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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

RORA WOKE UP to a text from Tawny saying she wouldn’t be available for breakfast Sunday, and Eiren chimed in she was checking out early, and so Rora ate with Stockton, and they lingered out in the courtyard long after the buffet breakfast had been cleaned up and the final morning run was well underway.

There were definitely less participants that morning, and the numbers didn’t look good—many more bucks than does. Sure enough, there were bucks wandering back in, looking dejected and tired.

She and Stockton joked they were probably out there sparring like mad, competing over whatever tail there was to be had.

They talked about other things, too. They talked about school, and a professor they’d both had, one who taught freshman-level math who had a thick accent that they couldn’t decipher, but it turned out not to matter, because he would give a pre-test on the class before the actual test, which was exactly like the actual test, only with different numbers. If you showed for the pre-test and wrote down all the problems, you were allowed to use your pre-test on the actual test, so passing had been a breeze.

They talked about how Stockton was waiting to see if he’d be accepted into the graduate law program at the school where they both attended, but that he thought it was pretty likely, so they’d be in the same vicinity for the foreseeable future.

They talked about how Rora was still dallying over declaring a major. It should probably be English literature, but she was thinking that she should do something practical, like education or maybe get her masters in library science, even though she didn’t know how she’d fund a master’s degree. Her family pooled resources to pay for undergrad for everyone, but there was a sort of understanding that she was supposed to come out of college with a degree that would allow her to be gainfully employed, and that she would be required to then contribute to the finances of the household.

Because, of course, there was no moving out and leaving home when you were a deerkin woman. There was just eventually having your babies and raising them there. And maybe, if you had enough babies, you’d get to move one of your elderly aunts out of one of the suites on the house that had its own kitchen, maybe, but maybe not.

They talked and talked, and she found herself not wanting to leave and go home, because she was getting lost in spinning some kind of fairytale future with Stockton, who seemed to want to be her boyfriend, like a real boyfriend, who was going to be a lawyer, and who wanted them to belong to each other, and who didn’t live with his mother right now, but in his father’s house in Alberdeen, which was where they both went to school, about twenty minutes away.

Stockton had grown up with his father in his life, and they talked about how he wanted to be a father to his own children, and she found herself at once hoping for this soap bubble of a different life and also scolding herself not to get ahead of herself, that there were all sorts of reasons why things might never get anywhere with Stockton.

When she finally did get home, it was mortifying.

Her gran and her mother and her aunts had thrown her some kind of celebratory rite-of-passage, now-you’re-a-woman luncheon, and she had to sit there and be subjected to teasing while all the kids were there, wide-eyed and curious, and asking questions like whether or not Rora was going to have a baby now.

As soon as it was polite, she fled to her room to read the books that Stockton had bought for her.

Her phone beeped.

It was him.

He’d texted her. Thinking of you. Can’t seem to stop. Do we have to wait for you to talk to Maibell?

She felt a flood of happiness, a buoyant warmth of hope that she’d never allowed herself to feel before.

What if I get everything I want, after all? she thought, her breath catching painfully in her throat. She’d never allowed herself to truly believe that was even possible.

MAIBELL WAS PERCHED on a stool at the coffee shop near campus with her ears twitching nervously. “What the hell, Rora?” she said. “You are giving me a heart attack here.”

Rora had texted her that she wanted to talk with her in person, and Maibell had gotten very anxious and basically demanded they meet up right now in the coffee shop, early on Monday morning, hours before Rora even had a class.

Rora didn’t mind, however. It was easier to get this over with, frankly, and she didn’t want to have it hanging over the growing relationship with Stockton. They had texted for hours last night, and she was still feeling a dizzy and hopeful warm feeling every time she thought about him.

“Sorry,” said Rora, sitting down. “I was going to buy you your coffee, you know.”

“Rora, if you make me wait for you to go and buy a fucking drink, I am going to lose my mind,” Maibell snapped. “What happened? What is going on?”

Rora spread her hands. “I’m really sorry that this is freaking you out so much. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be that big of a deal in the end, actually. But… I don’t know. It’s about Stockton.”

Maibell’s ears flattened against her head. “Okay? We broke up. You know that, right? Like, if you’re going to tell me you saw him with some other girl or something, whatever.”

Rora winced. “Well, I hope you mean that, because he and I ran into each other this weekend.”

“Oh,” said Maibell, pulling back, bring her drink with her.

“Okay, so, when we started talking, we had a discussion about how we were just friendly, of course, and I said that I could not get into anything with him, because you and I are friends, and dating a friend’s ex, it’s… you know… not cool.”

