11

The “no” in “annotation”

The “um” in “circumvent”

The “err” in “aberration”

The “con” in “malcontent.”

“Rejection Song”
Written by Heather Wells

Cooper and I exchange astonished glances. The astonishment, anyway, isn’t feigned.

“Did anyone here accuse you of killing anyone, Douglas?” Cooper spreads out his hands innocently.

“Yeah, really.” I shake my head. “We were only accusing your fraternity of supplying alcohol to their underaged brother.”

Doug scowls. “You leave my fraternity out of this, okay?”

“We might be able to do that,” Cooper says, stroking his whiskered jaw thoughtfully. “If you could be a little more forthcoming with the information my friend here requested.”

Winer flicks a glance up at me.

“Okay,” the kid sighs, leaning back against the pillows of his water bed and twining his fingers behind his head so that Coop and I both have a great view of the tufts of blond hair beneath his arms. Ew. “What do you want to know?”

Ignoring the armpits, I say, “I want to know how long you and Lindsay Combs were dating.”

“Dating.” Doug Winer smirks at the ceiling. “Right. Dating. Let me see. She showed up at a rush party in September. That’s where I met her. She was with that girl Jeff Turner’s seeing. Cheryl Something.”

“Jeff’s a Tau Phi?” I ask.

“He’s pledging. He’s a legacy, so he’ll probably make it, if he passes his initiation. Anyway, I thought she was cute. Lindsay, I mean. I offered her a drink.” He shoots Coop a defensive look. “I didn’t know she wasn’t twenty-one. Anyway, things kinda went from there.”

“Went how from there?” I ask.

“You know.” Doug Winer shrugs, then shoots Cooper such a smugly superior smile that I feel hard-pressed not to launch myself at the guy, tear a hole in the water mattress, and hold the kid’s head in it until he drowns.

Not, of course, that I would ever do something like that. Because then I’d probably get fired.

“No, I don’t know,” I say, through gritted teeth. “Please explain it to me.”

“She gave me head, okay?” Winer snickers. “Fucking homecoming queen, my ass. And she was a pro, let me tell you. I never had it like that from any girl—”

“Okay,” Cooper interrupts. “We get the picture.”

I feel my cheeks burning and curse myself. Why do I have to respond like such a Goody Two-shoes to words like head? Especially around Cooper, who is already convinced I’m “a nice girl.” By going around blushing all the time, I’m just reinforcing the image.

I try to make out as if I’m not blushing, just flushed. It is warm in Doug’s room—especially since, judging from the sound of water coming from his bathroom, his girlfriend (or whatever she is) appears to be showering. I start unwinding my scarf.

“Never mind,” I say to Cooper, to show him I’m all right with the gritty language. To Doug I say, “Go on.”

Douglas, still looking smug, shrugs. “So I thought it’d be a good idea to keep her around, you know? For emergencies.”

I’m so surprised by the coldness of this that I can’t think of anything to say. Cooper’s the one who inquires, calmly examining his own cuticles, “What do you mean, keep her around?”

“You know. Put her number in the little black book. For a rainy day. Whenever I was feelin’ down, I’d give ol’ Lindsay a call, and she would come over and make me feel better.”

I really can’t remember the last time I’d felt so much like killing someone—then recall that only an hour or so ago I’d wanted to pummel Gillian Kilgore with almost the same intensity as I now longed to throttle Doug Winer.

Maybe Sarah is right. Maybe I do have a Superman complex.

Cooper glances at me, and seems to sense that I’m having a difficult time restraining myself. He looks back down at his fingernails and asks Doug casually, “And Lindsay didn’t have any complaints about this kind of relationship?”

“Shit, no,” Doug says with a laugh. “And if she had complained, she’d’ve regretted it.”

Cooper’s head turns so fast in Winer’s direction that it’s nothing but a blur. “Regretted it how?”

The kid seems to realize his mistake and takes his hands away from his head, sitting up a little straighter. I notice that his abdomen is perfectly flat, except where it’s ridged with muscles. I had abs that tight once. When I was eleven.

“Hey, not like that, man.” Winer’s blue eyes are wide. “Not like that. I mean, I’d’ve stopped calling her. That’s all.”

“Are you trying to tell us”—I’ve found my voice at last—“that Lindsay Combs was perfectly willing to come up here any old time you called and give you—ahem—oral sex?”

Doug Winer blinks at me, hearing the hostility in my voice, but apparently not understanding where it’s coming from. “Well. Yeah.”

“And she did this because?”

