3 Months Later Part 2

Men like that do not end up with girls like us, Mom’s vicious whisper fills my head again. They like to have sex with us. They like to date us. They like to buy us pretty things. They may even think themselves in love with us, but at the end of the day, they’ll marry a woman with a nicer pedigree. 

Great. 

The absolute worst time to be haunted by the ghost of Mothers past. 

The last thing I want is for Sophie to see that she’s managed to crack even a fraction of my confident exterior, so I resist the urge to fidget with the hem of my skirt, and I smile. 

It’s as fake as the length of her hair, and full of teeth, but it’s a smile. 

“I’ve got to go, but I appreciate the advice, Sophie.” I stiffly march toward the stairwell leading up to the dormitories. 

“Oh, anytime, Poppy.” I feel her smug superiority nipping at my heels the whole way. 

I grab the railing, step one foot up, and then pivot back toward the group. “Oh, Sophie?” 

Her eyebrow forms a question mark. 

“I’m not sure Adrian’s interested in pedigree,” I tell her. “At least, he wasn’t while he fucked me last night.” 

The room falls dead silent, and Sophie gapes at me, but I don’t stick around to watch the ripple effect. 

I do, however, ride the temporary high all the way back to my dorm room. Sophie might have a knack for getting under my skin, but I’ve got one thing she's never even come close to obtaining. 

Adrian’s desire. 

I unlock my dorm room, pausing when I see the mail slot’s full. 

Of course it is. 

I haven’t checked it in weeks. 

Flopping on my bed, I shuffle through the letters – junk mail, fundraiser I don’t have money for, more junk, and – 

What’s this? 

Stuck between some pre-approved credit card offer and a prize offer promising I’ve won thousands of dollars is one yellow, hefty envelope.

I go still. 

No fucking way. 

In the millisecond it takes me to tear through the sealed envelope, I’m sure I must give myself a hundred paper cuts, but it doesn’t matter. 

My heart pounds through my ears. 

I read the enclosed letter at least five times before I’m confident that I’m not hallucinating its contents. 

But it’s all here. 

Stamped letterhead. Black ink. Signed by the Dean. 

My acceptance letter from the Pratt Institute.

***

After we returned from holiday break in Mobile, I hadn’t planned on applying to Pratt. Adrian was insistent that Harvard was a done deal. I didn’t need backups or safety nets or second choices, but the application for Pratt was almost already done, and I think some masochistic part of me just wanted to know. 

So, I quietly submitted my application and waited for the rejection letter to end up in my inbox. 

But this…

This is a full-ride merit-based scholarship, the very same deal that’s Harvard’s offering. 

And cocooned in the darkness of my own dorm room, I tell myself this doesn’t change anything. It can’t. 

Pratt’s not my future, Adrian’s my future, and it doesn’t matter if I study art in Harvard’s historic halls or Pratt’s. 

My chest swells with an uncomfortably full ache. 

Because I love Adrian. 

The realization’s been sitting in the bottom drawer of my brain since Mobile, and I’ve done just about everything in my power to avoid touching it. 

Adrian and I might know each other’s darkest secrets, we might’ve connected on the basest, most physical level but…

Love’s the highest form of power you can hand another human being. 

In certain hands, it’s a weapon too. 

Oh, Poppy. He hasn’t even told you he loves you? Mom’s mocking voice fills my head.

Especially Harvard. They only take the best. I’m sure you’ll find your people just as Adrian will find people closer to his own pedigree, Sophie chimes in. 

A shaky breath escapes me. 

They don’t know Adrian the way I do. 

His attention’s not fickle. Eighteen years he’s been surrounded by willing, beautiful people, and I’m the one that aroused his curiosity. I’m the one that’s elicited a string of human emotions he didn’t think himself capable of. 

We’re made for each other. 

His darkness dances with mine. 

But men like that do not end up with girls like us, Mom whispers. 

I run my fingers through my hair. 

Adrian’s different. Sure, he’s beholden to his family in some ways, but it’s not as if he’s going to wake up one morning and decide he’d rather share his bed with a European socialite instead of a waitress’ daughter. 

But he could. 

He could do anything he wanted, and I’d be the one left hanging out to dry. 

I stare down at the acceptance letter creased between my fingers. 

And then I grab my phone. 

***

“You brought me a muffin,” are the first words out of Adrian’s mouth as I walk through the door of his dorm room. “Are you trying to bribe me?” 

