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  * * *

  As far as the actual commencement ceremony was concerned, I hadn’t been looking forward to it, and as expected it went by in a flash. I was actually glad my mother hadn’t come, even though she’d wanted to, because she would have realized how few friends I’d made, and for some reason I preferred that she think of me as something other than a social underachiever. There were about five girls and two guys in the Nutrition program who I actually hung out with outside of class, but the lot of them were antisocial types who didn’t do much beyond classwork. Also, my dependence on Gracie and our sibling-like tendencies could have struck my conservative, Midwestern mother as something sapphic, which I really didn’t want to have to deny or explain.

  Graduation day was also particularly stressful given it was the first of two moving days for me. I had yet to stow all my furniture and boxes in a musty little storage unit before moving into Julien’s guesthouse the next day, so I was still dressed in my drab graduation gown when I rented a U-Haul that afternoon, with the bittersweet melody of “Pomp and Circumstance” still stuck in my head. I had talked Gracie into helping me move the big stuff in exchange for a steak dinner, but somehow we had lost each other in the diploma-clutching throngs and I found myself waiting for her in the U-Haul parking lot for over an hour, getting intermittent texts that said things like traffic=me and directions fail/there in… soon.

  Lucky for my inner demons, the U-Haul office had an extensive vending machine selection, and in the course of an hour, I had sampled not one but two bags of chips, a wrinkly yellow packet of peanut M&M’S, and a roll of Life Savers that may or may not have been there since 1995. I was actually standing against my car, graduation gown open to expose my less-than-formal T-shirt and shorts underneath, and clinging to all the empty wrappers as I foraged through my last bag of chips for edible crumbs, when a U-Haul pickup truck pulled into the lot and slowed down as it passed me. I squinted to get a better view of the driver, but the sun was in my face and I couldn’t quite make him out. I went back to foraging, eventually tipping the bag over my mouth in a shameless display.

  “Hey there… again,” I heard a voice say as the door to the pickup slammed shut. “Long time no see.”

  I whipped my head in the direction of the Australian accent, in utter shock and disbelief. It was him—Liam.

  “Oh, hi!” I called out faux-casually as he made his way toward me, his shoulders moving in unison with his hips in a James Dean swagger. I had never seen someone so happily aware of their own sexiness. It almost put me at ease.

  “Mischa, right?”

  “Yes!” How the hell had he remembered my name? If I were a cartoon, my eyes would have been bugging out of their sockets and my eyebrows hovering somewhere above my head.

  “Whatcha got there? Ruffles?” He pointed to the bag I had forgotten I was clutching.

  I glanced down, my eyebrows knitted as if the chips had just materialized in my hand miraculously. “Oh. Yeah. I’ve been here a really long time. I was starving.” Straightening my posture self-consciously, I shoved the bag, along with my other empty wrappers, into the back pockets of my shorts.

  “Hey, you don’t need an excuse to eat Ruffles. I fucking love those things.” Liam leaned beside me against my car. “You know, I never heard of Overeaters Anonymous before the other night. It got me thinking, I probably need that too.”

  I gave Liam’s lean body a quick once-over, doing my best not to gawk. “I doubt it,” I said.

  “No, I swear. All I do is eat. I own a restaurant for God’s sake. Anyway, I figure food is like the fundamental addiction. If you can get over that, you can get over anything, right?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll let you know when I get over it.” Liam nudged me, and we both smiled. For two people who hardly knew each other, we’d fallen into casual conversation like it was no big thing. Had I already been demoted to the friend zone?

  “So is this the big graduation party?” he teased.

  “Yeah, I’m the first one here,” I shot back, determined to make him laugh if nothing else. “No, I have to move out of my apartment. What about you?”

  “I had to haul some artwork to my restaurant,” he said.

  I nodded. “Cool.” This was followed by a long pause. There was nothing else I could come up with to say, other than So… how’s your sex addiction going? Which I figured was out of the question, even if posed ironically.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about the other night,” he said. “I was in a bad place. I shouldn’t have hit on you like that.”

