"Will!" she cries when I pick up. "Thank God. I've been calling and calling. I heard you quit!"
"I did quit," I tell her calmly.
"But why?" she gasps. "I know I implied it, but I never would have told anyone about Olivia sleeping at your mom's."
"I don't think you implied it. You used it to blackmail Olivia into leaving."
She's silent for a moment, recalibrating. "I don't know what she told you, but you know what a liar she is, Will."
"Jessica, I didn't even learn it from her, so don't try to bullshit me."
"I was upset that night, honey, and I was jealous. Maybe it was a little crazy, but I love you and sometimes love makes you do crazy things."
"I agree," I tell her. "It's what made me resign."
"You-" she draws in a hopeful breath. "You resigned for me?"
"No," I reply. It's petty but I'm really going to enjoy disappointing her. "I resigned for Olivia. And I don't think I'd ever have known how much she really meant to me if you hadn't run her off, so I guess I should say thanks."
///
"You really think that girl can make you happy?" Jessica snarls.
"She already does. Oh, and Jessica-you know how I kept telling you I wasn't ready to get married anytime soon?"
"Yes," she snaps.
"I was wrong," I tell her, and I hang up the phone.
We end up staying for dinner, at my mother's insistence. I was on the verge of arguing but a look from Olivia silenced me. "We should get going," I say, as soon as the meal has concluded.
"You're not going anywhere," says my mother. "I've got Olivia's favorite pie in the oven."
Olivia, sitting across from me, looks like she wants to laugh. I'd been considering breaking my lease and moving back to the farm until I found a new job. Now, after spending two hours watching Olivia and keeping my hands to myself, I realize that plan will never work.
It's just begun to snow as we leave. Snowflakes cling to her hair, to her lashes, making her seem other-worldly, lit up from within. She looks up at the sky and laughs, her delight almost childlike, and I'm flooded with warmth. I love her so much that it feels like there's not even room inside me for all of it.
"What's with the look?" she asks. "You don't want to date me now that I'm geeking out about the snow?"
I shake my head and step toward her, wrapping my hands around her hips, and taking it all in-her wide smile, her moonlit eyes, the snowflakes glowing in her hair. "Just the opposite," I tell her truthfully. "I'm looking at you and wondering if it's possible that I've gotten this lucky."
Her smile changes then from delight to something else, something warm and surprised, quietly pleased. "We're both lucky," she says, rising on her toes to find my mouth.
By the time we get in the car, our hair is soaked and we're both shivering. I crank the heat and head down the long road from the farm, but when I reach the highway, I don't turn toward campus.
"Where are we going?" she asks.
It didn't even occur to me to take her home. I suppose I should have asked her, but there's no way in hell I'm letting her set foot in that neighborhood again. "You didn't think I was actually going to sleep in your apartment, did you?" I tease. "I'm big but I'm not bulletproof, and we've already been involved with the police once this week."
"Okay, but you're not going to be weird about it, right?" she asks. "You were so weird that first time I slept in your apartment."
I roll my eyes. "Yeah, you mean the time my hot student sat up in bed and flashed me her tits? Nothing to be weird about there."
"I assumed you'd seen breasts before mine."
"Yeah, but yours are exceptional," I reply, pulling into the parking lot. I've thought about that morning so many times, and now I can actually act on it. I grab her bags and head for the door. "There is one way tonight will be like the first time you stayed," I warn her, putting the key in the lock.
"Oh, what's that?"
I grin, pulling her in behind me and not bothering to turn on the lights. "My bedroom is the only part of this apartment you'll see until daylight."
78
Olivia
I suppose it's because Will and I have spent so much time together at his mother's house that there isn't anything awkward about staying with him. About waking up in his apartment. Drinking coffee in his bed. Telling him I have a final in an hour so he'd better get undressed fast.
No, all the awkward has been saved for outside of his apartment, for the time when word about the two of us gets out.
And it will get out, eventually. The track team is a little too close-knit and a little too gossipy for it to escape everyone's attention.
Our biggest concern, of course, is Jessica-a problem Peter solves with a single phone call to her boss. It turns out that threatening to make the university look bad when you work in the public relations department is frowned upon. Jessica could still tell one day when she no longer cares about keeping her job, but the whole thing is not much of a story, given that Will has already quit.
So while our secret is safe for a while, I do tell a few people, and Evan is one of them. Even though we barely dated, I knew from Will that he'd been worried when I disappeared. It only seems fair that he know the truth. Not the part where I slept with Will during the banquet I attended with him, just the rest of it. And he isn't surprised.
"I kind of guessed it around the time you disappeared and Will went batshit crazy," he admits.
///
I also tell Erin and Nicole. Erin, because she already kind of knows, and Nicole because she's way too nosy not to figure it out on her own.
"I want all the dirt," Nicole says, slightly too eagerly.
"You're not actually saying you want me to talk about, like, physical stuff, right?" I ask.
She looks at me blankly. "Of course I am. You think I want to know what he eats for dinner? You've at least got to tell me how big his d-"
"I'm sure you can guess," I say, cutting her off. "And that's the very last detail you'll request, ever. Understand?"
She ignores me entirely, turning to Erin. "I told you he'd be huge, didn't I?" she crows.
The day that I officially become an adult coincides with the day I officially stop living alone. On December 21st, we return the furniture Will borrowed from various people and take the last of my meager possessions to his apartment. Erin and Brendan both come to help, though Brendan's version of "help" involves a lot more lying around than you might imagine.
"I still can't believe you're doing this," Erin says in wonder as we enter Will's apartment together. Brendan is, at the moment, "helping" by watching TV. "I mean it's weird, right? Isn't it weird?"
"How so?" It doesn't feel weird to me at all. Now that we're together it feels as if it was always inevitable.
"It's just so random. I mean, I knew you guys were tight but it's like finding out that Brofton is sleeping with the woman who scans our IDs at the cafeteria."
I choke on a laugh. "In what possible way is this like Brofton sleeping with an obese Polish woman?"
"That was a bad analogy," she concedes. "Okay, it's like finding out Brofton is moving in with Angelina Jolie. It's just, you know, he's Will … "
"Yeah." I smile. "I know." Sometimes I look over at him, when he's in the kitchen or getting dressed or stretched out on the couch waiting for me to lie beside him, and I can't really believe it either.
She throws her arms around me before I can back away. "This is the first decent break you've ever gotten, Finn. Don't fuck it up, okay?"
I promise her I won't, and though I'm not much good at keeping promises, I feel pretty good about this one.
There is a small birthday dinner at Dorothy's later that night. Will had wanted to take me out but I insisted we go to his mom's. "But we eat there all the time," he objected.
"I like going to the farm."
"You do realize that it's supposed to be me pushing you to go visit my mom and you reluctantly agreeing, not the reverse?" he asked. "You're turning 21. It should be something special."
"Maybe," I suggested, "you can focus on making it special when we get home."
Surprising no one, he liked that idea.
Peter, Brendan and Erin all join us that night at the farm, where Dorothy has made every food she knows I like. I don't mention it to them, but it's the first time anyone's celebrated my birthday since I was 10, which makes even a small gathering feel a little overwhelming. I swallow hard and dig my nails into my hands to avoid tears when Dorothy comes out of the kitchen carrying a cake with my name on it, singing "Happy Birthday." Sure, maybe I can cry now, but it doesn't mean I'm going to start crying when I'm happy. Dorothy gives me another dress, and Will gives me my favorite gift ever-new racing flats.