Beyond the Point(42)
“Let’s leave,” she’d shouted over the music. “I’m ready to go back to the hotel.”
“No, no, no,” Avery had interjected. “Rally! Come on. This is our one chance to be in the city.”
Hannah asked for a bottle of water from the bartender, who rolled his eyes as he delivered it to her hand. “Tim’s going to love hearing that I partied ’til dawn with a bunch of bachelor fire fighters.”
“Well—with all due respect—Tim can suck it,” Avery had shouted back over the din of the music. “You’re not doing anything wrong. And we’ve earned a little fun.”
“She’s kind of right,” Dani had said, pinching Hannah’s elbow. “Be a college kid for once. You can go back to being responsible tomorrow.”
Hannah shook her head and chugged her water. Then she said, “It already is tomorrow.”
“He’s going to hold her back,” Avery told Dani once they’d returned to life in uniform the following week. “They’re both so serious.”
“They’re seriously in love,” Dani had replied. But the explanation fell on deaf ears.
Lately, Avery had been sneaking around with God knew who at God knew what hour of the night, as if by the sheer volume of people she dated, she could find what she was looking for. Dani had started to wonder what had happened in Avery’s past to make her so ravenous for attention. She was like a diabetic, only instead of sugar, she couldn’t absorb love. Or, maybe, she absorbed it too quickly, and constantly felt the need for more. Whatever the problem, Dani wondered how long Avery could go on like this. Rather than dealing with her deficiency, Avery kept running, working hard to prove her worth and amass awards and achievements and admirers. But to Dani, all that effort seemed exhausting. She wondered if Avery would ever stop running. She wondered if she’d ever have the courage to stand still.
If she needed any advice, Dani knew where she could turn—after all, she was becoming an expert at being single.
“That looked good,” Locke said, bringing Dani out of her thoughts. “Go again.”
She picked up the bar, completed another perfect clean, and let the bar drop to the floor.
AFTER DINNER, THEY went back to Locke’s dorm room to study for West Point’s Term End Exams, known as TEEs. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill played from Locke’s computer speakers, mingling rhymes of revolution with Dani’s pack of physics problems. While she measured velocity and torque, she grew distracted by other sounds coming from Locke’s computer. A door creaking open or slamming shut. The sound of a loud cha-ching, indicating that someone special had come online. The constant ba-da-bing of an incoming AOL instant message.
“You’re popular tonight,” Dani said, putting her pencil down on the paper in front of her. “What’s happening up there?”
In truth, she worried Locke might be chatting online with some other girl, even while Dani sat comfortably on his floor. In the last six months, he’d had countless opportunities to make a move. Throughout the ballroom dancing lessons, they’d moved across the dance floor with more chemistry and ease than anyone in the room. She’d grown tired of feeling his hands spotting her in the gym, rather than reaching for her to pull her in for a kiss.
A few weeks earlier, Dani had been sitting in Wendy Bennett’s kitchen, talking about this very thing, when Wendy had firmly set her coffee cup on the counter and sighed.
“You’re going to drive yourself crazy waiting around for him to make a move.”
Tears had welled in Dani’s eyes, as if the truth had unlocked some inner door, letting the emotion free. A tissue box appeared on the kitchen table, but swallowing hard, Dani forced the tears back to where they came from.
“That’s not true,” she’d insisted. “Locke and I are friends. I don’t want to lose that.”
“You’re going to lose him one way or another. One of you will start dating someone else. Someday you’ll both be married. It won’t be like this forever.”
“So what? Stop being friends now because maybe someday we’ll marry other people?”
“No. I’m saying you should tell him how you feel.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Of course not,” Wendy had said. “Doing the right thing never is. That’s how you know it’s the right thing.”
Locke’s broad shoulders hunched over his keyboard, his eyes trained on the computer screen. And suddenly, the thought of spending two more years in relationship purgatory overwhelmed Dani with frustration. Wendy was right. She deserved an answer, but she would never get it waiting around on Locke’s dorm room floor.
“Hey, Locke,” Dani started. “I think we need to—”
“Oh man,” said Locke, interrupting her. “D, you’ve got to come see this.”
The somber tone of his voice and the shock on his face sent Dani’s eyes directly to his computer screen. There, a collage of images assaulted her—pale white limbs, curves, pink nipples. Dani pushed Locke out of the way. She scrolled quickly, her eyes reflecting the bright light of the computer screen, the images of one naked female body, over and over again. Locke stood behind her, biting his lower lip.
“Where did these come from?” Dani snapped. She looked back at Locke, who raised his hands in the air—Don’t shoot.