  I shaded my eyes to see him better. “No worries. I didn’t take it seriously. So, no harm no foul.” We shared another smile, and I allowed my heart to melt just a little

  “I appreciate you not taking me up on it, for what it’s worth. Anyway…” He tossed his U-Haul keys back and forth between his hands, his light green eyes—almost colorless in the sunlight—making contact with mine. “Are you waiting for someone, then?”

  “Yeah. My friend’s helping me move. Hopefully sometime in the next century.”

  “Oh yeah? How late is he?”

  “She,” I responded almost giddily, flattered that he had assumed I had some strapping guy to help me instead of my diminutive girlfriend who was probably tipsy from the flask of spiked Arnold Palmer she’d brought to graduation. I checked my phone. “She was supposed to be here an hour ago. An hour and ten to be exact.”

  “That’s no good.”

  “Well, we were supposed to come here together but we lost each other in the crowd. It’s fine. She’s helping me move on graduation day, which is a lot more than most people would do.”

  “So how was it? Did some famous person give you the best advice of your life?”

  Shifting my weight against the car, I laughed and shook my head. “Our speaker was the Pensacola-Five weatherman. He’s alumni, I guess.”

  “I never went to my high school graduation,” Liam said. “That’s the only chance I got for the whole cap and gown scene.”

  “It’s overrated. I almost didn’t go. Stuff like that just isn’t very important to me.”

  “No?”

  “Yeah, I never went to prom, for instance. I mean, not because I protested it or anything, just because I didn’t have a date.”

  Liam tilted his head and grinned. “Aww, I would have taken you,” he said.

  I squinted at him, incredulous. “You don’t even know me.”

  “So cynical!”

  “Just realistic.”

  Liam lifted his hands as if to feel the heat surrounding us. “Hey, listen, you can’t suffer out here forever. Let me help you.”

  “Oh, gosh… That’s… I mean…” It took everything in me not to say, “Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!” And why couldn’t I? Here was this modelesque creature offering to help me, of all people, with whom he wasn’t even having sex. I could just imagine walking behind him as he carried two boxes at once, watching his muscles strain as he lifted the heavy end of my ratty couch… But the naysayer in me argued that someone like this would never make such an offer unless he was a demented serial killer with a long line of victims, all short, round versions of myself. “That’s fine.” I shook my head, embarrassed for some unknowable reason. “Gracie’ll be here any minute.”

  Liam looked up and down the empty street beside the parking lot. “Right. Well I’m gonna turn in my keys. If she’s not here by the time I’m back, I’ll force my services on you. How ’bout that?”

  Before I could answer, he had walked away, and I found myself praying that Gracie would be a no-show. I checked my phone and saw her latest text: Whatta nightmare. Tell u in 5 secs. Based on the entire string of messages she had sent me, however, which had referenced multiple amounts of minutes and/or seconds it would take for her to arrive, I had come to realize that the time frames she was giving were completely arbitrary. In fact, according to her texts, Gracie seemed to be operating entirely outside of the space-time continuum as I knew it. So maybe she would be
here in five seconds, or maybe five hours. Which brought me back to the concept of Liam helping me move. It felt like a daydream hallucination I had had after standing in the sun too long—a Liam mirage, complete with witty repartee. What would I do if it actually happened?

  A loud car horn snapped me out of my thought-spiral as Gracie’s neon-green hatchback, arguably more of an eyesore than my Sloppy Jalopy, careened into the parking lot.

  “I bumped someone’s rubber fender—no scratches!—and they wanted to DUI me. Can you believe it?” she screamed through the open window as she parked. “I told them no problemo, called their bluff,” she said as she got out of the car. “For the record, there was one shot in that entire flask. I know that look on your face.”

