THE WRONG INVITATION
The days had been growing rapidly shorter. Now when I left the library after a postdinner study session, the torch lights along the pathways were already aglow to light my way back to Billings. With the dark came the intensified cold. After days of resisting and coming home with my teeth chattering, I had finally caved and broken out my crappy gray wool coat with the embarrassingly short sleeves and the unidentifiable stain along the hem. Already I'd caught a few disgusted stares from the female population. I was overdue for a phone call to Dad anyway. Looked as if the next one would include me begging him to put in an order with Lands End.
Yes, Lands End. While my classmates walked around in their Prada and Coach and Miu Miu, Lands End was the best I could hope for.
I ignored a pair of girls coming in the opposite direction who stared into my semifamous face, then started twittering and talking the moment I was past them. I barely even noticed this stuff anymore. If I ever did hit it big, this semester was going to be perfect prep for handling celebrity.
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I turned up the path to Billings, already mentally pep-?talking myself for whatever chore list my “sisters” had devised for me, when I saw a dark figure lurking in front of the door. For the splittest of seconds I thought of Thomas and my heart caught. But then I realized that a figure of that size could belong to only one person.
“Reed,” he said, stepping out of the shadows.
“Whit,” I replied, mimicking his serious tone.
“How was the library?” he asked with a small, knowing smile.
I decided not to ask how he knew I'd been at the library. I'd save him the pleasure of sharing, and me the pain of hearing, how he predicted my every move.
“Fine. What's up?” I asked.
“Well, I have a question to ask you,” he said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. “An invitation to offer, actually.”
The Legacy. My conscience and my desire had been at war ever since dinner the night before and neither one had yet waved the white flag. I was not prepared for this. What was I going to say? What was I going to do? Somewhere in one of the rooms above, someone was practicing the violin. Something fast and manic. It didn't help with the thinking.
“I was wondering if you would do me the honor of being my dinner guest on Friday night,” he said.
Wait. His what? Where was my plus-?one invite? And, hold on, he'd already asked Constance to sit with him at dinner. What was he doing, throwing out these invites like they were bath water?
“Whit, we already sit together at dinner every night,” I pointed
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out. A stiff breeze blew past us, filling my nostrils to bursting with the pungency of his evergreen-?scented aftershave. I held my breath and tried not to cough.
Whittaker chuckled. “No, no, no. Not here. Off campus,” he said. “You see, Friday is my eighteenth birthday. I've been granted permission to dine off campus, and I'd like you to be my guest.”
There were so many things wrong with this proposal that I didn't know where to begin.
“How did you get permission?” I said finally.
“My grandmother. She's on the board of directors and she's not above occasionally pulling the odd string,” he said with pride. “She's granted you a pass as well. We don't need to bring a chaperone.”
The word chaperone made me shudder.
“But, Whit, what about everyone else?” I said. “I mean, it's your eighteenth birthday. You don't want to spend it with just me.”
His expression told me that this was exactly what he wanted. This was very not good. Clearly Whittaker was even more serious about me than I had estimated. He could be here, on campus, ringing in his eighteenth year with a drunken party in the woods with Dash and Gage and the others, but instead he wanted to whisk me to some off-?campus restaurant.
“Say yes, Reed. We'll get dressed up; we'll go for a drive. I know this incredible little Italian place in Boston--”
“Boston?” I croaked. I had never been to Boston. I had never
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been to any city other than Philadelphia, and that was just for one day on my eighth-?grade field trip.
“Of course. You didn't expect me to celebrate my eighteenth at one of the three decent restaurants here in Easton,” he said with an incredulous exhale. He reached out and caught my hand in both of his, looking me deep in the eye. “Say you'll come.”