why was that anyone else’s business but ours? Why would we have to put ourselves on display, for the world to dissect and judge and comment on?

I didn’t respond verbally--maybe I bristled again--but he continued anyway, “Well, okay: more specifically, what do you think about telling Veronica about us?”

Veronica who, of course, loved to gossip and was close friends with my closest friends in Iota Chi, who also liked to gossip. Veronica, who was nice but invasive, who would certainly not let a situation like a romance between me and Kevin Malley go undisclosed to society.

“Well,” I said, stiffly. “Veronica got me a date for our party tomorrow.”

“Oh yes,” Kevin said, rolling his eyes, “the top secret Iota Chi date party that even I’m not allowed to know about.” He paused, turned the wheel towards the neutral ground on Carrollton so he could line up with Jeannette Street. “For the record, I highly doubt that Veronica hooked you up with a girl thinking you’re going to take her home and bang her afterwards. She knows I’m gay, and she just keeps asking me if I’ve found anyone because I think she knows I have. She always gets this glint in her eye when I tell her I’m going to meet you.”

“Why does she suspect?” I asked, glaring at him. “How often do you tell her you’re going to meet me?”

“I’m not telling her anything,” he snapped. “Don’t be paranoid. You told me not to say anything. So I’m not saying anything. That’s not what this is about.”

“Like this summer, when you didn’t say anything to anyone?”

Kevin shook his head in silent annoyance, but didn’t want to get dragged off the primary topic. “Veronica wouldn’t say anything.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “She’s the biggest gossip I’ve ever met in my life. She’s the first one to be like, ‘You’ll never guess who slept with so-and-so last night.’”

“She’s not like that with the important stuff,” he said. “She’s known I’m gay for almost two years, and she hasn’t told a single person.”

“As far as you know.”

“She hasn’t told a single person,” he asserted, again. “And I hate lying to her. I’m not saying everyone needs to know just yet, but doesn’t it weigh on you that not a single one of your best friends knows about one of the most important things in your life?”

“That’s not true,” I said. “Patrick knows about us.”

“Yeah, so,” he said, “you get Patrick. And I get no one.”

“You get Carver,” I said. “And the other 8 million people in New York City.”

“Don’t think he hasn’t said plenty about this,” Kevin replied.

And both of us sat in silence for another block, the whirring of the Tercel somehow amplifying the fact that the stormclouds were ripping in. We were about eight blocks from Kevin’s house, which was just slightly too long to wait for the clock to run out on this conversation.

And the last thing I wanted to do was get into a fight over Carver Alexander, who I didn’t doubt had plenty to say about me to Kevin.

“Look, I’m a private person,” I told him. “I don’t like people to have their noses up in every aspect of my life. What’s that quote? ‘Don’t tell people your problems, because 80% don’t care, and 20% are happy you have them’?”

“I’m not a problem,” he answered, coldly.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” I said. “Don’t twist my words.”

He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he said, “You realize that, whether or not people know you’re gay, it’s still fundamentally who you are. I’m not saying we have to post pictures of us making out on Facebook. Because you know that’s not me either. And I’m not even saying we have to come out anyone in Iota Chi, or anything. Just Veronica. One girl. Who knows I’m gay and almost certainly assumes you’re my boyfriend anyway. And who we know would not say anything to anyone.”

I didn’t respond to that; I sat there in stony silence. And maybe Kevin sensed my exhaustion with this topic, and the futility of this conversation, because as abruptly as he started it, he gave up on it.

“Do you want to get Plum Street Snoballs?” he asked, his voice quieter, as we pulled up towards the corner of Jeannette and Fern. “It’s two blocks that way.”

“I have class at two,” I told him. Kevin didn’t say anything; he kept driving down Jeannette for another few blocks, both of us in silence, and in another moment this might have become a fight, but it didn’t. Instead, his right hand snaked over, across the emergency brake, and grabbed mine. He squeezed it three times, in rudimentary morse code, and I of course felt guilty.

“Let me think about it,” I told him. “Okay? I promise, I’ll think about it.”

“Plum Street Snoballs?” he replied, his voice still quiet, but his mouth a slow sunrise, the first sign of a smile. “We already passed it. Not going to happen. Missed your chance. Live in regret forever.”

“You know what I mean.”

He sighed, and nodded softly. “I know,” he said. “And I appreciate that. I really do.”

And we just lay awash in the post-fight haze, for the next several moments until he parked at his house on Broadway. “You have time to come in for a second, don’t you?”

I nodded, followed him inside through the Becker door, and bolted the door shut. Kevin was already sitting on the side of the crisp white bed, facing me; there was a towel spread out on the bed already, which suggested premeditation. So I stood directly in front of me, and he was, of course, as amenable as the towel would suggest: he put his hands on my hips, and stared up at me, that crooked half-smile on his beautiful face.

I bent down towards him, and we kissed; I felt his one hand move up to the small of my back, and straddled his legs, and threw my arms around his shoulders.

I broke the kiss, moved my lips down his jawline, and he threw his head back slightly, gave a low, pleasurable moan. “I want you right now,” I told him. “I want you to fuck me.”

“I thought you had class,” he whispered.

“No, I’m just a dirty slut for you,” I whispered back, as I navigated the patch of skin behind his earlobe with my tongue. “You know you like it.”

“Ha,” he said, pulling his face away from my lips. “As much as I appreciate this repartee, I meant your two o’clock English lit class.”

“Oh.” I sat on his thighs, us both staring at each other, and snaked one of my hands down to his crotch--his big dick was already semi-hard in his jeans. “Well, attendance is only ten percent of the grade. And I don’t think I should leave this guy unattended.”

He leaned in, gave me a peck. “Well, I’ll make getting a B+ worth your while.”

“This sounds like the start of some kinky teacher porn.”

He rubbed the back of my head, and said, in a deep sexy voice, “Are you Hot for Teacher?”

I giggled. “No. Certainly not.”

“An apple a day...” he began, in the same low voice. He paused, snickered at himself. “Sorry, that one got away from me.”

I leaned back in for a kiss, my hands tightened around his shoulders, and his hands moved to my ass. And then, unexpectedly, he stood up, taking me with him; in a quick moment, I latched my legs around his waist, threw my arms around the back. And then I leaned down and kissed him, because there was nothing better than Kevin’s body against mine, his hands on me, guiding me, pick me up, taking control.

He spun around, and then threw me down on the bed.

“You like when I pick you up?” he whispered, as he kneeled over me on the bed.

“Yeah,” I said, “I fucking love it,” and he leaned forward onto his hands, on either side of my shoulders, and went in for another kiss. He put his hand on my stomach, underneath my shirt, all the way to my chest, as he lay his body on top of mine.

We were both already rock hard, even through our jeans, and he was suddenly fumbling with the zipper on his jeans, and I started fumbling with mine, until our dicks were both bare, sliding back and forth against each other.

He stood back up on his knees, and waddled forward, until his dick was aimed at my mouth. I started to prop myself on an elbow, but Kevin’s hand was on my shoulder, pushing me back down. And his dick was coming at my mouth, demanding entry at my lips, which I granted. I wasn’t even moving, as Kevin slowly lowered his dick deeper and deeper into my mouth. And then slowly began to fuck my face.

I could feel Kevin’s pubes tickling my nose and my chin, as he slowly moved his dick in and out. And he was moaning too, as he fumbled with the buttons on his flannel shirt.

My hands went up to bare ass, cupped his beautiful cheeks. “Oh, fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck.”

And he almost seemed to be lost in it, his eyes rolling to backwards, his one hand rubbing his bare chest, and he just kept going, and going, and then finally he said, “Fuck, let me take it out, I’m getting close,” and I did my best to shake my head, to grab tighter on his ass, to have him keep going, until he let out a low, guttural grunt, and I had the sudden taste of Kevin Malley’s hot, salty cum racing down my throat.

“Oh, my God,” he said, as he slowly began to pull his dick out of my mouth. “Holy fuck.”

His dick, an inch in front of my face, was slick with my saliva, still had cum dribbling out of it, so I flicked the tip with my tongue, and Kevin let out another moan.

“Holy fuck,” he said. “Fuck, that was. Unexpected.” He touched his hand to my lips, wiped a bit of cum from them with his thumb, and then stuck his thumb back inside my mouth. “Yeah, finish it all off,” he told me.

Kevin was glistening with a thin sweat, he had that elated post-coital, ready for a shower look across his face, so I told him, “You’re not done, Malley.”