  “I’m not looking like anything.” I glanced behind me, noting that Liam was still inside. I had the keys to the U-Haul I had rented in my hands, and without speaking another word, I silently led Gracie across the parking lot. If I waited for Liam to come out, there would be an awkward pause as he realized my friend had shown up, and I’d have to introduce them, and Gracie would make some Gracie comment, telling Liam to his face how smoking hot he was, and for some reason it all felt like too much. It reminded me of high school, when I would inexplicably duck out of conversations with cute boys because I couldn’t handle how anxious they made me. When faced with “fight or flight,” I had always chosen flight, then kicked myself for it afterward…

  “What’s wrong? Are you really mad at me for being late?” Gracie asked, climbing into the passenger seat as I turned the keys to the truck.

  I shook my head, still silent. This was officially the second time I had fled from Liam in less than twenty-four hours, and the second time I was filled with regret about it.

  If I see him again, I thought, all bets are off.

  Chapter Three

  “So what are you gonna do with yourself this summer? Other than try, try, try, very, very hard not to suck Julien Maxwell’s enormous cock?” God bless her, Gracie had a one-track mind.

  “You’re a sick and twisted individual. And I’ve told you a million times—crusty old professors are your deal, not mine.” Gracie saluted me with her freshly refilled beer, which she proceeded to guzzle, and I was struck with a pang of bittersweet emotion. “I’m gonna miss you!” I said. “I wish you weren’t leaving so soon.”

  “I don’t know how you’re going to survive out here without me,” she said, wiping the foam from her upper lip. “Especially in the summer. This place is d-e-a-d dead in the summertime.”

  “Well, aside from working for your dream man, I wanna keep working on my juice cleanse—”

  “There’s too many juice cleanses. You should do something else.”

  “There are no perfect juice cleanses. Mine will be perfect,” I said, smirking to indicate my level of seriousness. The “Mischa Jones Patented Juice Cleanse” had been my running joke of senior year, a pie-in-the-sky scheme that would allow me to pay off my student loans and start a nutrition empire. I referred to it anytime someone talked about their real plans for the future. Meanwhile, I had been working on it, off and on, and wasn’t fully convinced it was a bad idea.

  “You know what? I’ll drink to that.”

  “You’ll drink to anything!” I teased.

  “Right you are.” Gracie smiled as we clinked glasses, a couple of happy orphans enjoying graduation dinner sans the proud parents.

  As we talked about her plans for D.C., my impending move into Julien’s guesthouse the next day, and toasted all the big and little triumphs we could think of, my mind kept going back to Liam and his green eyes glinting in the sunlight in the U-Haul parking lot. Part of me was itching to tell her about it, especially after two beers and the two more shots she practically forced down my throat. I wanted to slam a hand down on the table and announce that a drop-dead gorgeous sex maniac had told me he would have taken me to prom, had offered to help me move out of the goodness of his heart, and had even remembered my name! These things didn’t happen to the Mischa that Gracie knew and loved, and maybe it was time to change that. Yet each time the news started to bubble up, I stopped myself, knowing that the way I had responded to Liam was the Mischa we knew and loved, and that was no bueno. Even with a solid buzz, I couldn’t handle hearing Gracie’s cry of disbelief at the anticlimax.

  * * *

  The next day, she and I shared a tearful, hungover goodbye at the Pensacola Airport before she flew off to D.C. I hadn’t anticipated how much it was going to hurt to see my friend go, and the only thing that kept me from falling into a total depression was the knowledge that I would be moving into Professor Maxwell’s guesthouse that afternoon and hopefully diving into work. In fact, from the airport, I drove directly to his address, parked on the street in front of his house, and approached his front door with my rolling suitcase in tow, buzzing with the anticipation that comes along with a new job, a new place, a new chapter. The house was a nice, traditional, two-story wooden structure painted white, with black awning-style shutters. It was almost colonial, like a turn-of-the-century home in the Caribbean, but the tame green lawn with sprinklers on timers and gem-toned zinnias and hydrangeas gave it away as suburban Florida. About a minute after I rang the doorbell, I decided to knock and was relieved to hear hasty footsteps coming down a set of stairs, eradicating my fear that he had forgotten about his new assistant-cum-houseguest.

