“Yeah, I’m also the girl that Esme regularly curses to eternal damnation.”
“Oh, is that you?” Pierce laughs to himself, shaking his head, and he slides around me, leaning against the tree trunk next to me. “Between you and me, Esme says a lot, and very rarely is it more than bullshit.”
He’s so direct and matter-of-fact that it shocks me into laughter. He looks pleased with himself suddenly, and it’s an attractive look on him. Everything’s attractive about him. It’s almost enough to make me forgive his absent-minded ignorance, embarrassingly enough.
This is the first time I’ve been close enough to him to notice that he’s tall, more than a head taller than me. My shoulder brushes against his bicep, and I have to crane my neck to see his eyes. I clench my hands behind me, back digging into the bark, and I wonder what part of me he is looking at—my eyes, the bridge of my nose, my lips, my shoulders, my tits.
“I was joking, you know. I do remember you, and not from the Diversity page or Esme’s drivel. We had gym together in eighth grade. You got a bloody nose during the volleyball unit, so I took you to the infirmary,” Pierce says proudly. “No one could ever remember where it was, but I do because I was born in there. My mom went into premature labor during a board meeting.”
“You’re a Remington. It was practically destiny,” I deadpan.
“Yeah,” Pierce agrees wholeheartedly, not recognizing the joke, because even if I recognize the whole story of the Remingtons as mythos, it’s not mythos for Pierce. It’s real. I don’t believe in fate. Not for people like me. People like me have to make their own destiny.
“So now that you’re finally leaving the infirmary you were born in behind, you’re going to Harvard, right?” I ask.
“Yeah, we all do. Well… almost all of us,” he amends. “I’m just ready to get out of here. I’ve known all these people my entire life. Esme… Charles… even Pen. God, Pen.”
He looks almost lost, tilting his head back as he lets out a long sigh.
“You want?” I ask, offering him a sip of my White Claw.
He grabs it and drains it, tossing the can to the ground, crushing it underfoot. Well then.
“Thanks,” he mutters, a second too late, a little awkwardly.
“So… Penthesilea… Pen won’t be joining you at Harvard then?” I say slowly, attempting to gauge the situation.
“Nope. Pen’s going to Brown. Pen… is Pen. She’s the best, you know? Literally the best. But it’s going to be hard, me at Harvard, her there.”
“They don’t seem that far apart though, are they? How many miles would you say there are between Cambridge and Providence?” I know the answer. It’s fifty miles. Only fifty miles.
Pierce nods like he didn’t quite hear my tone. “Too many to count. She applied to Harvard too, you know. And she didn’t get in. She was so upset.”
“Well, that wasn’t your fault,” I say lamely, but Toni’s words float back up in my mind. He could probably get her in with a phone call.
I wonder why he didn’t.
Pierce sighs righteously. “I know that, but she’s angry.”
I’ve never seen Penthesilea angry a day in my life. When our paths happened to cross, she’d show me courtesy, but it was removed. She exists in a perpetual state of content, her plush mouth curled upward, jovial sunshine in her eyes. She’s too nice, too kind, too sugary-sweet. It’s almost clinical, like the aftertaste of cotton candy.
“That… sucks,” I say, trying to muster up some sympathy.
Pierce laughs to himself, a self-deprecating but low sound that does something to me despite myself. “It does, doesn’t it?” he murmurs, conspiratorially, like we’re sharing more than his girlfriend’s secrets. “She’s afraid, I think. Everything is going to change. But… maybe it should.”
“Yes, hopefully for the better,” I agree.
“Where are you going?” Pierce asks, just like I’ve been waiting for him to.
“Uh… nowhere,” I admit.
Pierce straightens. “What do you mean?”
“I got into Yale, in December, my top choice. Early action. But, um, that fight with Esme happened and I was almost expelled and… and my acceptance there and everywhere else got rescinded,” I explain.
Pierce leans in.
“Esme got your acceptance rescinded?” he whispers. When I nod, he whistles through his front teeth. “She’s an asshole, isn’t she? Just a spoiled, pretentious brat.”
“You’re in the same tax bracket.”
Fuck, I shouldn’t have said that.
Pierce lets out one of those charming laughs out of the movies, like he should be speaking with a transatlantic accent. “You have a smart mouth, Adina,” he says finally, and then, “I like that.”
It stops me short, this sudden victory and the turn I can feel it taking.
His grin widens in that way, and I tilt my head as I stare up at him. Pierce Maxwell Remington IV is blond and perfect. The last boy I kissed didn’t have lips like his, a perfect Cupid’s bow. His skin wasn’t perfectly smooth like Pierce’s, the product of good genes, hyaluronic acid, and an expensive dermatologist who probably doesn’t take insurance. The last boy was kinder too, but tonight I don’t need kind. I don’t want it. Tonight, I want this.
“You are interesting, Adina Walker,” Pierce declares, like it’s fact, like anything he says becomes one. “You deserve better than the lot you’ve been handed.”
“I think I’ll decide what I deserve,” I whisper, because this is a boy who has the key to the world in his palms, and I deserve that too—the boy or the key, I’m not sure, maybe both.
I reach up, sliding my hands over his shoulders, and I pull him in. His long fingers come up immediately, pressing just a little too hard on my scalp as he spins and presses me back up against the tree.
I gasp, arching into him as his lips find mine. I hum loudly into his mouth as his fingers drag down to my jaw, tilting my head up and just to the left. We get lost in the heat, hands tugging at clothes, pressing closer to each other. Goose pimples erupt over my shoulders and it’s too much, and not enough, as he pushes me tighter against the tree, and practically consumes me.
“Wait… wait…，” I whisper, mouth wet against his jaw. His hands tighten on my hips, but he stops.
“What?” he mutters, breath wet against my neck.
There is something in the woods. I stand on my toes, looking over his shoulder, searching, but the bonfire is only a flickering pinprick in the distance. Shoving aside my paranoia, I turn back to him, cupping his jaw, pulling his face closer to mine.
And then I hear her, far away: “Can’t believe you showed your fucking face, Toni.”
“Fuck,” I whisper, easing away from Pierce.
“What?” he asks, bewildered and sweaty, and still beautiful.
Esme’s starting in on Toni, which means time is running out. I don’t regret kissing him, but I know I will if I don’t speed this up and shoot my shot.
“I wanted to ask you about something,” I blurt out.