“What a shithead. You should have called the police.”
“They probably wouldn’t have believed me. And he got hurt and I didn’t. I would have gotten in trouble, and I couldn’t prove what he did.”
“Thank God,” Jake said gratefully. If there had been proof, it would have been rape. “You did absolutely the right thing to clobber him. You were damn lucky!” He hated the thought of what could have happened to her, and was enormously relieved it hadn’t. He gave her a big hug as they left the restaurant. “I’ll be your bodyguard from now on.” She didn’t usually need one, and nothing like it had ever happened to her before. Jeff had taken her by surprise, and taken full advantage of her trust and innocence. It had been a huge lesson for her. She’d heard stories like it on campus the year before, during freshman year. Assaults of that kind were common in colleges, workplaces, even on dates with boys girls knew. Lara had told her that she had to be very careful from now on. Clearly, there were bad people everywhere, and good ones too. No matter what the circumstances, drunk or sober, Jake would never have done anything like it. But some men did. It made her wish she were invisible again. She’d had an easy time in high school, where boys paid no attention to her. She hadn’t even had a date for her senior prom, and hadn’t gone. She felt like a total loser, but it was easier. Now men paid more attention to her. She looked older and her beauty was more evident. She was still small and delicate, but she looked like a woman now and not a child, which attracted bad guys like Jeff, as well as good ones. Being “invisible” had been simpler. She’d never felt beautiful before, and she didn’t now. Her mother had always told her she wasn’t, even as a child, and her father never complimented her, but she was a woman, and for some men that was enough to treat her as easy prey.
* * *
—
Jake admitted to her that he’d dated a girl while he was working at the Fairmont. She was a beautiful Mexican girl, one of the maids, and a student at Berkeley. She was smart and wanted to go to law school. They’d had fun, but it ended when he left, and they both knew nothing would come of it. He was going back to New York, and there was a senior she liked at Berkeley. It was just a summer fling, and neither of them had tried to make it more, which seemed sensible to Antonia.
* * *
—
Sophomore year was harder than their freshman year had been. Antonia signed up for more classes, hard ones. She was taking a lot of writing classes, and had endless assignments. Jake was working harder too, and they were both struggling for good grades and had less time to play than the year before. More was expected of them sophomore year.
She never went home for the weekend, as it was too complicated staying at the apartment now, with all the junk in her room. Lara said that every time she made order of it, her father brought home more. She could still sleep there, if she was willing to climb over all the boxes, and she couldn’t bring anything home. She felt like she’d been evicted, and in a way, she had.
She turned down the few offers of dates she had. Jeff had put her off from dating, for a while anyway, and she said she had too many assignments and didn’t have time.
“You can’t live like a nun,” Jake scolded her.
“I’m only nineteen. What do you want me to be? A slut?” She was afraid to go on a date now, even a simple dinner. What if something horrible happened again?
“You could try for something in between.”
“Yeah, later,” she said. She always had a good time with him and for now it was enough. Good grades were more important to her.
* * *
—
She decided not to go to San Francisco with Jake for Christmas this year. She’d hardly seen her father since school started in September. He and Lara were staying home this year, and she had a lot of writing assignments to do. She was going to stay in the dorm, and spend Christmas Eve and Day with her father and Lara, and the rest at school, working in the library.
Jake tried to convince her to go home with him.
“I’d love to, it was the best Christmas of my life, but I can hardly keep up with my writing assignments, and I feel like I should spend it with my dad and stepmom since they’ll be here.”
“Christmas won’t be the same without you,” Jake said sadly. “My mom said so too. Genevieve and my dad have a surrogate who’s pregnant with his sperm and a donor egg. It sounds disgusting, and they’re bringing her to dinner. Genevieve just had surgery, she had her eyes done again. She wants to look ‘fresh’ for the baby. Ian finished his latest book, and my mom thinks Eloise and John might get engaged. You’ll be missing all the fun!”