He smiled at that, and then he waddled backwards on his knees, and dropped his mouth down to my tenting jeans. He undid the button, pulled down the zipper, and rubbed my dick through the thin cotton of my boxer briefs.

“You have such a beautiful dick,” he said, and he leaned down, and gave it a soft kiss through the fabric. And then he yanked down both my underwear waistband and my jeans, and let me pop free.

He didn’t hesitate; he took the whole thing in his mouth, and began sucking me off, steady and rhythmic, and I was so sensitive, so craving release. But then he stopped, took a second to lick his middle finger, and in one motion, to my dick back in his mouth and began opening my asshole with his slick finger.

I gave an involuntary moan, as his finger pushed deep into my asshole. And the pleasure of Kevin’s mouth on my dick, and his wet finger pounding on my prostate, was too much.

“I’m cumming,” I said, and he dropped my dick out of his mouth just as I unleashed a torrent of cum on his face.

And maybe I blacked out for a second, but then I opeend my eyes and there was Kevin Malley, looming over me, my cum streaked across his face.

“Lick it off,” he whispered, and I did, I licked his face, licked my own cum off his face, and then he leaned in for a kiss. “My favorite,” he whispered, collapsing on the bed next to me, “is when I want you so fucking bad that we don’t even get our clothes off.”

 

Patrick was in our room when I got back, sitting crosslegged on his bed with his laptop balancing on his thighs. “How’d it go?” he asked, without looking up. “Paris, I mean. Not the inevitable sex that followed.”

I chose to ignore that particular invasion of my mores. “Well,” I said. “I breached the topic. Response was positive. From him. What do you think I should do?”

“I already told you what I think you should do,” Patrick said, leaning back on his bed and tilting his laptop screen closed, as he seemed to realize this was a longer conversation than he had maybe anticipated.

“No, you didn’t,” I said. “You told me I should do whatever I want.”

“Exactly,” Patrick replied. “Do whatever you want. That’s what I think you should do: whatever you want. But, I mean, you know what everyone’s going to say if you go, right?”

There was an awkward pause, that maybe wasn’t a pause at all but felt geologically long to me. I briefly considered making him spell it out, if only in the hopes that I was somehow mistaken, but I didn’t. Instead I said, “Yeah, probably.”

“Which is fine,” said Patrick, “if you don’t mind that everyone’s going to say it, but everyone’s going to say it.”

That I was going because Kevin and I were boyfriends, that we didn’t want to be separated for the semester, and really, that is of course what everyone would say because there was otherwise no good explanation for why I would suddenly flee Tulane with weeks left in the semester and go to Paris.

“Do people suspect?” I asked him. “Already, I mean?”

Patrick shrugged. “Not really, from what I’ve heard. It’s not like you two hang out that much one-on-one outside of the bedroom, and you’re both pretty coy when you’re in groups.” He reopened his laptop, stared for a moment, and hit the backspace key hard, three discrete times. “Is ‘maladroit’ too pretentious a word?”

“As an adjective or as a noun?”

He looked at me, scandalized. “It’s only an adjective. You don’t actually use it as a noun, do you? You Barbary pirate.”

“Yes, it’s too pretentious,” I replied, and he backspaced again. “So people don’t suspect now, but you think they would suspect if I went to Paris?”

“‘Tactless,’” he said, typing the word, his eyes still on his computer screen. Then he glanced back over at me. “Yes. If I’m being entirely honest. Maybe people suspect or don’t suspect right now, but no one’s said anything about you and Kevin to me, and I’m the roommate. I’m the first one they ask.”

“So they do ask?”

“No,” he said. “They don’t ask that.”

“What do they ask, then?”

“Oh,” he said, “you know. This and that. ‘Why isn’t Becker dating anyone?’” Without waiting for me to interject, he added, “I lie. Don’t worry. I’m very good at keeping your cojones out of the fire. You’re fucking welcome.”

The door from our bathroom swung open, and it was Tripp, barefoot in a pair of plaid pajama pants and a threadbare Cal Poly t-shirt, his laptop tucked under his arm.

“Erik sexiled me,” he said, flatly, and without saying anything more, he plunked himself down in the red papasan chair. “Erica Strout. I know she’s hot, but it’s literally three in the afternoon. And he’s already taking her to Speakeasy tomorrow. He couldn’t freaking wait? Tell me I’m not being unreasonable here.”

“I don’t concern myself with other people’s sex lives,” Patrick told him, lazily, returning to his computer, and Tripp rolled his eyes at the piety.

“Well, I have to swing this model by studio in an hour, and I can’t go in my pajamas, so he’d better hit it and quit it.” He looked up at me. “Did you get the reservations for dinner tomorrow before Speakeasy?”

“Bistro Italia on Magazine,” I told him. “Eight of us, at seven o’clock.”

He silently counted. We all pretended we didn’t hear Erica Strout moaning from the other side of the wall. “Perfect,” Tripp said, finally. “Now that I’m taking a date I actually want to impress, I mean.”

Patrick abruptly stopped writing, and perked up at that. “Ooh, who are you taking?”

“You don’t concern yourself with other people’s sex lives,” Tripp dismissed.

Patrick smirked. “I mean, have you had sex with her yet?”

“Well, no,” Tripp said. “Which is why I’m buying her an expensive dinner and taking her to the most exclusive party of the year, instead of kicking my roommate out in the middle of the day for a booty call.”

“Then I can happily concern myself,” Patrick replied. “Who is it? How disabled is she? Big growth on the side of her face or something?”

“Her name’s Kiandra Coleman,” he said; Patrick began frantically typing, ostensibly to find this girl on Facebook. “She’s in architecture with me. Second runner-up, Miss Georgia Teen 2005.”

“Couldn’t get the winner of Miss Georgia Teen 2005?” Patrick asked. “Oh, wow, she’s hot.” He spun his laptop towards me--there was a Facebook photo of an attractive black girl with a wall-to-wall beauty queen smile, on a stage in a blue sequined evening gown. “Tripp, I didn’t know you were a fan of ‘Chocolate Rain.’”

Tripp responded with the finger, and then, “I swear, if any of you pull that shit in front of her, you’re not coming to dinner with us. I’m sick of all the shit, just because I’m from Pass Christian, Mississippi--”

“Dear fucking Lord, I was kidding,” Patrick said. “She’s a smoke show. Good job. Way out of your league. No idea what a girl like that is doing going to Speakeasy with a shmegma-breath like you. Okay?”

“Thank you,” Tripp replied, perfunctorily. “She’s great. Hot, smart, and apparently likes me.”

“I mean, she likes you enough to eat a free meal next to you, at the very least,” Patrick replied.

“Hey, she can order the whole fucking lobster tank as far as I’m concerned,” Tripp told him. He glanced up at me. “Who are you taking, Becker? Jordan? Michaela? Chris Baker?”

It was my turn to give him the finger. “Veronica set me up with a sophomore Tri-Gamma. Lauren Hartwell or something. She’s supposedly cute.”

“Oh, you met her,” Tripp said. “Remember when you tried to fix me up with Jackie Hughes’s roommate, and the four of us went out together that one time? She’s the roommate.”

“Oh,” I said, and I suddenly felt a wave of discomfort over this whole ordeal. Not just because of the internal disaster my date with Jackie Hughes had been--which it had been, even if she had a perfectly pleasant time, before I blew her off--but at the discomfort of having to relive it again. Looking at some girl, and having her be some sort of relic of something that I shouldn’t have done, that I really would rather not have to deal with again.

I thought about an exit strategy. There wasn’t one. Except one found me the next morning, when Veronica texted me that, regretfully, Lauren was puking with the stomach virus, or was pregnant, but hopefully the stomach virus. Veronica’s sources could not confirm.

“Well, I’m flattered to be your last resort,” Jordan told me, huffily, as she tore through her closet looking for something that was passably 1920s-themed for her to wear to Speakeasy. “Considering you wouldn’t even tell me what this party actually was until today.”

“I couldn’t!” I said. “I told you: it’s a top-secret party. It’s Speakeasy. No photos. No mentions on Facebook. Brett Morton told us not even to say the word ‘Speakeasy’ ever again. We’re supposed to let the mystique just trickle out by itself. Don’t be mad at me, when I’m taking you somewhere awesome.”

