Love Story(14)
Author: Jennifer Echols

If Hunter never showed surprise, he never, ever showed anger. And right now he seemed angry with me. Despite my stomach twisting into knots, I nonchalantly took another sip of coffee as if I were calmly considering him. I’d put this off long enough.

“Hunter,” I began, “I’m truly sorry about the stable-boy business in my story. I hope you didn’t take it the wrong way.”

He watched me steadily, his brows down in what I could have sworn was barely controlled outrage. I noticed for the first time that the rims of his eyes were red. “What way did you want me to take it, Erin?”

My fingertips hurt from pressing hard against my hot mug. “Maybe I had you on my mind because I assumed you might live in my dorm or register for some of my classes. But I never intended for you to read my story. I wasn’t baiting you, if that’s what you think.”

He continued to stare me down. Between my hot face and the coffee below my chin, I felt like I was sitting in a sauna.

Finally I asked, “Why are you angry with me?”

He sat back in his chair. “Why do you say I’m angry?”

“I can tell. For some reason, you’re slipping a little.”

He gave me a wry smile. “I’m angry because what you’ve done is insulting. There are only two possibilities. First, you knew I was going to be in that class, and you wrote that story deliberately to mess with me. But the story was dated several days ago and I just transferred classes today. I don’t see how you could have known.”

“I didn’t know,” I assured him. Boy, didn’t I.

“Which brings us to the other possibility. You wrote the first assignment of your creative-writing degree about me. Which means I was on your mind. Which means you liked me in middle school and high school, just like Rebecca carried a torch for David, through six years of those ass**le kids at school calling me your stable boy, and you never said a thing.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Not only was he angry, he was also admitting for the first time that he cared how people talked about him in relation to me. This scared me. When Hunter and I had started seventh grade, he was the new kid at my school. I could have made things easier on him and introduced him to my friends. I didn’t. I pretended he didn’t exist. That probably contributed to the ass**le kids making fun of him when they found out he was living on the grounds at my farm.

And I had always felt guilty about that. But right after what happened between our parents, I could hardly look at him, much less maintain the friendship we’d started or pal around with him at school. I still couldn’t talk about it. My own anger welled up in defense.

“I don’t understand why you think there are only two possibilities for what is going on in my mind,” I seethed, “when we are not even friends. Sounds like an oversimplification on your part, to make yourself feel better about what you’re doing. Even you would feel bad about stealing the birthright of a girl who had a soul. But as long as I’m a shallow girl, starkly drawn in black and white, hell, steal away.”

Color crept into his cheeks underneath his tan. “I am not stealing anything. Not yet.”

“Oh, yeah?” I challenged him. “What time is it?”

Reflexively he glanced at his Rolex. Score!

I struck again. “Where’d you get the money for the outrageously expensive T-shirt you’re wearing? Did I drop it in Boo-boo’s stall before I left home? Because the last I checked, you were shopping across the river in Indiana, at the thrift store next to the mall, just to make sure you didn’t wear something to school that one of your friends had thrown out.” I had passed by the parking lot and seen the farm truck my grandmother let him drive to school. I knew what was going on.

I’d pushed him too far, and I held my breath for his reaction. I’d never seen him lose his cool completely. Now I was about to see it at my workplace and get fired from my job again.

His glare zeroed in on me. His jaw hardened—

And then he laughed. He threw back his head and let out rich, rumbly, boy chuckles as if I was the funniest girl in the world and I made him happy.

Hunter losing himself in laughter—this I had seen. But he used it strategically, as when the high school chemistry teacher or the president of the bank or the guidance counselor helping him apply to this college was the one making the joke.

I asked him suspiciously, “Have you been drinking?”

He beamed at me. “Drinking?”

“Did you go out drinking after the writing class?”

He shrugged. “Manohar and Brian and I had a few beers.”

I thought he’d had more than a few beers. “And when you had a few beers with Manohar and Brian,” oh God, I could just picture the guffawing, “what did you chat about?”

He maintained that same politely jovial expression, like he couldn’t quite catch what I was saying.

I gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “You didn’t chat about stable boys, did you?”

He grinned at the ceiling. “I might have mentioned it.”

“Hunter.” I gazed down at my mostly full mug of crude oil, stomach sinking. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Really?” His handsome face wore an ironic smirk. “I thought you wanted to talk to me about calculus.”

I felt like such a fool. I’d psyched myself up for this conversation, worried over it because it mattered so much, and he’d prepared by getting buzzed. I said gravely, “I think I have a shot at the publishing internship they award at the end of the semester. It would take a lot of pressure off me. But to get it, I need to do well in this class. I need Gabe to take me seriously. I don’t want him to find out there’s a real stable boy.”

Hunter picked up his mug. He tipped it ever so slightly toward him. I could still see the surface of his latte, and I watched him suck the heart into his mouth.

“You’re going into business with my grandmother,” I said. “I know you want to leave the stable boy behind. I’m trying to leave that whole life behind and get out of your way. The internship will help me do that.”

His tongue peeked out of his mouth. He licked a bit of the foam heart off his upper lip.

“I know you’re angry with me, Hunter, and I understand why. But I honestly never meant to offend you. My only real crime is to step aside and give you a stab at millions of dollars and a hundred and forty-two horses.”

“A hundred and forty-seven,” he corrected me. Of course they’d bought and sold and bred them over the summer. Because he was buzzed, he couldn’t resist reminding me that the farm went on without me.

He set his mug down. “I won’t tell Gabe.”

I ignored his patronizing tone. I was growing more desperate by the minute. “Don’t tell anyone else, either. It might get back to Gabe.”

The corner of his mouth quirked into a smile. “I won’t.”

“And ask Manohar and Brian not to spread it around.”