Love Story(18)
Author: Jennifer Echols

She whirled to face me and shook her fists, a piece of bikini swinging in each. “You wanted me to flirt with Manohar and bring him over to your side. This is the perfect opportunity, and I am not going to a party in the men’s bathroom in a bikini by myself!”

Reluctantly I pulled my own bikini from my dresser. It was designer, from last year. Luckily it was solid steel blue, not a bold pattern that would date it to a particular collection. And it wasn’t too worn. I’d gotten no use out of it at all during my long, hot summer working in New York.

One of the differences between expensive clothing and cheap clothing, I’d discovered now that I’d actually tried on something in a New York department store’s bargain basement, was that expensive clothing could make the wearer look better. My bikini was no exception, draping in graceful folds reminiscent of a 1950s starlet.

But a glance in Jřrdis’s full-length mirror reminded me that there was nothing the loveliest designer bikini could do about my freckles. This summer I’d had zero opportunity to acquire a light tan, so my freckles stood out like a pox on my white skin. In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia calls a neighborhood girl a “nasty little freckled thing.” Silently Elizabeth agrees. The reader is not to sympathize with Lydia, but she is to sympathize with Elizabeth. I loved Jane Austen with all my heart, but I could not forgive her for this.

Summer called, “I guess, if I am going through with this bizarre notion of flirting with Manohar, I need to touch up my makeup and look like I mean it.”

This was Summer’s hint, I thought, that I’d taken off my makeup for the night, and she did not approve of my look for a party. Reluctantly I pulled my face cream out of my makeup bag. I was almost out. And I would never be buying this particular miracle cream again. It was ridiculously expensive, I realized now that I compared its price with dorm rent. I resented having to waste a dollop on this party, just to silence Manohar on the stable-boy issue.

Summer watched me struggle with the tube. “Fold it like toothpaste.”

“I’m past that point. I think I can get another month out of it if I cut it open, but I’ve tried all Jřrdis’s scissors. They’re not sharp enough.” I sighed with relief as I came away with a smear and moisturized my face. Then I reached for my powder.

“Are you trying to cover up your freckles?” Summer watched me in the mirror above her dresser. “I’m not saying you should. But I use a brand of foundation that’s a lot thicker than yours.”

“No, I’m not trying to cover them up. It’s fruitless. I’ve tried everything and I have made peace with them.” Lie. “The most I can hope for is to tone them down with a look of dewy freshness.” I passed the powder brush over my nose one more time. I’d lived a hard life and lost my looks already. Or maybe that was the dark circles under my eyes from studying late. Anyway, I wasn’t gussying up to catch a man. Summer was saving my internship and I was going with her, in a bathing suit so I would feel even more naked and exposed than I had during that first critique session in the writing class—almost as if Hunter had planned the party this way.

“You look beautiful,” Summer told my reflection.

“You are beautiful,” I said. She glowed with energy in her bright bikini. I wished, at that moment, that I could trade places with her, that I was the clueless Southerner wide-eyed at New York, wanting nothing more out of life than a fabulous professional job and a meaningful love relationship, ecstatic at the prospect of forced flirting with a boy from class.

We locked our outer door and pushed open the door to the stairs. “I’m so excited,” she gushed. Her voice sounded hollow in the stairwell. “Maybe next I could write an espionage story for Gabe. It’s like I’m a spy. A spy for love.” She kept talking but the music had drowned out her voice by the time we passed the third floor. We kept climbing and pulled open the door to the fifth floor.

I’d been going to horse parties since I was fourteen. In retrospect, I realized this was not because my grandmother thought I was mature enough to handle the alcohol and schmoozing with older boys like Whitfield Farrell. I was not. It was because she was grooming me, even then, to take over.

Four years later, Hunter was taking over instead, and I was destitute, with a lot of partying under my belt. I’d even done shots with a few celebrities who came to Kentucky only during Derby season and who thought they were part of the in crowd if they drank bourbon and wore a hat. And now, walking into a college party on the fifth floor of the honors dorm—could it sound more lame?—I got nervous, chickened out, spread my hands over my bare tummy, and would have backed away down the stairwell if Summer hadn’t grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd outside the bathroom.

“You like Hunter more than you want to admit,” she said in my ear as she tugged the door open. “But maybe he won’t be here.” She pushed me inside.

The room was dimly lit with a few rotating colored lights, and the hot, swirling mist made it even more difficult to see. The showerheads in every stall sprayed full force—hot water, judging from the fog. The room was more like a sauna than a beach.

But the boys had worked hard on the beach scene. A few potted palms framed the doorway where we stood. About half the thirty people in the room stood in a circle near the sinks and batted a beach ball back and forth. An upperclassman had set up a bar in front of the urinals. He chopped ice in a blender, mixed it with fruit juice and vodka, and garnished the drinks with paper umbrellas.

And over the bare shoulders of boys, right away I saw Hunter stripped down to his bathing suit and flip-flops. For the first time in months and months, here was what I’d seen almost daily for so many Kentucky summers: Hunter with his shirt off. Back home his muscles had worked underneath his skin, stacking bales of hay, holding a bucking stallion. Muscles like that, in a body as beautiful as a machine, should have made noise as they worked, some low grinding music, rather than sliding along silently through their task.

In class or in the coffee shop, I had known those silent muscles were there, disguised in a crisp cotton shirt or a blue polo for another girl to discover. Now another girl had discovered them all right. Bracing one hand against the wet tile wall, Hunter leaned in and talked to a blonde, as confidently and casually as if he’d met a girl from our rival high school outside the pretzel shop at the mall.

I waited for him to look up at me in the doorway, give me a smug smile, and turn back to her. That would let me know he was interested in me and trying to make me jealous.

He never looked at me. He kept talking to her as if I were not there.

Summer noticed, too. Conveniently ignoring his blond accessory, she gasped, “My God—Hunter’s body. Are those muscles from being a stable boy?”