At that point, Jordan did crack a little bit of a smile, because maybe as much as she wanted to be irritated with me for asking her last minute, only after my date had dropped out of the running, part of her was excited to be included in what had been hyped--at least by Brett Morton--as the greatest Iota Chi party of the year, a hot commodity because the greater student body knew about it only from hearsay and secondary sources.

“Okay,” she said, pulling out a red cocktail dress. “How about this?”

I surveyed it. It didn’t look especially 1920s to me. “I don’t know,” I said. “Do you have something with, like, that kind of 1920s fringe?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jordan said, rolling her eyes, as she hung the red dress back up. “I always keep costumes ready to go for every single decade, just in case.”

She pulled out another dress, this one black, with long sleeves and a frilly lace collar.

“1920s,” I said, “not 1820s. Why do you even own that?”

She glared at me, and hung it back up. “I think we’re starting in the wrong place,” Jordan told me. And without saying anything further, she headed to the right place: she walked across the shared bathroom and into Michaela’s bedroom, with me scrambling behind her.

Michaela wasn’t there, but I had known them both long enough to know they generally had free range of each others’ closets. She pulled opened the doors, and kneeled down to open a canvas laundry bag. “Michaela’s costume bag,” she explained to me. She pulled out two black opera gloves, and a decorative cigarette holder. “Good thing she went as Holly Golightly for Halloween.”

She handed them both to me, and then threw the canvas bag back into the closet. Getting down on her hands and knees, she dug to the back of the closet, to a heavily-worn paper shopping bag from Sav-A-Center.

“And good thing Michaela is a filthy packrat and never throws anything away,” she continued. She pulled out multiple strands of Mardi Gras beads from last winter, in purple, green, and gold, and finally she found a few long strands of white beads.

She stood back up, looking proud of herself, and looped each of them once around her neck, letting the rest of them dangle over her t-shirt. Beaming up at me, she said, “Eh?”

“Looks good,” I said. “Try the gloves.”

She took one of them from me. “I feel like I’m about to commit a very classy murder,” she said, sliding the first glove on. She held her gloved hand up to me, rubbed her fingers together.

“See,” she said, as she headed back, again without warning, across the bathroom and back into her room. “Beads, gloves.” She pulled the first red cocktail dress back out from the closet, and held it up against her body. “Now it looks 1920s.”

“I guess so,” I said. “Not bad for last-minute.”

“‘Not bad for last minute,’” she mocked. “You could’ve asked me a month ago, and this is what I would’ve wound up wearing.” She pulled the glove off, and threw them both on her bed, and then took off back into the bathroom.

She pulled out, from the bottom shelf of their bathroom cart, Michaela’s makeup box, what I always thought looked like a very large pink tackle box. “Red,” she said, hunting around for the lipsticks. “Red, red, red.” She pulled one out, presented it to me, and then turned back towards the mirror.

We heard Michaela’s door open, and a couple seconds later, Michaela popped her head into the bathroom, seeing Jordan with Mardi Gras beads and one black Holly Golightly glove, holding a tube of red lipstick. “Playing dress-up?”

“Oh,” Jordan said, as she puckered her lips in the mirror, and started applying the red lipstick. “I needed to borrow some stuff for a costume. Your gloves.”

“And my lipstick, apparently,” Michaela noted.

“Yeah,” Jordan replied. She smacked her lips together, then looked at me. “Good?”

“Perfect,” I said.

Jordan glanced back at herself in the mirror, stared at herself for a few seconds. “You don’t have a boa, do you?” she asked Michaela. “Maybe a headband?”

Michaela looked slightly confused, and more than slightly taken aback, at this turn of events, that Jordan was demanding costume tips as Michaela stood there, unprepared and clutching her plastic bag from Rite Aid. “What are you dressing up for?”

“Speakeasy,” Jordan said. She looked at me, apologetically. “Oops. Sorry.”

“You’re now sworn to secrecy,” I told Michaela. “You can’t say the word ‘Speakeasy.’ We’re having a secret 1920s-themed party at the Iota Chi house.”

“Oh,” she said, her face falling. “That. I’ve heard about that. Everyone knows about that.” Michaela did not look excited. If anything, she looked the opposite: she burrowed her brow and crossed her arms in tentative disdain. “You didn’t think to ask me?”

Jordan and I looked uncomfortably at each other, but no: to be entirely honest, it hadn’t dawned on me to ask Michaela. Not because Michaela wasn’t a beautiful, fun date--she was; we had a blast at formal last year. But she was dating Tate. And when I needed someone quickly to get ready for a date party that started in four hours, my mind went immediately to Jordan, did not pass Michaela, did not collect $200.

And, again, Tate, who didn’t seem to like me, despite Michaela’s efforts to endear us to her boyfriend, and I assumed wouldn’t appreciate an (allegedly) straight guy taking his girlfriend to Iota Chi’s signature party, even platonically.

“You have a boyfriend,” I told her. “It’s weird.”

“No, it’s not,” she said. “Tate and I were dating when you took me to formal.”

“You weren’t really dating,” I said. “You were, you know. Pre-dating.”

“Fucking,” Jordan translated, still admiring her bright red lips in the mirror, touching up a tiny spot on her top lip.

“Whatever,” Michaela said. “Me being with Tate doesn’t mean you can’t take me to Speakeasy. You’re specifically not including me in something, and that’s a shitty thing for a friend to do.”

The blowback had caught me off-guard, considering that Michaela frequently did things without us, frequently went off to Zeta parties with Tate or to dinner with his friends. And she frequently did things with us, without Jordan, like going to the Iota Chi formal last year. Which Jordan, to her credit, never once complained about.

Michaela’s statement was not rhetorical; she seemed to be waiting for me to respond, and I didn’t quite know what to say. I could only bring one date.

I looked over to Jordan, who was trying not to meet my eyes, as if she suspected that I might tell her that I was bumping her for Michaela. And I was tempted to do so, almost considered doing so, but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to her--she already had lipstick on. And I wanted to take her.

“I mean,” I said, slowly, “I can ask around to see if anyone needs a date last-minute.”

“Don’t fucking bother,” Michaela said, angrily. “I don’t want a pity date.” And she slammed her bathroom door, and we heard her lock the deadbolt with aggressive finality.

Jordan gave me an exasperated look, rolled her eyes, and set the lipstick down. She went over to the bathroom door, and knocked. In an apologetic, maybe slightly patronizing voice, she said, “Michaela? Sweetie?” She looked back at me, and motioned for me to leave. “I’ll fix this,” she whispered. “Just go.”

So I did; I left Jordan’s room, and went back to my room, where Erik and Tripp were sitting on my floor with PlayStation controls, playing Battlescar 3.

“You know neither of you live here,” I said. “And you have a perfectly good PlayStation in your room.”

Neither of them thought that was a comment worthy of a response. I tried again, with a question: “Where’d Patrick go?”

“Just left,” Tripp said, mashing buttons. “He had to take Annie to Party City for last minute costume stuff.”

“And he took the Beemer,” Erik added. “He said you wouldn’t mind.”

I had let Patrick borrow the BMW exactly one time, at the beginning of the semester when we were supposed to go to the Tchoupitoulas Wal-Mart together but I bumped him for a last-minute booty call from Kevin.

Patrick had since taken that as permanent, ongoing permission, which I didn’t bother to clarify with him. My dad had specifically told me that no one but me or Justine were allowed to drive the BMW, under punishment of death, which was his long-standing rule even from when we were in high school. But both Justine and I had broken that rule so many times, both at the Harrington School and at Tulane, that it didn’t seem worth bothering with it now.

Regardless, the fact that Patrick was en route to Party City was fortuitous, so I pulled out my phone and texted him: “Can you get some 1920s stuff for Jordan?”

I received an immediate text back from Patrick’s phone: “It’s Annie. Patrick’s driving. I thought you were taking Lauren Hartwell?”

“Lauren’s sick,” I told her, “or pregnant. Veronica wasn’t sure.”

“Well, she’s definitely not pregnant,” Annie assured me. “She asked me for a tampon at Chapter on Thursday.”

I was at a complete loss at how I was ever supposed to respond to that, or even acknowledge that, so I didn’t: “So can you maybe get Jordan a boa and a 1920s-y headband?”

“Sure. What color?”

“She’s wearing a red dress,” I replied. “I don’t know.”

“Black,” Annie replied. “On it.”

I texted Jordan next: “Let me know when the coast is clear. Annie’s bringing you a boa and headband.”

