Notorious (5 page)

After passing through the sleepy main street of the tiny town of Rhinecliff, the car turned toward the river and drove along a thickly wooded road. Lights from large, tasteful homes glinted through the trees. Then, right when it looked like they were about to drive into the slow-moving Hudson, the car turned suddenly down a long driveway. Branches swept lightly against the windows and sides of the car. Completely private, Brett noted.

The car pulled up in front of a modern angular redwood-and-glass house nestled into the riverbank. Eric opened the front door, wearing Diesel jeans and a navy blue vintage Red Sox T-shirt. Seeing him dressed so casually felt so intimate. He looked exactly like the kind of beautiful yet faintly scruffy college student she’d always dreamed about bumping into on one of her many Ivy League college tours. The Red Sox logo made her think guiltily of Jeremiah before she quickly pushed him out of her mind.

“I’m sorry for not calling. I’ve been so busy.” Eric leaned in to give Brett a kiss on the cheek, lingering longer than necessary. “I’ve missed you, and you smell lovely.”

Brett hated to swoon, but how many boys did she know who could say “lovely” in all seriousness? Certainly not Jeremiah. She immediately forgave Eric for all the unreturned calls. He was an adult, after all. He got busy.

Eric led her through the narrow entryway that opened into a dimly lit living room with cathedral ceilings. A wall of windows looked out on what must have been a breathtaking view of the river, though only blackness was visible now. The room was sparsely and elegantly furnished with low, rectangular pieces of furniture that had clearly been custom-designed for this house. Candles flickered on the coffee table and the sound of saxophone music filled the air.

“Is this a Frank Lloyd Wright house?” she asked, since Frank Lloyd Wright was the only modern architect she knew.

“Nah,” Eric said, pouring red wine into the two crystal glasses already sitting on the coffee table. “My grandfather was a big fan of Wright’s work but not his lifestyle.” He gestured toward the couch, and Brett sat down, wondering what “his lifestyle” meant but too shy to ask. The couch was surprisingly stiff and uncomfortable. She tried leaning against one of the velvety pillows and felt a little better, although she was worried her posture looked too suggestive. Eric handed her a glass and sat next to her, close enough that their knees brushed against each other. “My grandfather was kind of a hard-ass.”

“It sounds like your grandfather was a man of …
principle
,” Brett said, trying to sound sophisticated but suspecting that she sounded like a freak. She sipped her wine and felt a little out of place.

“
He
thought he was,” Eric said with a chuckle, setting his glass down on the table. He raised one of his perfectly shaped blond eyebrows and met her gaze. “But he had a weakness for pretty girls.”

“Oh?” She could feel herself blushing. She gripped her knees with her hands. “Does that run in the family?”

Eric leaned toward her and tenderly pushed back a strand of Brett’s red hair, making sure it didn’t snag on any of the small gold hoops she always wore along the upper curve of her left ear. “Just pretty redheads,” he murmured hoarsely into her ear.

His fingers slipped down to her shoulder. Brett was having serious trouble concentrating.

“Um … Eric? What, exactly, are we doing here?” she faltered, trying to sound as un-childish and casual as possible. “I mean, seriously. You could get in a lot of trouble. We both—”

Eric sighed and took his hand from Brett’s shoulder, letting it fall to the back of the couch instead. His sandy blond hair looked darker in the candlelight, and his face turned serious. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and while there are plenty of logical reasons why this shouldn’t be happening, I don’t want it to stop.”

Brett couldn’t help herself. She pressed her small knee against his larger one. The sight of their two denim knees together just seemed so normal and right to her. He was just a guy, after all, handsome and smart and totally irresistible. She slowly moved her hand over to his leg and rested it there, admiring the feel of his muscled thigh beneath her shimmering light lavender nails. Suppressing a giggle, she remembered the name of the Hard Candy polish she had picked out of Callie’s makeup bag: Jailbait.

“I just …” Eric shrugged and brushed an invisible piece of hair off his face. “I just think you’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever met.”

