Chapter 57
Dana shrugged, neither yes nor no. She no longer wanted to talk about it.
With a sigh, Bethany admitted, “I have a boyfriend back home. His name is Terrance. We’ve been together since eighth grade.”
“Do you love him?” Dana wanted to know.
“Well, yeah.” The way she said it didn’t sound too convincing, but Dana wasn’t in the mood to argue. “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”
Suddenly Dana stood up. “You know what? It’s getting late. Maybe we should just get back to campus.” Without waiting for Bethany to reply, she opened the stall door and stepped out.
Bethany followed. “I thought you wanted to see the movie again?”
“Once was enough.”
Walking over to the sink, Dana washed her hands, then splashed cold water on her face so she wouldn’t have to look at Bethany’s reflection in the mirror. One word tolled through her mind like a bell. Stupid, stupid, stupid.She should’ve known better than to crush on someone like Bethany—of course a girl like thatwould have a boyfriend. Terrance was probably hot as shit, an all-star athlete on scholarship somewhere, working his way through college just waiting for the chance to settle down and marry Bethany. After graduation, they’d get married, buy a house in the suburbs, and have a bunch of beautiful children.
And Dana would be on her own, alone. Maybe if she were lucky, she’d have a cat to sleep beside her at night, but no girlfriend. No Bethany.
A warm hand touched her shoulder. “Dana, are you alright?” Bethany asked.
Grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser, Dana wiped the water from her eyes and turned to smile at her friend. “Fine. If we hurry, we won’t have to wait too long for the next bus. Come on.”
Bethany’s words continued to echo in Dana’s ears. Not into girls.As she followed Bethany out of the restroom, she wondered if she’d hear them for the rest of her life. 2: Still Have You
May 1996
The morning of graduation, Dana woke earlier than usual to a bare room full of boxes. Everything she had accumulated in the past three years was packed away neatly in cardboard and labeled, ready to be loaded into her parents’ car whenever they arrived on campus. For a long moment she stared at the ceiling, listening to the quiet around her; before long, the day would burst into motion and sound, but for now everything hung in suspended animation, frozen in time. This was her last day as a college student, her last morning waking in a room she shared with Bethany. Tomorrow she’d be back home, expected to begin life as an adult, ready to look for a real job and a place of her own.
The thought terrified her.
She’d moved into Bethany’s dorm room unofficially shortly after they met, then put in for a transfer as soon as she could. By the spring semester of their sophomore year, the two of them were inseparable. Even if Bethany didn’t like her in the same way Dana wished, that didn’t stop them from becoming the best of friends. Hell, she even met Terrance, though privately she thought he was a tool and Bethany could do better.
Yeah,she thought, rolling onto her side in the top bunk, she could have me.
In the bunk beneath her, she heard Bethany’s soft snores amid the rustle of sheets. Dana was leaving campus immediately after the graduation ceremony, heading back home, but Bethany wasn’t. At the end of the week, she’d start an intern position at The Washington Postas one of their foreign correspondents—her job would be to monitor francophonic media from around the world for current events and entertainment pieces, then translate the stories for the paper to reprint. The advent of the internet made her position even easier; in the past, she would have been expected to comb through papers such as Le Monde or Le Devoirby hand. Now she could scroll through them online in half the time it would take. Dana knew she was excited about the job; she must be, because she hadn’t stopped talking about it since she was offered it.
The one downside to the position, from Bethany’s point of view, was that she’d be working in the nation’s capital, too far from her hometown to commute, which meant her relationship with Terrance would have to stay on hold until her internship was completed. Bethany wasn’t too worried about that, really, or so she said, but Dana could tell it bothered her a little. Terrance was a handsome man—even Dana had to admit that—and he had a bad habit of mentioning the girls he met or who hit on him whenever he could. It hurt Bethany when he did it, which was probably exactly why he did it in the first place. Dana didn’t have to be psych major to figure that out.