“Absolutely not.” I hand over the chocolate muffin, hoping the offering will distract from all the nervous energy I’ve just brought into the room. 

I shed my Moncler down jacket – another gift from Adrian – and take a seat in one of the recliners. “I stopped by the cafeteria. There was a bake sale going on.” I fidget with one of the pleated roll arms. 

“I thought you were determined to spend the entire night dusting your dorm room before end-of-year inspections next week,” he says. “Have you come to finally request my help for whatever mold’s growing in your coffee mugs?” 

“I’d never subject another human being to that.” I turn my gaze to the crackling fireplace. It’s already May, but Adrian tends to keep the fireplace going whenever he’s here, regardless of Connecticut’s spring humidity. 

Not that I can blame him – the flames do more to soften the space than any of the overhead lights do. 

“Something’s wrong.” 

“There’s nothing –” 

“You’re fidgeting,” he tells me. “You always fidget when you’re nervous.” Adrian folds himself into the other recliner and gestures me over. 

Now invited, I waste no time curling into his lap like a content house cat, relishing in his cedar-scented cologne. 

I shouldn’t even bring it up. 

I should just stay like this, exactly like this, forever. 

Let things take their course as they will. 

It’s a fleeting, tempting thought – but self-preservation’s too strong of a habit to kick, and it’s now or never, so I peel my head from his sweater and say, “I’ve been thinking. About Harvard.” 

He cocks an expectant eyebrow at me. 

I steel my nerves. “Say we broke up –” 

“We wouldn’t break up.” The flat, knee-jerk answer is exactly what I’m expecting to come out of his mouth. 

“But if we did –” 

“We wouldn’t.” 

“But if, for some reason, we did –”

“We, for some reason, wouldn’t.” 

A exasperated sigh escapes. “Okay, in a hypothetical situation, if we –”

“There is no situation, hypothetical or otherwise, where we’d break up.” A muscle ticks in his jaw. 

I take a deep breath. “Fine. In an alternative universe, with an alternate Adrian and Poppy who also go to Harvard, what do you think would happen if they broke up?” 

The narrowing of his eyes is the only answer I receive, so I add, “Would we awkwardly wave at each other in the hallways? Send the occasional drunk text?” I suck in a breath. “Would you take Harvard from me?” 

Understanding lightens his expression. “That’s what you’re worried about? That I might take Harvard from you?” 

“You could,” I admit quietly. “You’re the only reason I have it in the first place.” 

He doesn’t deny it. 

Neither one of us has ever been under any pretense that I earned Harvard fair-and-square. 

“I’d never take something that allows me to keep you close,” he replies. 

I’m not sure how good of a job I do at hiding the frustration building in my bloodstream. “But if you no longer wanted to keep me close –” 

“There is no future in which we aren’t together,” he snaps. “I thought you understood that as well as I do.” 

“I do,” I argue. “Of course I do. I am giving you my future. You are holding it in your hands as we speak, and I need to know if something were to happen…”

“And what do you think might happen?” He cocks his head to the side, the warning in his voice as loud as sirens blaring down the road. 

“Well…” I swallow, visibly uncomfortable. I don’t like considering the what-ifs any more than he does, but I do consider them. “You could meet someone. You know, someone closer to your own…” I’m not going to say pedigree. I refuse to use that word. “...social standing.” 

“Right,” he drawls. “Because I’ve been so interested in social standing up to this point.” He grips my jaw, forcing me to maintain eye-contact. “Look at me. Have you forgotten the part where I tolerate just about everyone else in the world but you? I didn’t even realize I was capable of desire – true desire – till you came around.” 

It should make me feel better. It should reassure me but…

“Desire’s fickle.” I shake my head. “Desire waxes and wanes by the superficial. Stress, a tight dress, a couple of pounds, boredom…” 

He scoffs. “You should know me well enough to know that my desire’s not fickle or superficial.” 

“Maybe not now.” 

“Not ever.” 

“You don’t know that. Not for sure,” I shoot back. “Give it a year. Or two. Maybe you get bored. Maybe you realize you’d like to bring someone home to your family without worrying about all the logistics. Maybe you start thinking I’m not that special. Maybe your desire shifts, and I’m just…”

Shattered into a million pieces. 

Left without Harvard, without Pratt, without anything but the shadow of a future I could’ve had.