She felt drunk even though she’d hardly touched her wine. She moved her face toward his, slowly, keeping her eyes focused on his lips. Finally she met his lips with hers and felt an electric sensation course through her.

After a long, lingering kiss, he pressed his lips to her throat. She couldn’t help remembering the last time they were together, on his boat, when they had started taking off each other’s clothes. There she was, completely naked in Eric’s bed, when she suddenly realized she wasn’t ready to do it yet. But this time, she was sure. Who better to share her first time with than someone so incredible … who thought she was
amazing?

But as Eric breathed into her neck and his hands inched toward her breasts, she couldn’t help feeling, once again, that he was just
too
good at this. He knew exactly how to touch her, which was, in a way, hypnotically exciting. But whenever she started to think too much about it, which she couldn’t help doing, she could picture him doing the exact same thing with some generic girl in her place, who he called amazing and maybe even made the same joke to about the family weakness for redheads, or blondes, or freckles, or whatever the girl happened to have. How many girls—or
women
—had he been with on this very couch, in this candlelit living room? The thought made her immediately self-conscious, and her body froze up.

Eric pulled away from her and looked at her face questioningly. “
I—I
think I might not be ready just yet,” she stammered, feeling like the biggest baby in the world. She stared at her lap and concentrated on holding back the tears that threatened to come spilling out.

“That’s fine, Brett.” Eric placed his hands on her cheeks. “Look at me—don’t worry about it. There’s no hurry—we’ll take it slow.”

Brett looked up. “I’m sorry I’m such a … ,” she started to say.

“A what? A beautiful, sexy girl?” He laughed, and Brett smiled sheepishly. “Trust me, I’m not going anywhere. We can take our time.” He held out his arms, and Brett collapsed against him in relief, enjoying how his body felt wrapped, fully clothed, around hers. She’d be ready soon; she could tell. Just not yet.

Two hours later, Brett lay partially clothed with Eric dozing next to her, beneath smooth Egyptian cotton sheets that had to be like a thousand thread count. And as nice and sexy and sweet as it was, Brett couldn’t help thinking about how her own bed would feel at that moment. She could almost hear the soft whimpering noises Callie made in her sleep. Eric’s manly snores kind of reminded her of her father. She wished she had just slept with him and gotten her first time over with—she wouldn’t feel like such a kid, and it would make the next time even easier. Needing to pee, she slipped out from under his arm, careful not to wake him.

She reached for the pair of Ralph Lauren silk pajama bottoms on his bureau to pull on over her underwear. As she tightened the drawstring around her waist, a streak of moonlight illuminated the top of the dresser. Next to Eric’s sleek black Italian leather wallet lay a plastic baggie of marijuana. Brett picked it up and sniffed inside to be sure. Eric, a pothead? Brett had never smoked pot, but it occurred to her that it might be just what she needed to relax enough to do it with Eric. Maybe next time.

“Where’re you going?” Brett turned around to see Eric sitting up in bed, his sexy gray eyes sleepy and his hair rumpled. “You’re not leaving?”

“Bathroom,” Brett answered, suddenly wondering how she was supposed to get home.

“Spend the night.” Eric yawned adorably. “I just want you to sleep next to me.”

Brett melted. Without a thought of curfews or her roommates or what she’d wear in the morning, she agreed. “I’d like that too.”

Instant Message Inbox

SageFrancis:
U awake yet? I just’ Knocked on Pardee’s door to tell her our toilet’s clogged again and I heard Mr. Pardee totally freaking inside.

BennyCunningham:
U get anything good?

SageFrancis:
Not really. Maybe she’s got a boyfriend? Mr. Dalton?

BennyCunningham:
Doubt it. Someone saw Brett getting dropped off at dawn in a schmaney Town Car this morning.

SageFrancis:
U don’t say …

Instant Message Inbox

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date:
Wednesday, September 11, 9:01 a.m.

Subject:
Stables

Hey, baby,

Meet me at the stables at 5 p.m.?

