Page 90 of Stags

And then they slept in each other’s arms, and he thought that he never wanted to let her go.

PART TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

RORA WOKE UPto a text from Tawny saying she wouldn’t be available for breakfast Sunday, and Eiren chimed in she was checking out early, and so Rora ate with Stockton, and they lingered out in the courtyard long after the buffet breakfast had been cleaned up and the final morning run was well underway.

There were definitely less participants that morning, and the numbers didn’t look good—many more bucks than does. Sure enough, there were bucks wandering back in, looking dejected and tired.

She and Stockton joked they were probably out there sparring like mad, competing over whatever tail there was to be had.

They talked about other things, too. They talked about school, and a professor they’d both had, one who taught freshman-level math who had a thick accent that they couldn’t decipher, but it turned out not to matter, because he would give a pre-test on the class before the actual test, which was exactly like the actual test, only with different numbers. If you showed for the pre-test and wrote down all the problems, you were allowed to use your pre-test on the actual test, so passing had been a breeze.

They talked about how Stockton was waiting to see if he’d be accepted into the graduate law program at the school where they both attended, but that he thought it was pretty likely, so they’d be in the same vicinity for the foreseeable future.

They talked about how Rora was still dallying over declaring a major. It should probably be English literature, but she was thinking that she should do something practical, like education or maybe get her masters in library science, even though she didn’t know how she’d fund a master’s degree. Her family pooled resources to pay for undergrad for everyone, but there was a sort of understanding that she was supposed to come out of college with a degree that would allow her to be gainfully employed, and that she would be required to then contribute to the finances of the household.

Because, of course, there was no moving out and leaving home when you were a deerkin woman. There was just eventually having your babies and raising them there. And maybe, if you had enough babies, you’d get to move one of your elderly aunts out of one of the suites on the house that had its own kitchen, maybe, but maybe not.

They talked and talked, and she found herself not wanting to leave and go home, because she was getting lost in spinning some kind of fairytale future with Stockton, who seemed to want to be her boyfriend, like a real boyfriend, who was going to be a lawyer, and who wanted them to belong to each other, and who didn’t live with his mother right now, but in hisfather’shouse in Alberdeen, which was where they both went to school, about twenty minutes away.

Stockton had grown up with his father in his life, and they talked about how he wanted to be a father to his own children, and she found herself at once hoping for this soap bubble of a different life and also scolding herself not to get ahead of herself, that there were all sorts of reasons why things might never get anywhere with Stockton.

When she finally did get home, it was mortifying.

Her gran and her mother and her aunts had thrown her some kind of celebratory rite-of-passage, now-you’re-a-woman luncheon, and she had to sit there and be subjected to teasing while all the kids were there, wide-eyed and curious, and asking questions like whether or not Rora was going to have a baby now.

As soon as it was polite, she fled to her room to read the books that Stockton had bought for her.

Her phone beeped.

It was him.

He’d texted her.Thinking of you. Can’t seem to stop. Do we have to wait for you to talk to Maibell?

She felt a flood of happiness, a buoyant warmth of hope that she’d never allowed herself to feel before.

What if I get everything I want, after all?she thought, her breath catching painfully in her throat. She’d never allowed herself to truly believe that was even possible.

MAIBELL WAS PERCHEDon a stool at the coffee shop near campus with her ears twitching nervously. “What the hell, Rora?” she said. “You are giving me a heart attack here.”

Rora had texted her that she wanted to talk with her in person, and Maibell had gotten very anxious and basically demanded they meet up right now in the coffee shop, early on Monday morning, hours before Rora even had a class.

Rora didn’t mind, however. It was easier to get this over with, frankly, and she didn’t want to have it hanging over the growing relationship with Stockton. They had texted for hours last night, and she was still feeling a dizzy and hopeful warm feeling every time she thought about him.

“Sorry,” said Rora, sitting down. “I was going to buy you your coffee, you know.”

“Rora, if you make me wait for you to go and buy a fucking drink, I am going to lose my mind,” Maibell snapped. “What happened? What is going on?”

Rora spread her hands. “I’m really sorry that this is freaking you out so much. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be that big of a deal in the end, actually. But… I don’t know. It’s about Stockton.”

Maibell’s ears flattened against her head. “Okay? We broke up. You know that, right? Like, if you’re going to tell me you saw him with some other girl or something, whatever.”

Rora winced. “Well, I hope you mean that, because he and I ran into each other this weekend.”

“Oh,” said Maibell, pulling back, bring her drink with her.

“Okay, so, when we started talking, we had a discussion about how we were just friendly, of course, and I said that I could not get into anything with him, because you and I are friends, and dating a friend’s ex, it’s… you know… not cool.”

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