There was no response, but since she was only about five doors down, she apparently took that as an invitation: she barged into the room about fifteen seconds later.

“Oh,” she said, watching the TV as Tripp riddled Erik with bullets.

“Nice to see you too,” Erik said, glancing up at her as he waited to respawn. “I hear you’re escorting our dear Becker to Speakeasy last-minute?”

“My date got sick,” I told him. “But Michaela’s pissed that no one’s taking her. So, I don’t know--is anyone still looking for a date, do you think?”

“No one asked her,” Erik said, with a schadenfreudig smirk. “I’m taking Erica Strout.” He went back to the TV; his avatar was running down a dank hallway, until the end-of-game kill statistics popped up on both his and Tripp’s side of the screen.

“Erik died nine times,” Tripp said, looking very pleased with himself. “And has one kill. Good job, man. You’re about as deadly as herpes.”

“Fuck you,” Erik replied, putting down the controller. To us, he continued: “Like, okay, I know Erica’s a bitch and you all hate her, but I ran into her at The Boot on Tuesday and we started talking about old times.”

“‘Talking about old times,’” Tripp repeated. He wrinkled his face with disapproval. “I still can’t believe you sexiled me for her yesterday.”

“She’s smoking hot,” Erik replied, dismissively. “There’s just something that draws me to her. I can’t describe it. You know what I mean?”

“It’s her name,” Tripp predicted. “It’s because you’re a narcissist. Didn’t we all come to that conclusion about a year ago?”

“Whatever, dude,” Erik replied, leaning back on his elbows. “Once she heard it was Speakeasy, she got super excited. And she’s hot and she puts out and her personality really is not that bad, so why the hell not?”

“‘She puts out and her personality is not that bad,’” Jordan repeated. “You’re just every girl’s dream, aren’t you, Erik Fontenot.”

Erik grinned at her. “And yet, they all keep coming back for more.” He looked at Tripp. “Why don’t you take Michaela? Aren’t you just taking some neanderthal from archi-torture?”

Tripp glared at him. “Kiandra was second runner-up, Miss Georgia Teen 2005, thank you very much.”

“Kiandra? You didn’t tell me her name.” Erik glanced upwards to me, mugged a bit, as if I was supposed to share in a silent joke that Tripp, the cartoonishly preppy white Missisippi Republican, was taking a black girl to Speakeasy, but coming from solid Republican stock myself, I didn’t give him the satisfaction of taking the bait. “No, I think it’s nice,” he continued, alone. “I can tell her how I’m voting for Barack Obama, and you can tell her about how you’re voting for Mike Huckabee.”

“I never said I was voting for Mike Huckabee,” Tripp said, defensively. “I said if it came down to Huckabee or Giuliani in the primary, I’d consider voting for Huckabee.”

That was not entirely the truth on Tripp’s part; his exact words were that Huckabee was “not that bad,” apropos of no one else, but I didn’t want to insert myself into a conversation that seemed frighteningly close to multiple taboo topics.

“As an Arkansan, I can tell you: he was a terrible governor.” Erik, still smiling, looked back to Jordan. “But anyway, the short answer is no, neither of us are able to take Michaela to Speakeasy out of pity. We have actual women.”

“Well, this was an enlightening conversation,” Jordan said. “But it sure beats trying to grovel to a sobbing Michaela from behind a locked door.”

“She’s sobbing over this?” Erik said, shaking his head in disbelief, but he was still smiling because a larger part of him did enjoy seeing Michaela Birdrock--a girl who had repeatedly rejected him--suffering. “God. Drama queen.”

Tripp sighed. “Someone should go talk to her. She’s our friend.”

Erik, Jordan, and I all glanced suspiciously at each other, clearly not nearly as gung ho as Tripp was at approaching Michaela during what was shaping up to be one of her more ridiculous tantrums, but Tripp was resolved; he stood up, and headed to the door, and the three of us wordlessly followed him down the hallway.

He came to Michaela’s door, and knocked on it. “Michaela? It’s Tripp.”

There was no response. He put his ear to the door, and raised a finger to quiet us.

“Is she still in there?” Jordan asked.

“I don’t know,” he told us. “I think so? I thought I heard someone crying.” He knocked again, this time a little more forcefully. “Michaela, open up. It’s Tripp.”

“She’s not going to open the door,” Jordan said, unlocking the door to her own bedroom. “Whatever. Let her cry it out. The next time we see her, she’ll pretend the entire thing didn’t happen.”

We all followed Jordan back inside her room. Erik and I sat on the edge of the bed, but Tripp wandered into the bathroom, tried to shimmy the doorknob to Michaela’s room.

“First thing she locked,” Jordan told him, sitting down in her desk chair.

Tripp came out of the bathroom, glanced over to the door to Jordan and Michaela’s shared balcony. “Do you guys ever lock yourbalcony doors?” He didn’t wait for a response; he walked across the room and opened Jordan’s balcony door. “I bet hers is open too.”

“Oh, just give it up,” Erik said. “If she wants to cry over nonsense, let her cry over nonsense.”

Tripp didn’t bother to acknowledge Erik; instead he disappeared onto the balcony.

And then, fifteen seconds later, we heard Michaela audibly scream.

We were all startled--jumping up, but not really sure how otherwise to spring into action. We were all staring at the open door to the shared balcony, as if it might explode at any moment.

Michaela’s door slammed shut, and Tripp came barrelling back in through Jordan’s door, slamming that one shut too and bolting it, then slapping his hand over his mouth.

“Oh God, oh God,” he said, muffled, to us. “Oh God.”

All of us were at a loss for words; Erik was the first one who was able to articulate: “What the hell happened?”

“So bad,” Tripp said, shaking his head. “So bad. So very bad.”

“What happened?” Erik said again, more forcefully.

Tripp closed his eyes, shook his head again. “Michaela and Tate were fucking. Right in the fucking middle of the floor.”

Erik threw back his head and let out an uproarious laughter.

“What’d you do?” I asked him. “What happened?”

“Well, I open the door, and I’m just looming over them,” he said. “And they’re twisted on the floor doing, you know, and Michaela screamed. And Tate was just staring at me, looking like he was going to throw me off the balcony. So I just said, ‘Keep up the good work’ and left. I didn’t know what else to say!”

Erik had the biggest smile I had ever seen on anyone. “Literally anything else” Erik said. “Anything but that. Jesus fucking Christ, Tripp. ‘Keep up the good work’?”

“I was caught so off-guard,” he said. “In the moment! How was I supposed to know that they’d be having sex on the floor in front of the balcony door?”

Jordan, for her part, looked apoplectic. “Here we were, worried about her, and she’s having sex?”

“Let it go,” I told her. “We should’ve left her alone.”

“Oh God, they’re going to kill me,” Tripp said, shaking his head.

 

We didn’t hear from Michaela or Tate for the rest of the day, so Tripp lived to see his date with Kiandra Coleman. We all went to Bistro Italia, then took a cab back uptown to the Iota Chi house, which had been utterly transformed for Speakeasy.

I had taken one of the first set-up shifts for Speakeasy, where the first action of business was papering over the front windows of the Iota Chi house from the inside, using the free copies of The Hullabaloo that we stole from the newspaper racks in the Lavin-Bernick Center.

So when our cab pulled up at the house on the night of the party, it was nondescript: the windows blacked out, the porch light off. I unlatched the gate, and the eight of us snuck back through the driveway to the back door.

Eddie Darien, who was physically imposing anyway, looked downright ominous, bathed in red light, wearing a bowler hat. “Password,” he said, gruffly.

I glanced at Erik, Patrick, and Tripp to see who would have to deliver the password. It had been, apparently from the look in their eyes, assumed it would be me.

“‘My favorite movie is High School Musical 2,’“ I quoted for Eddie, bitterly, and he swung the door open for us; his girlfriend, Sophie, who looked especially annoyed that Eddie had drawn the first door shift, glumly handed us solo cups full of poker chips.

“For the gaming tables,” Eddie told us, looking far more enthusiastic than Sophie was. “Winner gets a bottle of nice champagne.”

“How nice?” Erik asked. “Before I spend all my time gambling for a bottle of Andre.”

“Like, $20?” Eddie replied. “Not Andre.”

“I’ll play for Not Andre,” Erik agreed.

