Page 107 of Holidating
My stomach dropped. Was I the only one on the planet who didn’t know any better than to fall for Beta Rho’s pledge ritual? Slowly, I nodded.
Andy’s face sagged. “I’d always just assumed that was a myth.”
“Apparently, it’s not.” I tried to say this with nonchalance. But I don’t think I pulled it off. Because my eyes began to sting. And that was no good, because, you know,mascara. Carefully I pressed my fingertips against my tear ducts. “I wouldn’t have even known, except that I overheard a couple of them talking about it. I was studying at one of those carrels in the stacks. Have you been up there?”
Andy nodded. The main library held twelve floors of books, and each floor had a row of old oak study desks with little walls attached. When you really needed to study — as opposed to picking somewhere with good people-watching — the stacks were the place to go.
“I heard these two guys carrying on, and I was going to walk over there and complain. But then I heard them say his name.” I swallowed then, and my throat was thick. “So I listened. And one of them had been in the hallway that night. He was telling the other one exactly what he’d seen…” I had to stop there. Not only did I not want to speak about the details, I didn’t want to think about them, either. When you’re getting busy with somebody, you do not want to spend your time wondering what the expression on your face looks like when you’re giving a…
God. Just shoot me.
I cleared my throat. “So, thanks to me, Dash’s place in the pledge class is secure.” And now I was done talking about this nightmare.
Andy pressed the fingertips of both hands against his brow, as if he had a sudden pain there. “He earnedpledge pointsfor letting the other guyswatch.”He let out an angry noise. “That’s disgusting.”
When he said that, the weight of my outrage grew a tiny bit lighter. All week, I’d been carrying this embarrassing secret around. And it was awfully heavy. The sound of Andy’s displeasure made me feel as if I’d just handed off a portion of my anger, letting someone else carry it for a moment instead.
“I’m still an idiot,” I said, because it was true.
“No!Shit, no. That is the lowest of the low. That is…” Andy took a deep, slow breath and let it out again. “You know all those brochures about consent that the college passed out during the first week of school?”
“Sure.” They were pretty funny, actually. My roommates and I had a few giggles reading the flyers out loud to one another. Some genius had written out a script for hookups that was supposed to guarantee that both parties had consent for every sexual act. So the bullet points read like a porn film.Do you want me to put my hand here? Does it feel good when I do this? Can I touch you here?
As funny as that was, it didn’t really apply.“But… I, uh. I consented.”
Andy shook his head. “No, you didn’t. Because if you had, you wouldn’t feel afraid to go in there right now.” He jabbed a finger toward the door.
I had absolutely no response to that. Except that the pressure in my chest loosened another percentage point or two.
Andy didn’t wait for a reaction from me, though. He was on a roll. “I mean… forget common decency. Don’t any of them havesisters?God.”
“At least there wasn’t any evidence,” I said quietly. “When I was eavesdropping, I actually heard the brother who wasn’t there ask if there were pictures. And the other one said no, because that would make it into a code violation.”
“Howthoughtfulof them to avoid violating the code,” Andy spat. “Are you going to report it anyway?”
That was something I’d thought about all week. “It’s not like I don’t feel the urge. But as far as I can tell, they didn’t break any rules, let alone laws. So it would be a waste of time. Not to mention that everyone would know how stupid I was.”
Andy moved fast, then. He stepped forward to wrap his arms around me, giving me a quick, fierce hug. “You weren’t stupid. Trusting, maybe. But that’s supposed to be a good thing to be.”
I was too shaken up to decide whether or not he was right. But I did notice that Andy gave first-rate hugs. Those long arms were good for something besides dunking basketballs, I guess. Come to think of it, he was probably only hugging me for warmth. We’d been out here awhile, and I had his jacket on. “I’m sorry to dump this on you,” I said into his shoulder.
He released me, stepping back. “Sorry ithappenedto you. Want to go home? You don’t owe it to him to be civil.”
“But I can’t avoid him for four years! And it’s not just him! I don’t know who was standing on the other side of that door. So I don’t even know who to avoid. I’m lucky it’snoton the front page of theNew York Times. Mom was right.”
Andy stuffed his hands into his pockets, and began pacing the porch. “She wasn’t, though. I don’t think your mom has thought that through.”
“What do you mean?”
He stopped walking and turned to me. “We all do things that we don’t want to see in a newspaper. I mean, she probably has sex with your father, right?”
“Ew.”
He grinned. “Sorry, but you get my point. She doesn’t wantthatpictured in theTimes, even though there’s nothing wrong with it. And you didn’t do anything remotely wrong, either. At the risk of sounding very pre-law, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy if you follow a guy into his room to…” he broke off the sentence, and there was an awkward pause.
“…Put some lipstick on his dipstick?” I supplied. And then I laughed. I actuallylaughedabout my nightmare. Because now that I was breathing just a little bit easier, I could see just how fricking ridiculous the whole thing was. And humiliating. But still…funnyin a way.
God, I was probably losing my mind.