Xxx,

C

Jenny plopped her giant purple suede tote bag she’d gotten at an open-air market in Prague that summer on the floor beneath the art desk she’d tentatively claimed as her own. She’d fallen in love with the bag, and her mother had quickly handed over the two thousand koruny the vendor wanted for it without even trying to bargain, as if her willingness to buy Jenny the bag made her a less-neglectful mother after basically abandoning her and Dan when they were kids. Jenny loved the bag despite its being a bribe and despite its being slightly grungy and not exactly hip. After her first week at Waverly, Jenny was finding herself less concerned with everyone else’s idea of what coolness was. There was something very empowering about the way she had found herself turning the Black Saturday cheer to her advantage instead of collapsing in shame, and she suddenly felt like she could do the same with everything if she set her mind to it. Who cared if her bag was slightly lumpy and Eastern Bloc looking?

Yesterday Mrs. Silver had invited Jenny, Easy, and Alison Quentin into the Advanced Portraiture elective that met on Wednesdays. The class was mostly seniors, so Jenny felt especially proud. And the fact that she was going to have another class with Easy didn’t hurt either.

Jenny headed to the student supply closet and pulled her enormous newsprint sketch pad out from the shelf labeled
HUMPHREY
in her elegant calligraphy. She couldn’t help smiling at the sight of Easy’s name on his shelf in sloppy charcoal, the dark, dusty letters already smearing on the white label.

“Glad you could join us, Mr. Walsh,” Mrs. Silver greeted Easy as he strolled into the classroom just as she was closing the door.

“The pleasure is all mine.” Easy slid onto the stool next to Jenny, glancing at her out of the corner of his brilliant blue eyes. It was a mixed blessing, a tease, like someone waving a slice of Original Ray’s cheese-and-pepperoni pizza under her nose and she was on a diet. What was wrong with her? She didn’t know if he and Callie were still together, but either way, Callie was her
roommate
. “Hey,” he whispered, barely audibly.

“Hey,” Jenny whispered back. What was she doing? She had to force herself to stop flirting with him. Concentrate on her artwork, something!

“I think you have all mastered the basic proportions of the face, working with a mirror and your own reflections.” Mrs. Silver, a graying Mrs.-Claus-goes-hippie type, smiled kindly at the class. “Now, I’d like you to work on capturing a likeness of someone else’s face. These two rows, pair up with the person next to you—” She pointed at Easy and Jenny’s rows. “And these two …”

Jenny stopped listening. Easy was already turning his desk to face hers. It was almost as if everyone in the world had united to try and torture her.

“Who wants to go first?” he asked, his pencil already doodling on his paper.

“I’ll do you first,” Jenny said, not ready for him to be drawing her face yet. She’d blush like an idiot the whole time. Besides, she didn’t want him to start comparing her looks to Callie’s—she’d never measure up. Callie was the kind of girl who got all primped just to head out to field hockey practice and spend a few hours sweating. Callie was
beautiful
. Jenny looked down at her own less-than-perfect body with her disproportionately large chest and wondered again why he would ever even consider going from being part of such a glamorous couple to being with a girl more than a foot shorter than him. They’d look like freaks!

“All right, but I’ve never been a model before, so I might not be too good at it.” He looked vaguely embarrassed by the whole situation, tapping his fingers nervously on his drawing table.

“It’s okay; you don’t have to pose or anything.” Jenny giggled. “You can talk or draw if you want as long as you don’t move too much. And keep your eyes up.”

Easy met her eyes, and a slow grin spread across his face. “Okay, boss.”

She looked down at her paper and started her preliminary sketch of the outline of his head with a stub of vine charcoal, but her eyes were immediately drawn back to his face. With only a few glances down at the paper as she sketched, Jenny studied his features more closely than she had before, appreciating the small bump in his nose, the way his big blue eyes turned up at the corners, his slightly uneven sticky-outy ears. Her paper filled up quickly.

“Good,” Mrs. Silver said from behind Jenny’s desk. “Excellent—class, see how Jenny is keeping her eyes on Easy’s face, not buried in her paper? I want you to concentrate on what you are
seeing
, and the drawing will fall into place.”

Perfect,
Jenny thought. More mixed messages—she couldn’t keep her eyes off Easy and she was getting praise for it.