The kid stares at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that girls do not generally perform oral sex for no reason.” At least, no girl with whom I was acquainted. “What did she get out of it?”

“What do you mean, what did she get out of it? She got me out of it.”

It was finally my turn to smirk. “You?”

“Yeah.” The kid sets his jaw defensively. “Don’t you know who I am?”

Cooper and I, as if on cue, exchange blank stares. The kid says insistently, “I’m a Winer.”

When we both continue to look uncomprehending, Doug prompts, as if he thinks we’re slow, “Winer Construction. Winer Sports Complex? You guys haven’t heard of it? We fucking own this city, man. We practically built this fucking college. At least the new buildings. I’m a Winer, man. A Winer.”

He certainly sounds like one.

And if this was the reason Lindsay Combs had been bestowing blow jobs so liberally upon this kid, I for one didn’t believe it. Lindsay hadn’t been that type of girl.

I don’t think.

“Plus, I gave her shit,” Doug admits grudgingly.

Now we were getting somewhere.

Cooper raised his eyebrows. “You what?”

“I gave her shit.” Then, seeing Cooper’s expression, Doug glances nervously in my direction, and says, “I mean, stuff. I gave her stuff. You know, the kind of stuff girls like. Jewelry and flowers and stuff.”

Now, Lindsay was that kind of girl. At least, from what I knew of her.

“I was even gonna give her this bracelet for her birthday—” Suddenly the kid slings himself out of bed, affording us a view I’d have preferred not to have of his snug black Calvin Klein briefs. He goes to a dresser and draws a small black velvet box from a drawer. Turning, he casually tosses the box to me. I fumble, but manage to catch it. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it now.”

I open the black velvet lid and—I will admit it—my eyes widen at the slender strand of diamonds lying inside the box on a bed of royal blue silk. If this is the kind of payback Lindsay was routinely receiving for her services, I guess I could understand it a little better.

Stifling a desire to whistle at the costliness of such a gift, I tilt the box at Cooper, who raises his dark eyebrows. “That’s quite a trinket,” he comments mildly. “You must have some allowance.”

“Yeah.” Doug shrugs. “Well, it’s just money.”

“Is it Dad’s money?” Cooper wants to know. “Or your own?”

The kid had been rooting around, looking for something on top of the dresser. When his fingers close around a bottle of aspirin, Doug Winer sighs.

“What difference does it make?” he wants to know. “My money, my dad’s money, my grandfather’s money. It’s all the same.”

“Is it, Doug? Your father and grandfather’s money comes from construction. I understand that you traffic an entirely different substance.”

The kid stares. “What are you talkin’ about, man?”

Cooper smiles affably. “The boys down the hall intimated that you know your way around certain hydroponics.”

“I don’t give a shit what they intimidated,” Doug declares. “I do not deal drugs, and if you accuse me of selling so much as one of these to someone”—He shakes the bottle of aspirin at us—“my dad’ll have your ass in a sling. He’s friends with the president, you know. Of this college.”

“That’s it,” I say, feigning terror. “I’m scared now.”

“You know what? You better be….” Doug starts toward me. But he gets no farther than a step before Cooper blocks his path, a hulking mass of muscle, anorak, and razor stubble.

“Just where do you think you’re going?” Cooper asks lightly.

As Cooper had evidently hoped he would—guys are so predictable—the kid takes a swing at him. Cooper ducks, his grin growing wider. Now he has license to beat the crap out of Winer, as he’d no doubt been longing to do.

“Coop,” I say. Because suddenly I realize things are not going at all the way I’d hoped. “Don’t.”

It’s useless. Cooper takes a step toward the kid just as Doug is taking a second swing, catches the kid’s fist in his hand, and, by applying steady pressure with his fingers alone, sends Winer to his knees.

“Where were you,” Cooper growls, his face inches from the kid’s, “the night before last?”

“What?” Doug Winer gasps. “Man, you’re hurtin’ me!”

“Where were you the night before last?” Cooper demands, evidently increasing the pressure on the kid’s hand.

“Here, man! I was here all night, you can ask the guys! We had a bong party. Jesus, you’re gonna break my hand!”

“Cooper,” I say, my heart beginning to drum. Hard. I mean, if I let Cooper hurt a student, I’ll be in serious trouble. Fired, even. Also…well, much as I dislike him, I find I can’t stand by and see Doug Winer get tortured. Even if he deserves it. “Let the kid go.”

“All night?” Cooper demands, ignoring me. “You were at a bong party all night? What time did it start?”

“Nine o’clock, man! Lemme go!”

“Cooper!” I can’t believe what I’m seeing. This is a side of Cooper I’ve never witnessed before.

