Jackie shook her head. “Charlotte. Just let it go. It’s gonna be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
Jackie’s palm found her back and rubbed in comforting circles. “Reece is a big kid now,” her best friend reassured her. “He can handle himself.”
The true question floated across Charlotte’s mind in black permanent marker scrawl.
But can I?
“Besides,” Jackie added, “the two of you deserve some fun.”
Fun sounded amazing. Neon red and electric blue. Simple and hungry and satisfying.
Was it that simple? Could she just reach out and take what she wanted? Could she lean into the skid of reunion and actually enjoy herself, instead of crashing into a guardrail?
Yes. Yes, I can.
Charlotte took a deep breath. She didn’t know why she hesitated: This moment had a strange inevitability to it.
“Okay. I’m going.”
Jackie planted a wet kiss on her cheek, leaving behind a perfect print of her red lipstick. “That’s my girl.”
Chapter 6
If Acronym purred, 31 Atwood roared.
The hockey house resided in the middle of Senior Housing, a cluster of streets on the east edge of campus. The micro-village included two rows of identical prewar houses bought by the university during an admissions boom. The houses were renovated to allow groups of students to live together comfortably; the bedrooms were spacious, with actual plaster walls and hardwood floors. They had no air conditioning, but that didn’t matter for most of the year—seniors lucky enough to win placement on Atwood or Steele Street threw their windows open and let the babble of their lives pour out onto the road.
A hard bass line shook the windows tonight. Charlotte stood on the sidewalk in front of 31 Atwood and willed herself to breathe. No matter how hard she tried, her feet would not move toward the party.
The time warp of the reunion seized her in its disorienting grip again. She couldn’t count how many nights she stood right here, gathering her courage to walk up the concrete path and meet Reece. He lived in 31 Atwood as a senior in a spacious bedroom on the second floor. Charlotte never found out what insider hack the hockey bros used to pass the house down among themselves from year to year. The tradition drove Jackie nuts, especially when they compared 31 Atwood to their dated two-bedroom apartment in Rawls Tower, the other on-campus option for upperclassmen.
Fear seized her lungs as she remembered Ben stalking through 31 Atwood as he sought out the night’s It Party. When they were together, he dragged her in and out of raucous houses and dorm rooms as he searched for a gathering where he’d be treated like a campus celebrity. He got frustrated as the night went on, often blaming Charlotte as if her shyness were the reason he was never satisfied.
She never felt the same way about crowds after that: too many bodies, too much noise.
Ben didn’t have friends on the hockey team, and even if he did show up at 31 Atwood tonight, it wasn’t hard to hide behind a tall jock or duck into a side room. Still, Charlotte never felt safe in this corner of campus. Not then and not now.
My name is Charlotte Thorne, she reminded herself. I am twenty-seven years old and I have not had sex in fourteen months.
She reapplied her lip balm and shook out her hair. Then, having run out of excuses, she thrust her shoulders back and walked up the path.
The heat hit her as soon as she opened the door. Undergrads surrounded her, their faces a dark blur. Boys wore polo shirts and Hein tank tops, while girls favored crop tops and tight skirts. Athletic pennants from other colleges hung upside down on the wall in a display of disrespect.
It couldn’t be further from Acronym’s bright color palette of gender expression. Charlotte could smell the heterosexuality and white privilege.
The hostile vibe brought back old insecurities. At a school as small as Hein, cliques bled into each other by necessity. There just weren’t enough students to create rigid rivalries between the hipsters and the jocks and the nerds. Charlotte didn’t feel unwelcome at the hockey house, per se. But at a party like this, she could never be sure if she was the hunter or the hunted. The boys grossly outnumbered the girls. It was a space owned and controlled by the men of the house. She shivered as she remembered desperately searching so many rooms for someone she recognized.
Charlotte knew she was being paranoid—none of these kids would hassle an alumna—but she couldn’t shrug off the party’s menace. The scene felt so different now that she looked at it with adult eyes. Just entering this house as a woman meant consenting to being cornered and hit on or grabbed from behind under the guise of dancing.
The social rules that never seemed strange to her as an undergrad now seemed arcane and rude. For all of Hein University’s talk about progressive values and good citizenship, its hookup culture sucked.
Maybe she should turn around and go back to the disco. She should have asked Reece to meet her there instead.
Her phone vibrated. She clung to it, grateful for the excuse to lean against the wall and not talk to anyone.
TEXT MESSAGE FROM REECE KRUEGER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 11:21 PM: We’re out back!
Charlotte muscled her way to the back door and stepped out onto the deck. A group of bros she didn’t recognize hovered around lines of coke on the glass patio table. She turned away quickly and headed for the stairs to the grass below.
The homes on Atwood and Steele Street backed up onto a communal yard. Students moved in packs between parties, the yard a single, pulsing organism with pockets of different music. She was in the belly of the jock beast at 31 Atwood. A dance party hosted by kids from the African Studies program shook the house next door. Hein’s swim team barbecued on the other side.
Charlotte watched, hypnotized, as a woman in a one-piece swimsuit and gym shorts flipped a burger. The senior had a portrait of David Bowie tattooed on her shoulder blade, pink ink illustrating the lightning bolt across his face. With a dash of lust, Charlotte wondered if she’d ever been that cool during college.
“Charlie! Over here!”
She peeled her eyes from the girl at the grill and wheeled around. Reece waved at her from underneath a beech tree. He’d changed since dinner. Now he wore jeans and a white T-shirt that clung to his chest and shoulders. His hair crested in a perfect pompadour. The real difference was the open delight on his face, flushed and beautiful. Party Reece had arrived.
His friends Garrett and Liam perched on lower branches of the tree clutching tall boys of beer. Liam waved, while Garrett ignored her.
She ignored his prickly reception. Reece had invited her here. Garrett could deal with it.
Party Charlotte was in attendance too. Party Charlotte took no shit.
“How was the disco?” Reece asked. His voice scratched—he’d been yelling over the noise all night.
“Fabulous as ever. Lots of sequins.”