We pushed past Eddie and Sophie, into the uncharacteristic dimness of the Iota Chi house. All of the overhead lights had been replaced with red bulbs, giving the entire house a deep, ominous smokiness, and we passed the first of three professionally-staffed bars that had been set up for the evening: one in the foyer, one in the kitchen, one in the living room. In the living room were two gaming tables, with actual dealers: craps and poker. And there was even--and I was told this was a new addition for the year--a jazz pianist parked in the foyer, on a keyboard, crooning gently into a microphone.

“This is sick,” Erik said, nodding approvingly.

“You wouldn’t even know this was your shithole frat house,” Jordan marveled.

Jordan looked even better than I had anticipated; I wasn’t expecting her to commit so fully to the theme. She had her red dress and her beads and Michaela’s Holly Golightly gloves. And she had more makeup than I’d ever seen her wear: red lips, with smoky eyes. Her hair was curled tightly around her ears--I’d never seen her with her hair curled before.

“Well, I straighten it everyday,” she had told me, nonchalantly, when she arrived at my room, affixing the headband that Patrick had brought back from Party City. “Are you kidding? I’m Jewish. My hair would be gigantic in this humidity.”

“Whatever, Jordan, it might be a shithole, but it’s our shithole,” Erik said, with a smile. “Let’s go get drinks.”

“I’ll get the drinks,” I told Jordan. “Vodka-cranberry?”

Jordan nodded.

“Whiskey-coke,” Erik called after me, which I ignored. I went into the living room bar, where Chris Baker was already standing, waiting for the bartender to make him a pair of what looked like vodka martinis.

“Really thirsty?” I asked.

“One for me,” he said. “One for Katrina.”

“Is that your date’s name, or are you trying to quiet the sea with a vodka sacrifice?”

“Date’s name,” he replied. “Katrina Sawyer.”

“Unfortunate.”

“Yeah,” he said, somberly nodded. “Just don’t say a stunned, ‘Oh,’ when she says her name’s Katrina, because everyone does that and she really hates it. But it’s okay--I think the name takes her from a solid eight into a seven-ish, which definitely makes her more attainable for me.”

I didn’t want to comment on whether Chris Baker could land a girl who was a seven, even if she shared a name with city’s most destructive natural disaster, so I didn’t. I turned to the bartender, and ordered a Tom Collins for me and a vodka-cranberry for Jordan.

“Tom Collins, eh?” Baker said. “Getting fancy.”

“When in the 1920s,” I said, motioning towards his martinis. “So, Katrina? Because, when I saw you on Tuesday, you seemed to be contemplating making a play for Veronica with this whole thing.”

Baker looked exceptionally uncomfortable, glanced around from side to side as if someone within earshot could accidentally overhear the worst kept secret in Iota Chi. “Well, you know,” he said, slowly. “I considered it. But the problem with Veronica is that I’ve been so brutally friendzoned by her. Like, she has no idea that I like her, and she’s clearly not interested, so why make things so awkward?”

“You never know,” I said, as I grabbed my and Jordan’s drinks. “It’s Speakeasy. The most romantic party of the year.”

“Well, she had her chance,” he said, leading me away from the bar, in the direction of one of the gaming tables. “I took her to Speakeasy last year, and I was gearing up to make a move, and she didn’t even notice.”

I tried to imagine what “gearing up to make a move” entailed for Chris Baker, who was so devoid of game that I couldn’t even picture him successfully flirting with someone. And for Veronica, who was certainly no Sunday school teacher, to not realize when she was being flirted with seemed to suggest that Baker was deeply removed from the reservation by that portion of the night.

“Whatever, I have high hopes for this girl,” he replied. “She’s a sophomore in DRR. She’s in Business Stats with me and Dana Schwartz, and apparently Katrina told Dana she thinks I’m ‘cute.’” Baker could not even breathe optimism into the word “cute.” Instead, he sounded terrified of the fact that a girl could find him attractive and, thus, the stakes were higher than usual.

“You just need to get out of your own way,” I told him. “She’ll love you if you just be yourself, not that guy who freezes up around girls.”

“New topic,” he muttered to me, as we approached a blonde girl in a white fringed flapper dress, who seemed to be waiting for us. “Katrina, this is Adam Becker. Becker, Katrina Sawyer.”

Katrina was in fact very pretty, marred only by one incredibly unfortunate name. I didn’t begrudge Baker the opportunity to hopefully, finally, get with some actual human woman.

“Nice to meet you,” I said. I didn’t have a free hand, so instead of shaking her hand, I held my drinks up, lamely. “Sorry. I’m Baker’s little.”

“Aw,” she said. “Meeting the family. Who are you here with?”

I glanced back around; Jordan was chatting with Kiandra and Annie, amid an exceptionally bored-looking Erica Strout who was not participating in the conversation. “Jordan Fleischer,” I said. “You probably don’t know her.”

“Which house is she in?”

“None,” I said. “She’s, like, deputy treasurer of Hillel though?”

“The Jews need two treasurers,” Chris Baker replied, with a weak, uncomfortable smile that betrayed how much he regretted the joke even as the words were dribbling out of his mouth.

“Two more for poker!” the dealer called.

Katrina looked over to him, then back to us, suddenly excited. “So, which of you strapping young men want to play poker with me?”

“That’s all Baker,” I punted. “I have to find Jordan.”

Baker, for his part, seemed taken a little aback by the bluntness of Katrina’s request, by the sharpness of my decline, as if he hadn’t realized he would be alone with her so early in the night, so unfortified without liquor.

“Uh, okay,” he said, finally, as if this was a major decision that could affect the rest of the outcome of the night. “Do you know how to play poker?”

“Uh huh,” she said, with a sly smile, giving him a playful nudge. “My dad taught me how to play when I was five or six. And I love it. Don’t you?”

Baker glanced at me, a terrified expression cast across his face, as if I could rescue him from the pleasant conversation with the pretty girl, but when he realized I had no intention of doing so, he glanced back to Katrina. “Off and on,” which was not quite the semantic answer to her question.

“Believe me, I have a great poker face,” she replied, with a teasing smile. “Come on, Chris.” She turned to me. “Nice to meet you, Adam.”

I pushed my way through the crowd; the girls had been rejoined by Tripp, Erik, and Patrick, who had brought a bounty of drinks from the foyer bar.

Jordan greeted me with, “Finally. Had to go all the way to Russia for the vodka, did you?”

“It’s Taaka,” I said. “It’s from Metairie.”

“’Mixes easy, just add people,’” Jordan recited, from the Taaka billboard on Jefferson Highway that we always found vaguely cannibalistic.

Erik held up his drink. “Let’s make a toast.” We all followed suit. “Ladies and gentlemen, start your livers.”

Erica giggled, as if Erik had made up the toast on the spot, which he certainly had not. He had spent a whole hour sitting on my bed, googling ‘Prohibition era toasts,’ and running them past me for my English major approval.

Jordan, who had been around for much of the googling, looked disdainfully at me; Tripp looked slightly embarrassed, as he kept trying to glance at Kiandra out of the corner of his eye; Kiandra was doing her best not to have any expression on her face but a placid smile, her beauty queen training.

When did we all get so awkward?

“Cheers,” Kiandra added, finally, which seemed to break away the tension. “This is a great party. I’m glad I got to come along.”

“We’re good eggs at Iota Chi,” Erik replied, airily. “We throw damn good parties, at least. Is this your first one?”

“It is, actually,” Kiandra said, beaming at Tripp. “I almost went to that big one you had in September, but I was dating a guy in Alpha Phi Alpha, and it’s always a little weird going to someone else’s fraternity, you know?” She seemed to catch on that none of us had ever heard of Alpha Phi Alpha, so she added, “Sorry, Alpha Phi Alpha’s a black fraternity.”

“Oh, like at Xavier?” Erik clarified.

Kiandra paused for a second to consider her words, but she was really unflappable--that beauty queen training. “No, it’s at Tulane.”

Erik and I both exchanged slightly incredulous looks, because this was the first time I was hearing about Tulane having black fraternities as well. They, apparently, hadn’t penetrated the Tulane Broadway bubble that I thought included everyone.

Tripp seemed to pick up on where our minds were heading, and as Erik opened his mouth to probably say something slightly uncomfortable, Tripp swooped in with a stern, “Oh yeah, of course.” He turned sweetly towards Kiandra. “I think it’s time to go mingle?”

They left. Erik turned to me and was about to debrief, but the conversation was swiftly and mercifully interrupted once more by Sachit Chowdry.

