I guess I’m going to find out. At ten the next morning, when I come outside with my backpack, the truck is already loaded with liquor crates, and Rickie is seated behind the wheel of Dylan’s truck.
“Here’s the manifest,” Griffin says, handing me a folded sheet of paper. “Easy deliveries. Enjoy your day.”
“Thanks,” I grunt, heading toward the passenger seat. I guess I won’t be listening to the audiobook I’d planned for these Wednesday trips.
I climb onto the seat beside Rickie and shut the door. He smells good, damn it. Like some kind of spicy, exotic cologne. Lovely. An hour alone with a man who once stood me up, and then forgot I existed. Just what every girl craves.
“If you drive there,” I say by way of a greeting. “I’ll drive home.”
“Nah,” he says, putting the truck in gear. “I got it. Both ways.”
My blood pressure spikes. “It wasn’t a request. Women drive, Rick.”
“I’m sure you’re a great driver, baby girl. But I told Dylan I’d get you and the booze safe to Burlington, so that’s what I’ll do.” He puts on the radio and guides the truck down our long driveway. “So, what are you up to in Burlington today?” he asks, unaware that I’m silently planning his murder.
“Working. A job. Once a week.” My answer is as friendly as gunfire. Most people don’t want to hear about public health research anyway. It’s nerdy.
We roll on, and the cab is so silent that I can hear each ping of gravel the tires are kicking up. I know it’s my turn to ask a friendly question, but I just don’t have it in me. I have exactly one summer to untangle all the knots in my life. It’s not going very well. And stress has ruined my ability to make small talk.
“Hey, can you stop so I can check the mail?” I ask as he slows at the end of the drive to turn onto the road.
“Sure, gorgeous.” He brings the truck to a halt, and I try not to roll my eyes. He probably calls me that only because he’s forgotten my actual name.
I climb out of the truck and open our mailbox. There’s a dairy barn catalog in there for my twin brother, so I leave that alone. Dylan cares about two things—goat farming, and getting naked with his girlfriend. Not at the same time though.
Quickly, I sift through a stack of envelopes, looking for my name. I’m waiting to hear if I got a fellowship that will help me pay for my last year of undergrad. It hasn’t helped that I made the sudden decision to transfer from Harkness College to Moo U, and I applied for funding at the last minute.
This is what happens when you make a mess of your life.
There’s one envelope in the mailbox with my name on it, but it’s the wrong shape, and it’s from the wrong school. So when I get back into the truck with Rickie, I’m staring at a big square envelope from the Harkness School of Public Health. Now what do they want? In spite of my withdrawal from the university, I must still be on the mailing list.
Rickie heads down our country road toward the highway, while I tap the envelope on my knee. My curiosity wins out eventually, and I slit the envelope open with my thumb. Inside I find an expensively printed invitation to a party in September. Tour the Future, it says, inviting me to a formal celebration for the new wing of the public health building where I did research last year.
At the bottom of the fancy cream-colored card is a short list of benefactors who will be thanked at the reception. In the very center is a name I’ve grown to hate and fear. Senator Mitchell Halsey. The Halseys are a big deal in Connecticut. A huge big deal.
And I’m the idiot who got stars in her eyes when the senator’s son started flashing his blue eyes at me. Last year was like a slow motion disaster. It began with those blue eyes, and it ended with the realization that I had to leave Harkness if I wanted to graduate at all.
Reardon Halsey was an upperclassman with a research job in public health, just like me. I thought we had so much in common. I believed him when he told me that we were meant to be a couple.