Proposal (The Mediator, #6.5)(6)
So I guess shouldn’t have been surprised when I was applying for campus housing and overheard Andy telling my mother that the only way I was going to be safe from all the sexual assaults he’d heard about on National Public Radio was if I lived in an all--girl dorm.
Never mind that I have been kicking the butts of the undead since I was in elementary school, and that almost the entire time I resided under Andy’s roof, I had a hot undead guy living in my bedroom. These are two of those secrets I was telling you about. Andy doesn’t know about them, and neither does my mother. They think Jesse is what Father Dominic told them he is: a “young Jesuit student who transferred to the Carmel Mission from Mexico, then lost his yearning to go into the priesthood” after meeting me.
That one slays me every time.
So I didn’t protest the decision. I didn’t do so well on the SATs (the things -people like me are good at, you can’t measure with a multiple--choice test, let alone an essay), much to the everlasting mortification of my high--achieving, feminist mother. It didn’t help that my best friends CeeCee, Adam, and Gina got into extremely good schools, boosting my mom’s dream that I was going to Harvard and live in Kirkland House, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Instead the only place I got into was the local community college, where I live in a suite in what’s not--so--jokingly referred to as the Virgin Vault, with a practicing witch, a klepto, and a girl whose family’s religion doesn’t allow her speak to men outside of their faith.
I keep assuring Mom it’s cool. Another one of our suite mates came out last semester as a lesbian (to the surprise of none of us but herself), and a fifth is sleeping with a guy who’s in an actual motorcycle gang.
“See, Mom?” I’d told her. “Way better than Harvard. There’s so much more diversity!”
Like most of my jokes, she didn’t find that one funny.
But, seriously, these are my girls, each and every one of them. I’m secretly doing case studies on each of them for my biological psych class.
Except that tonight I didn’t have time to stop and chat, let alone have a friendly cocktail. I needed to change out of my sopping wet clothes, find out where this Zack guy lived, and then get back out there and stop Mark Rodgers from making the biggest mistake of his life.
Well, of his death, if you wanted to get technical about it.
But the girls were all in an uproar, as I discovered as soon as I keyed in with my ID card.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked Lauren, the witch. The rest of the girls from our floor were in the common room on beanbag chairs in front of the television, on which a film starring Drew Barrymore was playing (we each have single bedrooms while sharing a communal bathroom, kitchen, and TV slash study slash common area, Orange Is the New Black prison style, though to date no one has been shanked).
The game was that every time Drew or one of her zany coworkers wondered whether or not men were worth it, we were all supposed to chug.
But the game got suspended when I walked in. Everyone turned, raised their red cups, and started squealing.
“There’s a surprise for you in your room,” Lauren said, handing me a cocktail. “Where were you, anyway? I tried to call to tell you, but it went straight to voice mail. I was worried you’d been caught in that storm. And”—-she nodded at my dripping hair—-“I see that you were.”
“Library,” I said, taking a single grateful gulp of the cocktail. I couldn’t let myself have more, since I was going to be driving again in a few minutes, to wherever Zack Farhat lived. “Studying.”
“Ha,” she said, with a grin. “You, studying, at the library. Good one!”
“Ha.” I smiled back at her. “Yeah, I know. I was at the mall.”
“Sure you were. Here.” She plucked something off her desk. “This came for you. It was too big to fit in your mailbox, so they left it on the shelf for you to pick up downstairs, but I was afraid Ashley might swipe it, so I grabbed it.” Ashley was our resident klepto. She was making progress with her therapist, but like anyone with an impulse control disorder, she had to take it one day at a time. “Looks like someone’s got a Valentine.”
I glanced down at the package, excited that it might be from Jesse, even though we’d agreed we weren’t going to contribute to the mass hysteria surrounding Valentine’s Day, since we loved each other unconditionally every day, and he didn’t think I was the sort of girl who needed reminding of that fact with a cheap mass--produced card, candy, or stuffed bear.
(Not to mention that Valentine’s Day was no longer the sweet tradition it was when he was a child, when -people used the Pony Express to send handmade greetings to their sweethearts. See what I mean about some of his secrets being a little on the dark side?)
He was partly right. I don’t care about cards, and I haven’t owned a stuffed animal since I saw my first supernatural entity when I was a toddler.
Candy I wouldn’t have minded, though. What girl doesn’t like candy?
Nor would I have said no to a dinner at one of those bistros I’d passed on my drive out to the cemetery. Those -couples snuggled under those heat lamps looked so happy and contented, I wanted to pull over and snuggle up next to them.
Snuggle up next to them or pound their faces in out of jealousy. I wasn’t sure which.
But I’d never have mentioned a word of this to Jesse, because I didn’t want him to think I was the kind of girl who’d enjoy being taken out for what was undoubtedly grossly overpriced, probably not even very good surf and turf on a night that—-he was right—-has turned into a completely manufactured, mass--produced, grotesque commercial modern holiday.