“What up, Kap?” Preston walks over and shakes my hand. “How you been?”
“I’m good, man. Been good. Student teaching. Got a marathon in a few weeks. You?”
“Great. Had to come home this weekend to sit in on some meetings with my dad.” He’s got the same cocky grin I remember. “You know, preparation and all.” I watch as he smooths down the lapel of his suit jacket, and I’m pretty sure he did it just to flash the shiny ass Rollie on his wrist.
“Cool. You headin’ back today?”
“I fly out this afternoon. I wish I’d known you were in town, man. We could have gotten drinks.”
“Yeah, definitely. Or next time you could come back to my campus. I know it’s not Ivy League,” I mock jokingly, “but we had fun when you visited freshman year. You’d like my roommate. We could get some guys together for a pickup soccer game.”
“That would be great. You just home for the weekend?”
“Yeah, we’re heading back tonight. I teach in the morning.”
Preston cocks his head to the side. “We? Who’s we?”
“Oh, yeah, Ivy. I’m here with Ivy.”
Preston lifts an eyebrow at the mention of Ivy. Last he knew, she and I weren’t on speaking terms.
“So, she’s visiting from her aunt’s?” he says slowly.
“Her aunt’s?” What the fuck? “No, she transferred to BU sophomore year. She goes to school with me.”
“Ah,” he nods his head slowly, “so that’s why you dropped off the face of the Earth.”
“No, man,” I huff. “I dropped off the face of the Earth because I needed to pull my head out of my ass and focus on school and because you go to fucking Stanford 2,500 miles away.”
I think Preston’s always resented my relationship with Ivy a little. He thinks Ivy is why he and I stopped hanging out in high school, and I’m sure now he thinks she’s why we lost touch in college. In reality, we aren’t close anymore because he can be kind of a stuck-up douche sometimes and our priorities are vastly different.
“What do you mean her aunt’s? Ivy doesn’t have an aunt.” I change the topic.
“Yeah, Kap. She does.” He scrunches his eyebrows at me as if I’m the one who is mistaken. “You know how she left right after graduation? She was down in Bowen with her aunt, going to the community college there. Deferred her BU acceptance and scholarshi
p and everything.”
I stare at him blankly.
I don’t know where Ivy was freshman year. I don’t know why she came back. We never talk about it. The first time I tried, she clammed up, and I was just so relieved to have her back that I never asked her again..
“You didn’t know that?” he asks incredulously. “I thought everyone knew that.”
I shake my head slowly. “Nope, not everyone.” How the fuck does he know? His parents are pretty involved in the community, but why the fuck wouldn’t he have told me?
“Shit, Kap. Sorry.” He shrugs, obviously not sorry. “Maybe you need to have a talk with your girlfriend, then. See what she’s hiding.”
And this is why I stopped hanging out with Preston in high school. He’s a dick.
“She’s not hiding shit from me, Preston.” I start to pop my earbuds back in. “And we’re just friends.”
“Fuck, still?” His laugh grates in my eardrums. “I thought by now you’d have gotten your di—”
“—Don’t finish that sentence, Preston,” I warn. He throws his palms up and flashes a smarmy grin.
“Just joshin’, Kap.” His jokes stopped being funny a long time ago. “I gotta get to the airport, though, so I’ll be seeing ya. I’ll call and we can plan my visit to campus.”
“Yeah, sure.” Hell no. “It’s been a pleasure.” You’re an asshole. “Have a safe trip back.” I hope your pretentious ass BMW gets rear ended and you spill coffee on your $1,000 suit pants and get first degree burns on your dick.