Maibell blinked, her ears pointing straight in the air. “Okay, let me get this straight. You ran into Stockton this weekend. And you want my blessing to, like, go after him? Because I don’t think he would be attracted to you, no offense. And if it seemed like he was flirting with you, you know, he was probably just being nice, and I’m not sure if you have enough experience with men to really understand that kind of thing. Haven’t you, like, never had a boyfriend? Aren’t you, like, a virgin?”

Rora squared her shoulders. Well, Maibell was being rude, but Rora was here, doing a morally questionable thing, really. Maibell probably was feeling negative emotions about this entire thing, and she might lash out in various ways at Rora. Rora sort of deserved it. She would just take it and not comment. “Um, wow.” She put her hands palms down on the table. “So, your blessing would be great, but it’s not like that, exactly. I’m not asking permission. It’s more that I wanted you to know that we were going to go forward with it, before we, um, went forward with it. I told him I needed to talk to you first. It seemed like the right thing to do, for you to get the information from me, instead of seeing us together or hearing about it secondhand. I get that, um, that it’s not cool, but I feel like Stockton and I have a connection that is too intense for me to not pursue. I’m sorry if it hurts you, however. If you’re angry or you don’t want to be friends, that would be understandable. I really don’t want this to come between us, though, if that’s possible.”

Maibell took a drink of her coffee. She was quiet for a long time, seemingly processing.

Rora wanted to jump in and say more things, but she could sense that adding more words was not actually going to make the situation better. She waited.

“Well,” said Maibell finally, “I guess I really fucked with his self-esteem or something, and now he’s just dating someone who he doesn’t think will sleep with someone else.”

Rora flinched. “Okay. That’s… I guess I deserve that.” She bowed her head. “It just happened,” she told the table. “We did try not to—”

“Oh, moon and sun, you hooked up with him!”

“Just kissing, and we stopped,” said Rora. “I said I needed to talk to you first.”

“Wow, what do you want? A medal? Like, whatever, Rora, that does not make it okay.”

“I guess I know that,” said Rora, nodding. “It’s only, you broke up with him, and you and me, we’re not really that close of friends, so—”

“We really aren’t,” said Maibell. “In fact, I don’t think we’re friends at all anymore.” She swept up from the table.

Rora flinched again. “Okay,” she breathed.

“He’s just banking on the fact that you’re too fat for anyone else to want to fuck,” said Maibell to her, her voice sickly sweet in opposition to her words. “This is a phase for him, mark my words. I hope you don’t get hurt.”

Rora’s nostrils flared. Despite everything, tears came to her eyes. This was the reason why people tended not to do the right thing, wasn’t it? You tended not to get rewarded for it. It would have been so much easier not to have given Maibell this heads up.

Maibell’s gaze met hers, and Rora realized the other doe’s eyes were shining, too.

Rora’s lower lip trembled. “I’m sorry. It just happened. I didn’t mean to do it.”

Maibell’s face twitched. “Well, you won’t cheat on him, though.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not because no one else will want me,” Rora said, through clenched teeth. She knew now that was simply not true.

Maibell’s lower lip trembled, too. “I didn’t mean to do it, either, you know. It just happened for me, too. If he… if that’s how it was with him and you, you ask him if he can stop acting like he’s so morally fucking superior to me?”

“Maibell—”

“I’m sorry,” said Maibell. “I’m sorry I said… I have to go.” She dashed at tears that were spilling out onto her cheeks, and then she fled the coffee shop.

Rora sat back down heavily after that, sniffling a little. Well. It was done, anyway.

She sent a text to Stockton to tell him that.

How’d it go?

Kind of rough, she texted back. She was more upset than I thought.

Really? I don’t even get that. I don’t think she cares about me at all anymore.

She said to tell you that she didn’t mean to cheat on you, and that if we couldn’t control ourselves, you should stop thinking of yourself as “morally fucking superior.” That’s a direct quote.

There was a long pause.

Three dots came up, and he typed.

And typed.

Then, the response came up. Not fair of her to dump that on you. That should stay between her and me. Anyway, I tried to forgive her. She dumped me.

I know, she typed back. She had a feeling he’d typed something else out and deleted it. She hoped this thing with Maibell was not going to ruin everything before it ever even began.

You think I should talk to her?

I don’t think you owe her anything anymore. And she said we’re not friends anymore, so I guess I don’t owe her anything, either.

He responded with a one-hundred percent emoji, and then texted, So, now we can go on a date, right?

She sent a heart emoji. Hell yes.