Yeah, I put all the materials together, just in case. I didn’t really think I’d submit them. Especially because now the dean will go with the nuclear option and destroy me and my future with the law school, if not with academia writ large.
Or maybe he won’t.
I would’ve let this go, Reid. I would’ve taken my beating and hoped for a better result the next time a slot opened. But you had to goad me, didn’t you?
I mean, I try to be reasonable. But sometimes, I let things bother me more than they should.
38
Christian
“Let’s go out,” Gavin says when he shows up at my apartment, making a beeline for my booze in the kitchen. “Let’s get some tickets to the Cubs, then hit some clubs.” He seems to like that idea, humming “Cubs and clubs, Cubs and clubs” as he pours himself a bourbon.
“Not sure I’m up for it,” I say.
“Not up for the Cubbies? Okay, just the clubs, then. We’ll grab a steak and then hit the West Loop.”
I moan.
“The Triangle, then,” he says. “Maybe Tavern.”
“I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know? It’s Friday night. What, you wanna stay home?”
“Maybe. I’m tired.”
He shakes his head. “No, no, no. Nicky isn’t tired on Friday night. Nicky gets loaded with his buddy Gavin, then he takes his pick of fillies home—”
“I just don’t feel good, G. Sue me.”
Gavin takes a long sip of the bourbon and eyeballs me. With a wag of a finger, he says, “How’s it going with Number 7?”
“Good. All good. Got her right where I want her.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, we can have a drink or two here before we go,” he says. “Tell me about her.”
“That’s not the deal.”
“Well, not hername, but I mean, y’know, generally. I mean, what’s her story?”
I shrug. “Not much of a story. She was a runaway, best I can tell.”
That surprises him. It surprised me, too, when I looked her up, but then it didn’t. The more time I spend with Vicky, the more I see that she’s a loner, a fighter. Most of the women I target—all six of the previous targets, in fact—had pretty normal, privileged lives. None of them had lives that remotely resembled mine.
“Like she ran away from home when she was a kid?” Gavin says. “What’d she do?”
“I don’t know. She won’t talk about her past. Nothing online I can find.”
“You know what she did,” says Gavin, pouring himself a second bourbon.
“I don’t.”
“What elsewouldshe do? She runs away from home, has to fend for herself?”