He was, fortunately, not standing with either of his two friends, Henry Cowdray and Michael Graham, who I had met both of them multiple times and still couldn’t them apart, which caused me to stumble awkwardly through a conversation even more than usual, as I tried to remember which one of them I had said what to. As a result, my primary goal for the evening was to avoid them as much as possible. It hadn’t helped that, over the course of the semester, Henry and Michael had both grown neatly-trimmed brown beards, rendering them both even more indistinguishable from each other.

The three of them were now collectively referred to as “The Beards,” even though Sachit didn’t have one, but no one seemed willing to point that out.

“Hey, guys,” Sachit said. “Thanks for the invite.”

As if we had anything to do with deciding which freshmen snagged invites to Speakeasy.

Erik was, of course, perfectly willing to lap up the credit. “Don’t mention it, dude,” he said, confidently. “We’re glad you could make it.”

“Sick party, though,” Sachit said. He motioned to the girl next to him, a waifish brunette. “This is Claire. Claire, this is Becker, Fontenot, and Sullivan.”

“And this is Jordan, Erica, and Annie,” I said, motioning to our dates.

We did a short labyrinth of hand-shaking, before Sachit turned back to me, and said, “You’re the one who’s friends with Kevin Malley, right?”

I was taken aback by the bluntness of the comment, and after a moment of fear rose, I realized that the bluntness probably meant he was legitimately asking me. “Friendly,” I clarified. “Chris Baker’s better friends with him than I am.”

“Oh,” he said. “You have his number though, right?”

I didn’t entirely know where this was headed, so I said, “Yeah.”

“Okay, cool,” he said. “I need a new dealer. I’ve been going to this guy in Hollygrove, and he’s just sketchy as fuck. And I heard Malley came recommended.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Four-and-a-half stars on Yelp.”

Sachit smiled. “Do you mind?”

I shook my head, took out my phone, and read out my boyfriend’s number, which Sachit quickly popped into his phone. “Just tell him that Becker gave you the number,” I added. “He’ll respond.”

I quickly texted Kevin: “New customer coming your way. Iota Chi prospect. Sachit Chowdry.”

He texted back immediately, “Awesome. La Petite Grocery on me if it pans out.”

I closed my phone, slipped it back in my pocket. “Yeah, he’s a good guy. He’ll hook you up”

“Well, I hear he’s going abroad,” Sachit said, “but it’s good for now, I guess.”

“He’s not going abroad,” I replied, probably too quickly, probably too defensively. “Well, he’s still on the fence. So he tells me. I don’t think he’ll wind up going.”

“That’s good, then,” Sachit replied. He glanced over at the rest of the group, who had walled us off slightly from their conversation. “Which one’s with you?”

“Jordan,” I said. “Curly brunette.”

“Got it,” Sachit said. “I do want to pick your brain at some point: I’m trying to start a libertarian club. There isn’t one on campus, did you know that?”

The thought of getting sucked into some sort of political club sounded absolutely nauseating, especially with a bunch of other libertarians, which were never good in large doses. But we were still trying to woo Sachit, so I just smiled brightly, nodded. “That’d be awesome.”

“Cool,” he said. He motioned towards his date, whose name I had already forgotten. “We’re going to get drinks. But I’ll catch you later.”

 

Two hours later, Chris Baker’s date had gone predictably off the rails, by the time Katrina returned to the poker table for apparently the third time that night.

Though I wouldn’t want to use the word “predictably” in front of him.

“Seriously,” Baker muttered, from our perch, about five feet behind the poker table, as he bitterly stole furtive glances at Katrina, who was enjoying herself as the only girl playing poker (and, judging from the big stack of chips in front of her, the girl who was kicking the ass of all of my fraternity brothers repeatedly.) Our usual corner, where we retreated at parties, was now occupied by the living room bar; we were standing next to it, as close as we could to our usual vantage point, which put us only a few steps behind the poker table. “I would’ve talked her out of playing if I knew she’d be sitting there all night.”

“She can’t leave,” Jordan said, with a smile. “She’s demolishing everyone else.”

Baker rolled his eyes. “Still. Why do we even do this? What’s the point of getting dressed up, and buying a girl dinner, if she’s just going to sit over there and ignore you?”

“This is the time of the party when Baker and I retreat to our corner and wax poetic,” I explained to Jordan.

“Oh yeah,” she said, folding her arms. “I’ve noticed. You know that she doesn’t have to sleep with you because you bought her a porterhouse and a martini, right? Like, that’s not how that works.” She sighed. “Well, it’s Tulane. That’s kind of how it works.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Baker replied. “I’m not insisting she owes me sex because I bought her dinner. It’s just like, you know, being a good date. And freaking give me the time of day. She hasn’t looked over at me once since she sat down.”

“Oh, come on, she’s been with you all night and we’re like three feet away,” Jordan replied. “She just started playing again. Just go and tell her you want to go outside. She won’t care. I like her.”

“I can’t,” Baker said. “That’s so awkward. She’s going to think I’m some creepy possessive asshole.”

Jordan rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll get her.” She placed her purse on the bar. “I’ll have her out of there in two seconds, just watch.”

Baker looked like he was going to protest, but he didn’t seem to want to, because he did want Katrina to come back, so he let Jordan go in for the kill. She was moving methodically, a shuffled a few steps forward, until she was standing behind Katrina. Katrina let out a quiet victory cheer, when she showed her hand, which Jordan joined in. Matt Rowen bitterly tossed his cards towards the dealer, and his date--standing behind him, being decidedly not Justine, which meant that fling must’ve been flung--placed her hand apologetically on his shoulder.

“What are we watching?” Erik asked, as he and Erika sidled up to the bar. He turned to the bartender, and ordered.

“Jordan’s going to bring Katrina back over,” I told him.

“God, you’re such a freaking girl, Baker,” Erik replied. “Just go grab your woman.”

Erica looked briefly offended, but then Erik handed her a drink, and she settled back into bored indifference.

“It’s just Tulane,” I said, shaking my head in solidarity with Baker. “Same old. You know, I was thinking about going away for a semester. Studying abroad. Maybe. Kevin makes it sound so glamorous.”

“I guess that could be fun,” Baker replied, without moving his eyes off the poker table. “When are you thinking, next fall or spring?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe even this spring.”

“Naw,” Baker said, with surprising nonchalance. “You can’t do it as a sophomore.”

“Well, I’ll technically be a junior by next semester,” I said. “It’s possible, I mean. Credits-wise.”

“I didn’t mean credits-wise,” he replied. “You can’t miss second semester of your sophomore year. It’s by far the most important semester of being in Iota Chi. Sophomore spring is when you get your little brother, and continue our family line. Do you think ”

“Otherwise they have to give Baker another little,” Erik said, “and getting lightning to strike twice, I mean.”

Baker absorbed the gentle mocking with a smile. “Exactly!” he told me. “You can’t kill off our family.”

“And you’d have to resign as historian,” Erik said. “Which you won literally two weeks ago. You’d be that asshole who resigns literally before you even take office.”

“Yeah, well, it was just a thought,” I said. “Sheesh.”

“Studying abroad is just such a problem about fraternities,” Baker said. “Missing a whole semester would just absolutely suck. Like, if you do first semester, you miss all the good parties. If you do second semester, you miss Mardi Gras, and having pledges. There’s no good time.”

There maybe wasn’t.

The dealer geared up to deal the next hand, and Jordan finally decided she had made her presence known enough; she bent down and whispered something in Katrina’s ear, and Katrina put her hand on her heart, nodded empathetically, and began shoveling her large amount of chips into an awaiting solo cup.

“Damn it, she’s amazing,” Baker said, appreciatively. “How’d she do that?”

Except they didn’t turn around to return to us; they walked in the opposite direction, to the bathroom door, where they held a brief scrum and Katrina handed Jordan her purse, and then Jordan disappeared inside the bathroom. Katrina glanced around, caught us by the bar and threw us a smile, and came back over.

“Sorry about that,” Katrina said, putting her hand on Chris Baker’s arm, which left his face with an appreciative but uncomfortabe look. “They just kept dealing me in! And I kept winning!”

“Poker face,” Chris agreed, apropos of nothing. “You know, you have a good one.”

Katrina was not required to come up with a response to that one; Erik craned his neck, looked at her solo cup full of chips. “How much money is that?”

“No money,” she said. “Each chip is worth one point, and whoever winds up with the most wins a bottle of champagne.” She shook her solo cup playfully. “I think Chris and I have this locked down!”

