Chapter 56
These were the next four years of my life.
Four years that I had already mapped out.
“I already have a plan,” I tell him. “And I can’t scrap it.”
“Well, you don’t need to scrap it,” he counters. “Simply adjust.”
An undignified huff escapes me. “What you’re proposing is not an adjustment. It’s a 180-degree turn.”
“I’d call it ninety,” he says. “We both know you’d flourish as an artist anywhere. Pratt’s not the only art school with world-renowned teachers or classes.”
It’s with great reluctance that I’m willing to admit he has a point.
Maybe that’s part of the problem with chasing the holy grail. I’ve been convincing myself for so long that Pratt was it, the magnum opus of all my hard work, I haven’t paid much attention to anything else that might be buried alongside it.
And Harvard is…well, it’s Harvard.
People balk at Harvard. They frame rejection letters. They buy cheesy sweatshirts in hopes that someone will mistake them as alumni.
I have no doubt that Harvard would have its own arsenal of world-renowned artists teaching its classes, and nearly as many networking opportunities at Pratt.
And Harvard will have Adrian.
I swallow. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. You bring up all this stuff about Pratt, about Harvard, but you’ve got one hell of an ulterior motive. You want me at Harvard because you’re going to Harvard.”
He merely tilts his head to the side, his tone audibly softening. “Is that such a bad thing? To want to be close to my girlfriend?” He untangles one of his hands from mine, and gently threads it through my hair. “We’ll get a cute little apartment off campus. We’ll meet up after classes and study in the library together. On the weekends, we’ll go into the city, have breakfast, and afterward, I’ll take you shopping for whatever your heart desires.” His thumb skims my cheekbone, and I don’t even need the description – I can already imagine it well enough in my own head.
Put like that, it sounds so simple.
And the fact that he even wants me to follow him, that he’s thought about a future beyond Lionswood’s iron gates, sparks more satisfaction that it probably should.
But this is Adrian.
Things are never simple with Adrian.
“You’re still proposing bribery,” I argue. “Buying my spot at Harvard.”
To that accusation, Adrian’s smile only broadens, his dark eyes suddenly twinkling with mirth. “Your indignation’s a little hypocritical, don’t you think?”
I shake my head. “No, that’s not –”
“I mean it as a compliment more than anything else,” he cuts in smoothly. “You know, it’s one of the first things I admired about you.”
“What? My hypocrisy?”
“Your tenacity.” His gaze flickers down to our joined hands. “One of the first days we spent together, you told me you were going to be an artist.”
“I remember.”
I also remember that Adrian was just about the first person ever to actually take me seriously. He hadn’t laughed. He hadn’t told me it was a ridiculous plan. He’d just believed me.
“And there was no doubt in your voice. No hesitancy. You said you’d simply take what you wanted.” He makes eye-contact with me again, the full weight of his gaze pinning me to the spot. “I could tell you meant it too. At the time, I didn’t realize how much you meant it, but still. That sort of tenacity…it’s so rare. People want for things all the time. They spend their whole lives wanting for money, for a new career, for a better life, but so many of them lack the actual grit to take what they want. Not you though. You don’t lack for tenacity. Or grit. Lionswood is proof of that.” A fond smile breaks over his face, softening his features.
“All this to say,” he continues, drawing me out of my thoughts before I can spiral. “There’s no need to pretend you’re above using the advantages you have access to. You know as well as I do that people like me won’t.”
A part of me hates that he’s right.
And after four years at Lionswood, I know exactly just how right. The true wealth of my classmates isn’t in designer bags and red-bottomed shoes – it’s in connections. It’s Sophie’s step-father sharing a golf game with almost the entirety of Dartmouth’s admission board. It’s the gaggle of tutors and college counselors Ava’s mother had been hiring since she was old enough to walk. It’s Adrian’s mother inviting Harvard’s president over for dinner.
No matter how hard I try, how hard I study, how hard I work on my art, I’ve always been playing the same game with half the cards as anyone else.
And I’ll be stuck playing this game at Pratt too.
Assuming I make it in, I’ll still be bluffing my way through the same game, stacked against kids who’ve had private art lessons since they could hold a pencil and trust funds to pay for their Manhattan apartments.
A voice that sounds suspiciously like Adrian’s whispers in my head: Don’t you deserve a few advantages too?
Look how hard you worked for Lionswood.
That’s proof of your tenacity.
Then, like an electrical shock, comes another thought: or just proof that you have no problem taking what isn’t yours.
Ian Creasey’s the one who deserved Lionswood. He worked hard.
A sudden swell of guilt clogs my throat.
A few compliments, and I’m convincing myself that I’m the one who’s gotten screwed out of a few opportunities, when there’s a real victim in this story.
By all counts, Ian Creasey should be the one courting Ivy Leagues right now, not working out of Rick’s dingy shed for a few Busch Lights. He should be planning his bright future.
But here I am, trying to cheat my way into mine.
Adrian’s wrong.
I’m not tenacious.
I’m a thief.
“Sweetheart?” He gives me an expectant look.
“You sound like the devil on my shoulder,” I mutter.
“I’ll gladly be your devil.” His smile turns a touch mischievous, making the comparison seem even more apt. “You don’t need to decide right now. We’ve got two weeks of break to enjoy. Think about it.” His easy, self-assured confidence suggests that he already knows exactly which one I’ll be picking.
I open my mouth to reply, and nearly yelp when he scoops me up and rises from the chaise.
“Let’s go to bed, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and I’m struck speechless by the fact that I feel absolutely weightless in his arms.
He turns, and my stomach dips.
There’s only one bed.
Of course I noticed when we first walked into the hotel room, but between salivating over the room’s beautiful view and the back-and-forth about my future, my brain hadn’t actually computed what that would mean: we’re going to sleep in the same bed tonight.
Still, it’s a big bed.
It puts both the cramped bed in my Lionswood dorm and the sagging, twin-sized mattress in the trailer to shame.
It’s at least a King, with an ornate wolf that looks to be hand-carved into the headboard, and sheets that I can already tell are as soft as clouds.
But it’s one bed.
As he deposits me onto the dark, satiny sheets and strolls into the bathroom to get ready for bed, another thought flits through my head: are we going to have sex tonight?
My heart thunders.
Well, that’s what teenagers in hotel rooms do, don’t they?
God knows that in Mobile County, at least two or three teen pregnancies follow every homecoming and prom.
And, despite the raging superiority complex that most kids at Lionswood seem to have, they’ve only traded pay-per-hour rooms for vacation houses, luxury suites, and the occasional family yacht.
Yes, sex is exactly what happens when you put a hormone-driven teenage girl into an unsupervised hotel room with a hormone-driven teenage boy.
But Adrian isn’t driven by hormones.
He doesn’t drool over the flash of Millie Roger’s panties when she cheers too loudly at Lacrosse games. He doesn’t classify the success of his weekends by the amount of bases he was able to round. He doesn’t lure Cedarsville girls to his dorm under the guise of “showing them the family yacht next time.”
Weirdly enough, physical intimacy is the one thing he hasn’t pushed for. Sure, there’s been a hand on the waist here, a quick make-out session there – just enough touching to leave me wanting more, but also wondering if he wants more.
Well, there was the night of the dance too.
My cheeks warm, and I double-check that I can still hear the water pounding against the shower wall before I let my mind drift to the night he pushed me against the bathroom sink, ravished my mouth, and then licked his fingers clean of my arousal.