“How was your last year at Beaumont?” he asked as they walked back to his car. In his phone calls to Brooklyn she’d told him about her life in New York City, her supervisor, her clients, the apartment her parents had helped her to rent in the West Village, but they’d never touched on her senior year, or spoken about how she’d ended up with Kyle Davenport.
“I moved out of the sorority house.” Andy, surprised, said nothing. “It was different, living on my own. But I was glad I did it. I think I was more ready to live in the real world than if I’d stayed in the Gamma house and had all my meals cooked and my laundry done. And then I graduated, and then I moved to New York.”
“When did you dump Kyle?”
“When did I what?”
“Kyle Davenport,” he said.
She turned to him, her eyes wide, her face scrunched up in horror. “As if,” she said.
Andy felt a great lightness rising through him. “I called one night, and I asked for you, and whoever answered the phone said you were out with Kyle Davenport.”
“Andy,” said Rachel. She’d turned to face him, and she looked completely serious. “If Kyle Davenport was the last man on earth, I’d date women.”
He felt like he was drowning, only the water was made of light. It was the strangest mix of emotions—anger, for having wasted so much time, joy that he’d been so wrong, that Rachel had always been the Rachel that he’d loved, who would never have even considered Kyle.
“So why would someone tell me that?”
Rachel, who’d been staring at him just as intently as he’d been looking at her, shook her head. “Some of the girls were pretty pissed about the thing at the formal. We ended up on probation . . . oh, whatever. It’s not a big deal.”
Andy reached for her hand, and Rachel let him take it. She twined her fingers through his.
“So no Kyle,” he said, still feeling overwhelmed. Rachel shook her head and smoothed her hair with her free hand, a familiar, endearing gesture. He squeezed her fingers, tugging at her until they were hip to hip as they walked. “Every morning for six months I’d wake up thinking, Screw it, I’m going to go see her. If she’s going to dump me, I can at least make her do it in person. And by the end of the day I’d have talked myself out of it again. I’d think, She’ll probably laugh at you.”
“I would never have laughed,” she said.
They walked in silence through the parking lot. When they got to his car, he hugged her, holding her tightly against him, an embrace still on the right side of propriety, one that could still be considered friendly, but only just. When they broke apart, her face was flushed, her eyes shining. “I hope it won’t be another five years before we see each other again.”
Instead of answering, Rachel reached for him, putting her small, warm hand on the back of his neck, lifting her lips to his. They kissed, first lightly, then more urgently, his tongue in her mouth, her hips tilted against his, her breasts against his chest, her whole body sending a message that was undeniable. “Want to come up?” he asked. She’d left her bags in his apartment, with the understanding that they’d pick them up after dinner and he’d take her to the hotel she’d booked. More than once, when they’d been talking, he’d offered her his bed, saying he’d sleep on the couch, and Rachel had turned him down, politely but firmly.
Without a word, she climbed into the passenger seat, smiling at him, saying, “Yes.”
•••
As soon as his front door was shut they started kissing again. Her tongue fluttered against his, and his hands were deep in the softness of her hair, and it was like time unspooled, carrying them right back to when they were teenagers. He pulled her against him, thinking that he’d never get her close enough, that if he could fold her inside of him, like a mother tucking a baby into her coat, he’d do it. He’d keep her warm, he’d keep her safe, he’d keep her with him always.
Taking her hand, Andy led her to his bedroom, which looked like every room he’d ever lived in—a bed, a dresser, the posters on the wall—except for a machine humming softly in the corner. Rachel stopped kissing him long enough to point. “What’s that?”
“Oxygen simulator,” he murmured, his hands busy with the buttons on her blouse. “It’s supposed to simulate altitude.”
Rachel said something that sounded like For fuck’s sake. Andy felt relieved she hadn’t seen the back porch, where a tank with a submerged treadmill allowed injured runners to run underwater, and then they tumbled onto his bed. She nibbled at his chin, his ear, touching his face with her fingertips, sighing, whispering “You feel so good.” Once, she pushed him back, propped herself onto her elbows, and asked, “How long has it been?”