Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

Emily didn’t know what to say.

“It won’t be so bad, right?” He stood up and looked at her. “We’ve always gotten along.”

Emily couldn’t read his expression. Was he joking? Was he making an admission?

Blake read her mind. “It wasn’t me, Emmie. Not if it happened at The Party. Or any time else. I think I’d remember where my dick has been. I’m really quite attached to it.”

She watched a bird land in one of the trees across the driveway. This was what she had lost with her chastity. Before, no one directed rough language at her. Now, everyone seemed to.

“Anyway, I was completely wasted at The Party,” Blake said. “I zonked out in the upstairs bathroom. Nardo had to break the lock to get to me. I’d pissed myself like a baby. Can’t for the life of me remember why. The john was right there.”

Emily pursed her lips. She thought about her Columbo Investigation. Mr. Wexler had said that Blake and Nardo were still inside the house when he’d arrived. Blake was saying the same thing. If their stories matched, then they were likely telling the truth.

Which meant that Clay was the only boy left alone with Emily.

“Come on.” Blake dropped his cigarette into a coffee can. He nodded toward the garage. Emily felt powerless to do anything but follow him inside. Rock posters hung on the unfinished walls. There was a ping-pong table and an old couch and a giant hi-fi system that had belonged to Blake and Ricky’s parents. The clique had spent countless hours in the garage smoking and drinking and listening to music and talking about how they were going to change the world.

Now, Emily was going to be trapped in Longbill Beach forever. Thanks to Al, Blake and Ricky weren’t even going to college. Nardo wouldn’t last a year at Penn. Only Clay would get away from this claustrophobic town. Which seemed as predestined as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

She told Blake, “I can’t marry you. We’re not in love. And if you’re not the—”

“I’m not.” He sat down on the couch. “You know I’ve never thought about you that way.”

Emily knew the opposite to be true. He had kissed her two years ago in the alley downtown. She still caught him looking at her sometimes in a way that made her uncomfortable.

“Sit down, okay?” Blake waited for her to perch beside him on the couch. “Think about it, Em. It’s a solution for both of us.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t think about it.

“You get respectability, and …” He held out his arms in an open shrug. “I assume your parents will want their son-in-law to go to college.”

Emily felt the hairs on the back of her neck go up. Nardo’s father was the banker, but Blake had always been the one who was the most transactional. He kept a running score in his head. I’ll do this for you, but you’re going to do something for me in return.

She asked, “What about me? Do I just stay home and bake cookies?”

“It’s not a bad life.”

Emily laughed. It wasn’t the life she had planned. She was going to live at Foggy Bottom. She was going to intern for a senator. She was going to become a lawyer. If she made cookies for her husband and child, the baking would take place between arguing in a courtroom and preparing a motion for the next day.

“Be reasonable,” Blake said. “I mean, you can go to college. Of course you can go to college. But you can’t really have a career. Not with the kind of future your folks will expect me to have.”

Emily was struck by his cold calculations. “What kind of future is that?”

“Politics, of course.” He shrugged. “Your mom’s going to be tapped for something in the administration. Why not ride her coattails into a better life for both of us?”

Emily looked down at the ground. He had clearly thought about this before. Her pregnancy was nothing but an opportunity. “You’re forgetting my parents are Republicans.”

“Does it matter?” He shrugged again when she looked at him. “Political ideology is nothing more than a fulcrum to pry open the levers of power.”

Emily had to sit back on the couch. She couldn’t take this in. “So I’m one of those fulcrums you’re manipulating?”

“Don’t be melodramatic.”

“Blake, you’re literally talking about marrying me, being a father to my child, as a way to launch your political future.”

“You’re missing the upside,” Blake said. “We’re both in a bad way. We both want better lives for ourselves. And I don’t find you entirely repulsive.”

“That’s romantic.”