“Something fun to crack open at the end of the night,” Erik said, his eyes helpfully fixed on Baker.

That, unfortunately, just Baker look even more tortured. “Let’s check out the backyard bar,” he said.

“Okay,” Katrina said. She glanced back to the bathroom. “Well, Jordan has my...”

The door to the bathroom opened, and Jordan came back over to us. She handed Katrina her purse, mouthed, “Thank you,” and Katrina tossed back an, “Oh my God, don’t even worry about it,” and then she and Baker left for the backyard.

“Very slick,” Erik complimented. “What’d you do?”

“I told her I needed to borrow a tampon, because I couldn’t find my purse,” Jordan said, taking her own purse off the bar. “Girl code, you guys. Come on.”

“God,” I said. “That’s, like, twice today that I’ve had to think about tampons.”

“You’re going to make some girl very happy one day, Becker,” Erik replied, slapping me on the shoulder, as he and Erica filed back into the foyer.

The jazz pianist was playing “You Can’t Take That Away from Me,” singing along in a smokey voice, and I thought of Kevin, playing that for me in his little room on his trumpet at the apartment in Harlem over the summer. Singing to me in a gravely, Louis Armstrong voice.

It was usually around the fifth or sixth drink where I did start to miss Kevin at events like these, which is about where I was now, and as great as Jordan looked, and as fun of a date as she was shaping up to be, I imagined what it would be like if Kevin Malley was standing next to me.

So I did what I normally did in situations like this: texted Kevin. “Hey,” I said, without anything else, but he would get the message.

I put my phone back in my pocket, and waited silently for it to buzz, for Kevin to respond to me. He didn’t.

At least, until morning--college morning; it was about 2pm--when I woke up, and quickly realized the severity of my hangover, like someone had taken a hatchet repeatedly to my brain.

Patrick did not look any better off: he was lying in a pair of boxer-briefs, covers kicked off, a pillow on top of his face.

The text from Kevin was a simple, “Lunch?” sent at eleven-thirty, and asked with what I could only imagine was chirpiness.

“Hangover,” I typed, laborously.

He responded immediately: “Fair enough. Dinner?”

Kevin was being relentless, because it was Sunday and he needed my answer on Paris.

I thought briefly about Sachit Chowdry, who didn’t know Kevin but was somehow under the impression that he was going to study abroad, a misconception that I knew I would have to fix before six o’clock tonight.

I typed back, “If I can sit up by then.”

Kevin didn’t respond for about thirty seconds, long enough for me to shut my phone, put it on the mattress next to me, and snuggled back up against the pillow in my post-Speakeasy agony.

“So,” he wrote, making the subtext regular text. “It’s Sunday.”

I didn’t know exactly what he was planning on having me say, over text message, so I just responded with, “Yes, I have a calendar.”

“So,” he said, again. “Early dinner? Deposit has to be submitted online by six. And once my deposit’s in, there’s no turning back--I don’t have David and Catherine Becker money to throw around.”

“I know,” I said. “Early dinner. Fine” And, because I simply couldn’t resist the toxic allure of my own curiosity, I sent him: “What do you think you’re going to do?”

“I told you,” he replied. There was another long pause, as he either decided whether or not he needed to explain, or as he decided whether or not he wanted to explain.

Either way, he added: “I’m giving you veto power. Tell me not to do it, and I won’t do it. Don’t tell me anything, and I’m going.”

And I hated the way he was putting me on the spot like this, forcing me to act on something that was unquestionably his decision. Putting the onus on me to deny myself what I wanted--Kevin, here, with me--or deny Kevin what he wanted, Paris.

“Well, it sounds like you do want to do it,” I told him.

“Of course I want to do it,” he said, “but you’re my boyfriend and what you want is important to me too. Which is why I’m giving you this veto power. If you choose to use it, which I hope you won’t.”

It was fundamentally unfair to ask this of me, and I wondered if he knew it. No. I knew he knew it. This was Kevin’s way of getting what he wanted, and insuring himself against me complaining that I hadn’t gotten what I wanted.

My boyfriend was a sneaky, sneaky man.

The answer was no. It was a firm no from me. Unequivocal no.

“I just don’t want you to hate me if I tell you not to go,” I told him. “Like, I don’t want this to be something that you bring out in arguments months down the road, about how I crushed your dreams, how I made you unhappy. Is that how it’s going to be?”

There was another pause, an even longer one, or one that felt even longer, because I was staring at the tiny screen, staring at his tiny words, and waiting for the water to boil.

“That’s not my intention,” he said, cagily. “But you know I want to go.”

I did know. I did know. But what would happen to us, if he was gone for so long?

“What happens to us,” I asked him, “with you gone so long?”

This response was immediate: “Nothing changes.”

Followed by more affirmation: “I love you,” he said. “And I told you, we’ll make it work. You can come for spring break. We can talk on the phone all the time. And have you heard of Skype? Video chatting. We could do it all the time too.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, other than putting a firm yes or no on the question. So, instead, I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s two,” he said. “You have until six to tender a veto, but otherwise...”

I didn’t think that warranted a response, so I closed my phone, put it next to my mattress, and went back to sleep.

When I woke up again, it was four-thirty, and our room was streaked with the red, dim light of the afternoon sun, almost like we were back at Speakeasy again, where I realized that Tom Collinses did not necessarily agree with me.

I did not have any additional texts from Kevin.

Patrick was awake, sitting on his bed with his laptop. “Sleeping Beauty,” he greeted. “Rough afternoon?”

“How are you so chipper?” I asked him. “You drank just as I did.”

“I’m not chipper,” he said. “I only peeled myself out of bed an hour ago. Want to grab food?”

I looked at the clock again. 4:33.

“Yeah,” I said. “But then I have to go to Kevin’s.”

“Before six,” Patrick said. “Yeah, I’ve heard. I’ll rouse the troops. You get dressed. I’m starving.”

The four of us ate at the food court in the Lavin-Bernick Center, which took about an hour, and I had my eyes glued to my watch--something Patrick clearly found amusing, and something Erik and Tripp didn’t seem to notice.

Tripp was busy gushing about Kiandra: “She’s just so fun, and so beautiful.”

“And she fucked you on the first date,” Erik said, flatly. “Always an encouraging sign.”

I couldn’t tell if Erik was being surly because of the hangover, or out of jealousy that Tripp could barely contain his feelings for the girl he had gone out with, while Erik was saddled with Erica Strout, who was also beautiful and also put out, but was awful as far as the rest of us were concerned.

“We didn’t fuck,” Tripp replied. “I mean, we did stuff, but we didn’t do that yet.”

“I had to share Erica’s twin bed all night,” Erik said, mournfully, “and you didn’t even round all the bases.”

“All in due time,” Tripp said. “I’m a gentleman, y’all know that.”

It waited until it was 5 o’clock, at which point I felt tidal anxiety rising through my body. There was no text from Kevin, no overture into resuming this conversation. I put my phone back in my pocket, and withdrew what I thought was ten minutes later but was only about thirty seconds, according to the clock.

Maybe I would go too, to Paris, just say forget about it. Let people think what they wanted to think, resign my job as historian, and just go be with my boyfriend in Paris, the most romantic city in the world.

I looked at the clock. 5:01.

“I’m just saying,” Patrick was telling Tripp, “you guys just lost 29-37 to the Rams literally an hour ago. The Rams were 0-9. There’s no way the Saints are a playoff team. Fire Brees. He peaked in San Diego. Fire Payton. Clean house.”

“We’re 4-5,” Tripp said, too defensively. “That’s recoverable. We’re going to beat the Texans next week.”

“Are not,” Patrick replied. “But you know who will win next week? My Patriots. They’re going 16-0 this season, you heard it here first.”

5:02. It was amazing how time slowed to a halt, how long the minutes seemed.

I typed: “I don’t want you to go,” on my phone and I held it for a moment, daring myself to press the send button, but then I imagined Kevin seeing the white smoke, eagerly opening his phone, and then seeing a crushing: “I don’t want you to go.”

And how was I supposed to do that to a person, to do that to my boyfriend, to do that to Kevin? He wanted to go. He wanted to go, and I did not want him to go, but I didn’t want to be the person who had to tell him that he couldn’t go. The pressure was incredible, and I felt it in every inch of my hungover body: that I could lose Kevin for a semester, and risk the pitfalls of a long-distance relationship, risk Carver whispering in his ear for the next seven eight months; that I could keep Kevin for a semester, but maybe risk losing him forever in the frontier of bitterness and recriminations. I didn’t like risk. And I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t want things to change.

