Girl on the right isn’t about to drop this opportunity. ‘Was he really Reid Alexander?’
Before I can say a word, Claudia hoots a laugh. ‘Are you guys high right now? Reid Alexander, on campus, and no one noticed? Give me a break.’
Their faces fall. ‘Oh.’
Then left side girl rallies. ‘Then that guy – he’s goes here? To Cal?’
I shake my head once. ‘No, he doesn’t. He was just visiting.’
‘Aww,’ they say in unison, dismayed, and my scowl narrows on them.
‘And he’s my boyfriend.’ Whoa. Where did that tone come from?
Unbothered by any sense of diplomacy, left side girl snorts. ‘He is?’
Her friend tries to save face – by saying the most awkward thing possible. ‘Well, congratulations – I mean – he looks just like Reid Alexander, so obviously he’s hot. Aheh.’
‘Uh. Thanks?’
After they scuttle away, I say, ‘That was weird.’
I feel Claudia’s eyes on me. ‘So you’re dating Reid Alexander?’
I look into her dark eyes, and my lips part, but no sound emerges. I can’t think of a single thing to say.
‘Has anyone ever told you that you do not have a poker face?’
Lips twisting, I admit, ‘Yeah, I may have heard that one a time or two.’
She angles her head and smiles. ‘You’re the Habitat girl, aren’t you? From last summer.’
Oh, yay. I’d escaped two zealous Reid Alexander groupies, only to find out I’m in a study group with the most dangerous of them all. ‘And you’re … a Reid Alexander fan?’
‘Hell, no. My little sisters are. They’re rabid about him. He seems like a pretentious, untalented asshole to me.’
I blink.
‘Note I said seems. I haven’t actually seen any of his films. And he can’t be a total lost cause if he’s dating you. I think. Unless you care to refute that?’
‘Which part?’
She shrugs. ‘Any of it. I’m open-minded. Sort of.’
I laugh softly as our classmates finally walk up, shivering in their jackets.
‘Oh. My. Holy. Fucking. Hell,’ Raul says. ‘Can we please go inside to do this?’
‘A man after my own heart,’ Claudia says, bounding from the bench as though released from a spell and walking resolutely in the direction of the library. ‘Brr! Dayum. I never thought I’d say this … but I miss San Diego.’ Turning and pointing a finger, she adds, ‘You guys did not hear me say that.’
Afton mimes locking her lips and tossing an invisible key over her shoulder. ‘We all wanted to get the hell outta somewhere, dude,’ she says. ‘But some stuff we take for granted about home just isn’t better elsewhere.’
Claudia leans closer as we head towards the library. ‘Psychology majors, Jesus. And did she just call me dude? That’s so not going to endear her to me anytime soon – I don’t care how cute her butt is in those jeans. Although she does have a valid point about home and elsewhere. So … About the pretty boy –?’
I smile and meet her eyes. ‘He’s not a lost cause.’
She returns my smile. ‘Good enough for me.’
I have Reid’s fan sites bookmarked, so I can watch him from a distance, like everyone else has to. My annoyance is increasing, especially when sites claim ‘proof’ that he’s hooking up with random starlets or singers he stands next to at some event. Or a commenting fan proclaims her undying love and desire to have his babies. Or someone is trying to figure out who I am and where I’m from and why in the world Reid Alexander would even bother with me.
Looking at these pages feels a little stalkerish too. On the other hand, this is no different than going to friends’ Facebook profiles and browsing through photos of them living their lives apart from me. Curiosity is a compelling thing. Where Reid is concerned, I’ve been curious from the moment he called me a hypocrite for deeming him hopeless, days after we met.
With his mother beside him on the red carpet at his premiere, it’s a no-brainer where Reid gets his looks. Their colouring is exactly the same, as well as their features – with the exception of the angled jaw bestowed by his father. Lucy Alexander is stunning and elegant, her pride in her son evident in the way she watches him while he signs autographs and leans in to take photos with the beside-themselves fans pressing against the velvet rope.
When I came up with the idea of inviting his mother as his plus-one, I had a good feeling about it. He was unconvinced that she’d want to go, so I told him the only way he’d know was to ask.
‘You’d have thought I just handed her an Oscar,’ he said later, filling me in on their conversation. ‘First, she gasped and teared up, and I was thinking, Oh, great, I’ve upset her. And then she said, ‘Don’t you want to take Dori?’ So I told her you couldn’t get away that night. She stepped forward and hugged me, which she hasn’t done in – I don’t know – it feels like years, and then she said she’d love to go.’
‘I told you so,’ I sing-songed, and he laughed.
‘You just live for the times you’re able to say that, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, and lucky for me – with you, I get to say it a lot.’
‘Haha. Very funny, Miss Cantrell. I’ll have to try to hand out those little treats more sparingly. I don’t want you to get spoiled.’
‘Oh, so now you can control the frequency of your wrongness?’ I scoffed, trying not to giggle. ‘How will you do that?’
‘Well, I appear to have two choices. I can either be right more often – stop laughing – or I can stop saying things that turn out to be wrong. Hmm. This is a tough decision.’