Page 6 of Privilege

Chapter Five

Rich

The pink splotch on Cara’s upper arm has me grinding my jaw so hard it hurts. Couldn’t even get through one day without Dane putting his hands on her.

I run my palm over her soft skin, the freckles trailing down from her neck and shoulders onto her upper arms a beacon for attention.

I try to convince myself it’s not worth chasing after him, if only because there are at least three former water polo players openly eyeing her with interest and it seems futile at this point.

Awesome .

Cara tracks him across the lawn, his arm slung around the shoulders of a ten foot tall cocktail waitress who Arnold will have to drive home in a few hours. She bites her bottom lip, clearly lost in thought and paying far more attention to my brother than I’d like.

“Are you okay baby?” I say.

“Hmm?”

I frown. “Do you want to go?”

She smiles up at me and shrugs. “I’m fine, Rich.”

And the thing is… she really is fine.

Confusion was the only word for how I felt around Cara, at first. I kept waiting for the claws, the rules, the ultimatums. I was constantly on guard for the list of things I was doing wrong, the list of things she needed from me, the list of all the ways I needed to step up like everybody else in my life rattled off like a prayer.

In school, it was class rankings. Padding the resume for the Ivy Leagues.

Focus more. Apply yourself. Sports? Stats and diet and training specs.

Take this more seriously, Richard. The team needs you, Richard.

At home, it was living up to the van der Beer name.

To make my deceased father proud. To impress my step-father.

You’re not involved enough, mother would always say.

You need to maintain these relationships, Richie.

These connections will serve you for the rest of your life.

And the girls. The fucking piranas. Why were you being nice to her, Rich?

You can’t hang out with her, Rich. That guy can’t come to the party, Rich.

Jamie might have been a bitch, but at least she never asked me to do anything but show up. My last name was enough for her.

No wonder mother loves her.

And then I met Cara. In a library. With her legs tucked up to her chest, her campus hoodie pulled over them, chin resting on her knees while staring at her book so intently I remember being shocked that it didn’t catch fire.

Her naturally blonde hair was in this big, lopsided bun—it was the cutest thing I’d ever seen and before I knew it I was talking to her.

I don’t know what I expected from a girl solo studying in a library being unexpectedly bothered in the wee hours by a bunch of obnoxiously drunk athletes.

But it wasn’t for her to slip into conversation like we’d known each other forever, and pat Lyle’s back as he threw up behind a tree while we all willingly walked her back to her dorm.

Standing in the middle of a party full of Hampton people who hate themselves doesn’t matter. She is fine because she likes herself, and isn’t depending on anyone else to make her feel good about who she is.

“I’m so fucking lucky Cara,” I blurt.

She scrunches her nose in confusion. “For what?”

I grab her face in both hands and lean down, seal my lips over hers, and pour everything pumping through my veins into that kiss.

When I pull away, her cheeks are flushed and she tucks her hair behind her ears. I open my mouth to say something I definitely should have already said to her—

“Ahem.”

I wince.

My mother says, “You must be Cara?”

A familiar buzzing sensation starts to crawl all over my skin, tightening it up like shrink wrap. My chest constricts. Stomach churns.

Shit. Shit shit shit. It’s been over a year since I’ve had to deal with this kind of stress.

Mother advances. “It’s so lovely to have you here, Cara…?”

“Jones,” Cara says, extending her hand.

Mother blinks, clearly thrown off by Cara’s genuine, easygoing energy .

“It’s lovely to meet you Mrs. van der Beer. Thank you so much for having me.”

“Yes. Well. Richie didn’t give us much of a choice, did he?”

Cara takes it in stride. “I’m grateful for the last-minute accommodation. It’s very kind of you.”

Tension roils in my torso, the kind I used to feel during a good water polo match when I’d been put up against an opponent who had a brain instead of one who simply had a superior cardiovascular system.

If I weren’t mildly nauseous about this confrontation, I’d want to laugh at my mother’s shaky footing.

She’s not a socialite, Ma. She’s just… a nice person.

“You go to SoCal, Cara?”

She beams. “I do! Advanced robotics.”

“Richie was supposed to go to Harvard, you know.”

Cara takes my hand and squeezes it. “I know. He’s really smart.” She turns to me and smiles. “It was a nice surprise. You look like a dumb jock.”

I want to laugh, but the image of a cement paving truck comes to mind as my body crumples in on itself from stress. My mother’s eyes narrow on Cara’s hand in mine .

Mother takes my free hand and turns it palm-up, dropping a small white pill in my palm.

“Here you go dear,” she says.

It’s Ativan.