  “Hi.” A small voice came from behind the door as it swung open to reveal not Julien Maxwell but a thirteen-year-old girl with braces and an oversized One Direction concert T-shirt.

  “Hello.” I smiled, hiding my surprise. Julien was just old enough to be this girl’s father, so I had to assume that was the case. “I’m Mischa. Your dad’s assistant for the summer.”

  “I know,” she said, looking me up and down, suspicious. “He said he’ll be right back. You can come in.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  She looked me over once again, as if her decision to disclose any personal information would be based on my appearance. “Cecile,” she finally revealed.

  “Oh! Great name.”

  “I think it’s kinda lame, actually.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It sounds very grown up to me.” I was trying not to sound pandering, but it’s a thin line when you’re trying to win over a thirteen-year-old girl.

  “Whatever.” She frowned as she led me inside with a limp-wristed maneuver that felt less than welcoming. Her attitude made sense, given she had lost her mother hardly more than a year ago, not to mention she was thirteen, so I didn’t begrudge it.

  On my way to the living room, I noticed a family photograph displayed on the credenza in the foyer, showing Cecile’s clear resemblance to her mahogany-skinned, high-cheekboned mother. In the picture, the girl was a few years younger and quite skinny. Now she was decidedly fluffy. I wondered if her looking me up and down hadn’t come from that brand of self-hate that drives women, especially teenage girls, to size each other up in comparison.

  For a few painful minutes, Cecile and I sat awkwardly in the formal living room, both of us seeming to lack the necessary social skills to engage in small talk. Instead, she pretended to be busy with her phone while I glanced around at the eclectic decorations—a painted coral centerpiece on the coffee table, a massive gold-hued still life on the far wall, the Oriental rug that nearly covered the entire room. I vaguely recalled news reports from the time of Mrs. Maxwell’s death saying that she was an art history professor, which explained the impeccable interior decoration and the overall air of sophistication about the house.

  Even though we were both waiting for it, when Julien’s arrival actually happened, it took Cecile and me by surprise. He gusted in through the front door and called out “hello” so loudly that I jumped a little in my seat.

  “Dad, your student is here,” Cecile said, eyes glued to her phone as she got up from the armchair and skulked out of the room. I heard Julien kiss her hello in the foyer and stood
at attention as he walked in.

  He was in workout clothes—long gray shorts, a white V-neck, and slightly goofy-looking neon cross-trainers—the type of outfit that always prompts the same response in me: I need to work out more. “Mischa, sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. Let me show you to your new place.” He was slightly out of breath as he led me through the house and explained that he’d just ridden his bike from campus. Sweat dotted the back of his shirt. “Do you ever ride?” he asked.

  “Regrettably, no,” I said, my eyes focused on the floor as I rolled my suitcase over various runners and rugs, following him down the hall and through the kitchen.

  “I never did until last year. Now I can’t live without it. It helps me clear my thoughts.” Julien swung the back door wide open, and I trailed behind him with my suitcase knocking down the steps of his back porch. The backyard was unmowed but impressively green, with sweet little wildflowers rising up around the stone path that led to the cottage where I would stay. It was an A-frame structure that could have been deemed a “shed” if it were any smaller. But inside, there was a stark yet homey decor, and the high pointy ceiling made it seem more spacious than the outside let on. The walls were wood panels painted white. The bed had a simple iron headboard and a red-and-white Amish quilt. After he showed me the small bathroom and pointed out a stack of plush white towels, Julien sat down on the red-and-white quilt and bounced on the mattress slightly.

  “Still good!” he announced. “This thing has been with me since undergrad. Best three hundred dollars I ever spent.”

  “This is perfect.” I parked my suitcase by the door, dropping my purse on the small desk beside it. Gracie would be in heaven right now, I thought, seeing Julien on the bed across from me.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Mischa,” said Julien with one last pat of the mattress before standing up.