I had texted Jeremiah to tell him I was on my way and that I was walking, so it would take me a little while. I had to keep stopping to adjust my shoes because they were cutting into the backs of my feet. Heels were dumb, I decided.
Halfway there, I saw him sitting on my favorite bench. He stood up when he saw me. “Surprise!”
“You didn’t have to meet me,” I said, feeling very happy he had. I sat down on the bench.
“You look hot,” he said.
Even now, after being boyfriend and girlfriend for a whole two years, I still blushed a little when he said things like that. “Thanks,” I said. I was wearing a sundress that I had borrowed from Anika. It was white with little blue flowers and ruffly straps.
“That dress reminds me of The Sound of Music, but in a hot way.”
“Thanks,” I said again. Did the dress make me look like Fräulein Maria, I wondered? That didn’t sound like a good thing. I smoothed down the straps a little.
A couple of guys I didn’t recognize stopped and said hi to Jeremiah, but I stayed put on the bench so I could rest my feet.
When they were gone, he said, “Ready?”
I groaned. “My feet are killing me. Heels are dumb.”
Jeremiah stooped down low and said, “Hop on, girl.”
Giggling, I climbed on his back. I always giggled when he called me “girl.” I couldn’t help it. It was funny.
He hoisted me up and I put my arms around his neck. “Is your dad coming on Monday?” Jeremiah asked as we crossed the main lawn.
“Yeah. You’re gonna help, right?”
“Come on, now. I’m carrying you across campus. I have to help you move, too?”
I swatted him on the head and he ducked. “Okay, okay,” he said.
Then I blew a raspberry on his neck, and he yelped like a little girl. I laughed the whole way there.
chapter three
At Jeremiah’s fraternity house, the doors were wide open and people were hanging out on the front lawn. Multicolored Christmas lights were haphazardly strung all over the place—on the mailbox, the front porch, even along the edge of the walkway. They had three inflatable kiddie pools set up that people were lounging in like they were in hot tubs. Guys were running around with Super Soakers and spraying beer into each other’s mouths. Some of the girls were in their bikinis.
I hopped off Jeremiah’s back and took my shoes off in the grass.
“The pledges did a nice job with this,” Jeremiah said, nodding appreciatively at the kiddie pools. “Did you bring your suit?”
I shook my head.
“Want me to see if one of the girls has an extra?” he offered.
Quickly, I said, “No thanks.”
I knew Jeremiah’s fraternity brothers from hanging out at the house, but I didn’t know the girls very well. Most of them were from Zeta Phi, Jeremiah’s fraternity’s sister sorority. That meant they had mixers and parties together, that kind of thing. Jeremiah had wanted me to rush Zeta Phi, but I’d said no. I told him it was because I couldn’t afford the fees and paying extra to live in a sorority house, but it was really more that I was hoping to be friends with all kinds of girls, not just the ones I’d meet in a sorority. I wanted a broader college experience, like my mother was always saying. According to Taylor, Zeta Phi was for party girls and sluts, as opposed to her sorority, which was allegedly classier and more exclusive. And way more focused on community service, she’d added as an afterthought.
Girls kept coming up and hugging Jeremiah. They said hi to me, and I said hi back, then I went upstairs to put my bag in Jeremiah’s room. On my way downstairs, I saw her.
Lacie Barone, wearing skinny jeans and a silky tank top and patent leather red heels that probably brought her up to five-four at most, talking to Jeremiah. Lacie was the social chair of Zeta Phi, and she was a junior—a year older than Jere, two years older than me. Her hair was dark brown, cut in a swishy bob, and she was petite. She was, by anybody’s standards, hot. According to Taylor, she had a thing for Jeremiah. I told Taylor it didn’t bother me one bit, and I meant it. Why should I care?
Of course girls would like Jeremiah. He was the kind of boy girls liked. But even a girl as pretty as Lacie didn’t have anything on us. We were a couple years and years in the making. I knew him better than anyone, the same as he knew me, and I knew Jere would never look at another girl.
Jeremiah saw me then, and he waved at me to come over. I walked up to them and said, “Hey, Lacie.”
“Hey,” she said.
Pulling me toward him, Jeremiah said, “Lacie is gonna study abroad in Paris this fall.” To Lacie, he said, “We want to go backpacking in Europe next summer.”
Sipping her beer, she said, “That’s cool. Which countries?”
“We’re definitely going to France,” Jeremiah said. “Belly speaks really fluent French.”
“I actually don’t,” I told her, embarrassed. “I just took it in high school.”
Lacie said, “Oh, I’m horrible too. I really just want to go and eat lots of cheese and chocolate.”
She had a voice that was surprisingly husky for someone so small. I wondered if she smoked. She smiled at me, and I thought, Taylor was wrong about her, she was a nice girl.
When she left a few minutes later to get a drink, I said, “She’s nice.”
Jeremiah shrugged and said, “Yeah, she’s cool. Want me to get you a drink?”
“Sure,” I said.
He led me by the shoulders and planted me on the couch. “You sit right here. Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be right back.”
I watched him make his way through the crowd, feeling proud I could call him mine. My boyfriend, my Jeremiah. The first boy I had ever fallen asleep next to. The first boy I ever told about the time I accidentally walked in on my parents doing it when I was eight. The first boy to go out and buy me Midol because my cramps were so bad, the first boy to paint my toenails, to hold my hair back when I threw up that time I got really drunk in front of all his friends, the first boy to write me a love note on the whiteboard hanging outside my dorm room.
YOU ARE THE MILK TO MY SHAKE,
forever and ever. Love, J.
He was the first boy I ever kissed. He was my best friend. More and more, I understood. This was the way it was supposed to be. He was the one. My one.
chapter four
It was later that night.
We were dancing. I had my arms around Jeremiah’s neck, and the music was pulsing around us. I felt flushed and abuzz, from the dancing and from the alcohol. The room was packed with people, but when Jere looked at me, there was no one else. Just me and him.
He reached down and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. He said something I couldn’t hear.
“What?” I yelled.
He yelled, “Don’t ever cut your hair, okay?”
“I have to! I’d look like—like a witch.”
Jeremiah tapped his ear and said, “I can’t hear you!”
“Witch!” I shook my hair around my face for emphasis and mimed stirring a cauldron and cackling.
“I like you witchy,” he said in my ear. “How about just trims?”
I shouted, “I promise not to cut my hair short if you promise to give up your beard dream!”