And am pretty sure I never want to see again. Maybe this is why he won’t tell me what he does all day. Because what he does all day is stuff like this.

Cooper finally releases the kid, and Winer slumps to the floor, clutching his hand and curling into a fetal position.

“You’re gonna regret this, man,” the kid wimpers, fighting back tears. “You’re gonna be real sorry!”

Cooper blinks like someone coming out of a daze. He looks at me and, seeing my expression, says sheepishly, “I only used one hand.”

I am so stunned by this explanation—if that’s even what it is—that I can only stare at him.

A tousled blond head peeks in from the bathroom doorway. The girl from the water bed has managed to pour herself back into a bright orange party dress, but she’s barefoot, her wide eyes focused on Doug’s prone form.

But she doesn’t ask what happened. Instead, she asks, “Are my shoes in there?”

I lean down and lift up two orange high-heeled pumps.

“These them?”

“Oh, yes,” the girl says gratefully. She takes a few hesitant steps around her host and seizes the shoes. “Thank you very much.” Slipping the pumps onto her feet, she says to Doug, “It was very nice meeting you, Joe.”

Doug just moans, still clutching his injured hand. The girl scoops some of her blond hair from her eyes and leans down, displaying an admirable amount of cleavage.

“You can reach me at the Kappa Alpha Theta House anytime. It’s Dana. Okay?”

When Doug nods wordlessly, Dana straightens, grabs her coat and purse from a pile on the floor, then wiggles her fingers at us.

“’Bye, now!” she says, and jiggles away, her backside swaying enticingly.

“You get out, too,” Doug says to Cooper and me. “Get out or I’ll…I’ll call the cops.”

Cooper looks interested in this threat.

“Really?” he says. “Actually, I think there are a few things the cops need to know about you. So why don’t you go right ahead and do that?”

Doug just whimpers some more, clutching his hand. I say to Cooper, “Let’s just go.”

He nods, and we step from the room, closing Doug’s door behind us. Standing once again in the Tau Phi House’s hallway, inhaling the rich odor of marijuana and listening to the sounds of the football game drifting out from the game room, I study the spray paint on the wall, which the maid who’d answered the door is trying to wipe off with paint remover and a rag. She’s barely started on the F in FAT CHICKS. She has a long way to go.

She has a Walkman on, and smiles when she sees us. I smile automatically back.

“I don’t believe a word that kid said,” Cooper says, as he zips up his anorak. “How ’bout you?”

“Nope,” I say. “We should check his alibi.”

The maid, who apparently hadn’t had the volume on her Walkman turned up very high, looks at us and says, “You know those guys are gonna back him up whatever he says. They’re his fraternity brothers. They have to.”

Cooper and I exchange glances.

“She has a point,” I say. “I mean, if he didn’t talk when you had him in that hand lock, or whatever it was…”

Cooper nods. “The Greek Association really is a marvelous institution,” he remarks.

“Yes, it is,” the maid says, just as gravely. Then she bursts out laughing and goes back to scrubbing the F.

“About what happened back there,” Cooper says to me, in a different tone of voice, as we stand waiting for the elevator. “That kid…he just…the way he treated that girl…I just…”

“Now who’s got the Superman complex?” I want to know.

Cooper smiles down at me.

And I realize I love him more than ever. I should probably just tell him that, and get it out in the open so we can stop playing these games (well, okay, maybe he’s not playing games, but Lord knows I am). At least that way I’ll know, once and for all, if I have a chance.

I’m opening my mouth to do just that—tell him how I really feel about him—when I notice he’s opening his mouth, too. My heart begins to thump—what if he’s about to tell me that he loves me? Stranger things have happened.

And he did ask me to move in with him, pretty much out of the blue. And okay, maybe it was because he felt bad about the fact that I’d just walked in on my fiancé, who happens to be his brother, getting a blow job from another woman.

But still. He could have done it because he’s secretly always been in love with me….

His smile has vanished. This is it! He’s going to tell me!

“You’d better call your office and tell them you’re going to be late getting back,” he says.

“Why?” I ask breathlessly, hoping against hope that he’s going to say, Because I plan on taking you back to my place and ravishing you for the rest of the day.

“Because I’m taking you over to the Sixth Precinct, where you’re going to tell Detective Canavan everything you know about this case.” The elevator doors slide open, and Cooper unceremoniously propels me into the car. “And then you’re going to keep out of it, like I told you.”

“Oh,” I say.

Well, okay. It isn’t a declaration of love, exactly. But at least it proves he cares.