Love Story(28)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Hey,” said the guy who’d been bartending at the party in the bathroom. “You’re lucky we didn’t bring the hearse.”

“Fuggedaboudit,” I wanted to say in response to his accent. But I was playing nice and shutting Manohar up for good, so I only smiled sweetly at Summer’s horrified expression as the boys opened the door of the limo and handed us inside. I slid all the way over to the opposite door. Summer huddled next to me. She must have been a little creeped out by the idea of riding in the funeral home limo. She bent over and looked under the seat.

The boys shut the door behind us. They seemed to be conferring quietly. I thought they might be cooking up something. Sure enough, when the door opened, Hunter sat on the seat facing us and slid all the way to the opposite door, directly across from me. Manohar sat next to him, across from Summer. He was glad she had come even if he was too stubborn to say so. Two more boys piled in beside us, and the other two climbed in up front.

Hunter watched me, so light and bright in front of me with his blond hair and blue eyes in the black limo, but we were spared an awkward convo because the other boys had grown loud again. They were boisterous and adorable if you had a taste for honors program nerds. The boys in the back with us shouted movie quotes through a little window to the boys in the front. Underneath the noise, Summer and Manohar had started a halting convo of their own.

I’d expected a short ride through Manhattan, but the boys were willing to go blocks out of our way to avoid the Midtown Tunnel toll. I looked out the window and watched the city go by. New York was vast, yet all I saw on a daily basis was the same college buildings and town houses. Sixth Avenue was a different world. We passed Fortieth Street. Two blocks later Manohar said we should look down the street for a glimpse of Times Square, but I was still leaning toward Hunter and looking back over my shoulder toward the Kensington Books building, wondering whether, if I worked there, I would eat my lunch and take my writing break in the big park nearby. A few minutes later Summer ooohed as Manohar pointed at Rockefeller Center. I was looking in the other direction, at the strangely stark Simon & Schuster building, like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie about people in the Depression fearing the future. At the beginning of the semester, when we visited MoMA, I’d dragged Summer with me to stare longingly at the HarperCollins building, a modern black-and-white-striped monstrosity. But I peered up at it again, picturing myself as a publishing intern walking through those glass doors. I never took my eyes off it when Summer exclaimed, “And look, there’s the LOVE sculpture!” I was still watching the skyscraper through the back window of the limo when we hung a hard right at Central Park, throwing Summer into my lap.

In the ensuing commotion, which involved Hunter looking outraged as Manohar and another guy extricated themselves from his own lap, Summer whispered to me, “These city boys can’t drive.”

I nodded. “Hunter will use that.”

Her eyes widened. “For what?”

“He can’t stand being a passenger because he’s not in charge. I guarantee you he’ll find a way to drive us home.”

“Drink, ladies?” The bartender, who was driving, handed a bottle of Kentucky bourbon through the little window. The boys in the back with us produced tumblers from a secret compartment in the back of the driver’s seat—the limo was used for drunken wakes, apparently—and handed the bourbon around. Hunter put up his hand in an understated gesture of refusal. Just as I’d thought. After everyone else got drunk, he could drive the limo home because he would be the last one standing.

“Drink?” Hunter prompted me. One of the boys was trying to hand me a tumbler across the limo.

“No thanks,” I said.

When the boys’ volume escalated again, he asked me quietly, “More history homework tonight?”

“Calculus,” I said. “I can’t do it tomorrow. I’m working twelve hours.”

I’d been careful not to use a snippy tone. Still, I hoped the words themselves would shut him up. No such luck. He said, “You’re really tired.”

“I’m not tired.” I watched him suspiciously. “How can you tell I’m tired?” Maybe I’d been too stingy with the remnants of my miracle cream, and I needed to use a little more under my eyes.

“When you’re tired, you hold your chin up.” He demonstrated, lifting his nose into the air. “You look haughtier than usual.”

“Oh, nice,” I said.

“I didn’t mean it that way.” He spread even farther in his seat, arm along the windowsill, one ankle on the other knee, taking up more than his share of space, as always. Then he gave me a cocky grin. “I like you haughty.”

I did not know what to say to that. He was flirting with me again. I tried not to be flattered. He had flirted with me at the beach party right after putting his hands all over that blonde. Flirting meant nothing to him. I said noncommittally, “I think it’s the hat.”

“What?” Summer yelled across the car at Manohar. “I can hardly hear you.” She turned to the other boys. “Simmer down! It’s like freaking Boy Scout camp in here.” Then she turned to Hunter. “Trade places with me.”

Without protest, Hunter crouched and allowed Summer to slip past him and collapse between the door and Manohar. Hunter turned, sat down beside me, and proceeded to put his ankle on the opposite knee and his arm along the back of the seat behind me.

Summer was attempting to explain the Southern phenomenon of mud riding to Manohar, and Manohar was expressing disbelief. But between sentences and over her glass of bourbon, she took time to give me a sly smile.

I tried to ignore the tingles along my neck and shoulders where Hunter’s arm accidentally touched them. I looked out the window.

AT THE TRACK, THE GUYS WANTED to buy drinks—this would be a long process involving many drink stands because six people were drinking and only two of them were twenty-one—and find a place in the stands. They didn’t understand that betting on horses with any aplomb took some work. While the rest of them laughed amid the crowd under autumn trees, Hunter and I grabbed tip sheets and stood at the paddock fence, watching the grooms parade the thoroughbreds that would run in the first race.

This was déjŕ vu, standing next to Hunter at a fence with horses on the other side. I did not want to like him or have a good time today. I wished that the stallion in front of us didn’t remind me of Boo-boo, and that I wasn’t itching to touch him, just to feel his warm skin and sheer power under my palm.

“Hey, it’s Boo-boo,” Hunter said.

He meant the horse’s markings, but I chose to take him more literally. Paging through the tip sheet, I said, “No, this guy’s bloodlines are from California.” Then I flipped through the booklet for the next horse shaking its mane in front of us. The sire was from my farm. I’d never been too impressed with the father even though he’d won the Stephen Foster Handicap, but the dam was from a prestigious farm, and she’d won the Kentucky Oaks.