My finger rested on the send button. I did not press it, but instead closed my phone and put it back in my pocket. I reached for my sandwich, and took a bite. I was not really able to consume foods at this point of my hangover still; I chewed, I swallowed, and I felt somehow even worse than I had before.

I checked my phone. Still 5:02. And I put it back in my pocket.

Until 5:04, which again, still felt like lifetimes had passed.

“Please, Michaela’s a lunatic,” Erik was telling Tripp. “Who locks herself in her room and cries because she didn’t get asked to a date party? When she has a boyfriend in a different fraternity?”

“Who she’s having sex with in the middle of her floor,” Patrick added.

“Yeah,” Erik said. “Don’t apologize. Let her and Tate work it out, who even gives a shit. They’re not going to kill you. Things are just going to be awkward as fuck.”

“I don’t want you to go,” was still typed in the box. I erased it. I thought about what to put there instead--maybe something encouraging, like, “I know you want to do this. We’ll work it out. I love you.” But I couldn’t even almost bring myself to type those words.

I typed again, “I don’t want you to do this.”

But I, again, did not hit send.

I added, “I want things to stay exactly how they are.”

And then I deleted that line, leaving only, “I don’t want you to do this.”

I deleted “do this” and replaced it with “go” again.

5:06. My finger was lingering over the send button again.

“You’re being quiet,” Erik said, startling me. I closed my phone quickly, put it back in my pocket.

“Hangover,” I said. “I just don’t feel quite right still.”

“We were up way later than you,” Erik said. “We stayed out at The Boot another half hour, and then we all had to go back to perform our masculine duties, because there’s no excuse to not have sex after Speakeasy. Except maybe Jordan Fleischer.”

I gave him the finger. And, whatever, I had sex yesterday too, Erik Fontenot, even if I couldn’t tell him that.

With Kevin.

Who would officially be heading Paris for an entire semester, in 54 minutes.

I pulled out my phone again. 5:07. 53 minutes.

“You know who did have sex last night?” Patrick said. “You didn’t hear it from me, but Katrina Sawyer. And not with Chris Baker.”

“Obviously not with Chris Baker,” Erik replied. “Who?”

“Matt Rowen,” Patrick said. “We saw them at The Boot right after you and Erica left. So Baker said he wanted to leave and offered to walk Katrina home, and she was all, ‘No thanks, hombre,’ but all polite, because she’s a nice girl. And he really didn’t know how to make it look like he was just trying to bring her home so he could get in her pants, so he just got wicked awkward and left. And then we turn around two seconds later, and Rowen has her up against the pillar on the dance floor. And I don’t even know where his date went off to, but he and Katrina left The Boot, just the two of them, like fifteen minutes later.”

“Jeez,” Tripp said. “Matt fucking Rowen. I don’t know how he does it.”

“Dude’s a stud,” said Erik. “That makes sense. They were talking at the poker table together, like, all night, so you know he was totally just baiting that fishhook all night. Can’t blame the guy. She’s hot, and I actually liked her. She friended me on Facebook this morning, and her profile is her standing in front of this destroyed house in the Ninth Ward with ‘Katrina, You Bitch!’ graffitied on the side. Nice touch.”

“Oh, I appreciate that,” Patrick agreed. “Wow, unsolicited Facebook friend request from someone else’s date--maybe she’ll be calling you up to the majors one of these days.”

“Oh, I would so tap that,” Erik said. “She’s one of those girls that’s just a little bit crazy, and you just know she’s absolutely filthy in bed.”

On that note.

I looked back down at my phone. The world had only moved forward one minute. 5:08.

“You know what, I’m going to head back,” I told them, standing up. “I’m going to go lie down.”

Patrick looked instinctively at his watch, then back to me. “I’ll hang out in their room for a while. Let you sleep it off for an hour or so.”

“Thanks,” I said. I bundled up my mostly-untouched sandwich, threw it in the garbage, and walked out of the cafeteria. It was the middle of November, and there was a sharp, autumn wind, but it felt nice with my hangover. Nicer than being in the Lavin-Bernick Center.

I didn’t head back across the quad towards Mayer; I turned left towards the Newcomb side of campus, towards Broadway, where Kevin was awaiting the delivery of my veto, if it was going to come.

Which I wasn’t entirely sure if it was going to come, because this was a decision with no upside at all. Either I let Kevin go, and he’s happy, and I’m miserable. Or I tell him to stay, and I’m happy, and he’s miserable. And I didn’t know if a relationship could last if one of the parties was miserable.

And it wasn’t fair for him to put this decision squarely on me. It wasn’t fair.

I stopped walking. I was alone in Newcomb Quad, in the middle of the grass between Newcomb Hall and Rogers Chapel, The Boot to my left, Kevin’s house just down Broadway beyond that. I could see very faintly, on the corner of Burthe and Broadway two blocks down, the Becker door, unopened, shimmering like a mirage in the distance.

And I imagined myself, knocking on the door, Kevin answering it, and kissing him, and telling him that I loved him. And me having to say nothing else, that through my presence he would just know what I wanted, and would give me what I wanted, which was him, which was him here.

That wasn’t going to happen. I would arrive, and I would say, “I don’t want you to go,” and I would watch a spark die just a little bit from his eyes. Because he wanted to go. Because I was being selfish by asking him to stay, and he would know I was being selfish. And if he didn’t know I was being selfish, he’d have to tell Carver that he wasn’t going to Paris, who would inform Kevin that I was, in fact, being selfish.

I slouched, and then I sat, and then I felt another wave of hungover nausea coming into me, so I lay down in the quad, on my side, in the grass, and phone opened my flip phone. And, instead of moving, I counted up the minutes, from 5:17, to 5:18, to 5:19.

And the thoughts continued to be thought, the tug-of-war between telling Kevin yes and telling Kevin no, on a constant and ceaseless loop, all the way to 6 o’clock.

The recorded bells at Rogers Chapel chimed, followed by six bongs. And beyond them, I could hear the real bells from the church tower at Loyola on the off-beat, faint but clashing and utterly unable to be bridled, down the street or a million miles from where I was.

I closed my phone, and curled up around it in the fetal position. I was cold, I was freezing by this point, but I didn’t want to move, I somehow couldn’t summon the energy to move.

And then I felt a faint buzz against my chest. And I didn’t move, still, because I knew what my phone had come to tell me, and I didn’t want to hear it, and I wanted this all to go away, to let me pretend just a little bit longer.

It was 6:02 by the time I screwed up the courage to read the phone, though I thought much more time had gone by, in the cold, abandoned air of Newcomb Quad.

It was, of course, Kevin, with the lethal injection: “Well, that’s that.”

I felt numb, like crying, but I didn’t, and I couldn’t. Part of me was just relieved that it was over, the hard part, the part that involved me doing something other than waiting for him to come back. And I thought of variants on what to say: “I’m so happy for you,” or “I wish you weren’t, or something.

But I really wished it was three minutes ago. That I had sent, “Please don’t go,” before it was too late.

I instead went with, “I’m so happy for you.” And then I amended the period to an exclamation point, and sent that. And then regretted the exclamation point, because he would know I wasn’t celebrating this exclamatorily.

“No, you’re not,” he replied, and I could almost feel his half-smile, his smirk, appearing on his beautiful face as he typed it. “But it’s okay. I know it’s tough for you. And I appreciate this.”

I texted him back: “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he replied. “Hey, this is a good thing. I want to do this. I need to do this. And we’re going to figure it out. I promise.”

“We’ll make it work,” I agreed. “And I want to come for spring break. Assuming my parents will buy me a ticket.”

“Good,” he said. “You know what? It’ll be great. It’ll be like New York again. I mean, yeah, we’ll be apart, but it’s only temporary, and you’ll visit me right in the middle, so it’s only three months on each side. And when you’re in Paris, you can meet everyone, and we can be open about everything again. I can kiss you at the Eiffel Tower.”

“Well,” I texted back, “just play it discreet until I get there, you know? And we’ll sort it out when we’re together. And we don’t even have to stay in Paris the whole time. Have you ever been to Dubrovnik? Or Barcelona?”

Maybe fifteen seconds went by, before he sent back: “I haven’t been anywhere. Remember?”