Tiffany nudged me at the table we’d secured off to the side. “What’s up?” She was on drink number three, four if you counted the shot she took, and watched me carefully with the tiny straw in her mouth. She barely looked buzzed but the glaze in her eyes told me she was going to feel it soon enough.
Ren had disappeared shortly after we’d arrived, talking up some redhead who looked oddly like Rupert Grint, which made sense considering Lawrence watched the Harry Potter movies at least four times a year. Tiffany had rolled her eyes, ordered us drinks, and watched him work over the guy who had to be our age if not a little older.
“Nothing.” I faked a smile. I wanted to ask her the same thing after seeing the frown she was fighting all night. “I guess Ren and Ben stopped seeing each other for good.”
All I got was a shrug.
As if he knew we were talking about him, he squeezed the Rupert lookalike’s arm and walked over to us with a grin. “Ladies. Miss me?” He directed the last question to Tiffany, bumping her with his shoulder. When she recoiled, his grin disappeared.
“I was asking Della what was wrong,” she told him, finishing off her drink before putting the glass down a little too hard on the table. One of my brows raised.
Ren turned to me slowly. “What’s up?”
I couldn’t explain the bottomless pit in my stomach where a mixture of flutters and firecrackers went off. I wanted Theo here, taking me away, telling me we were going to spend time together tonight. But he knew where I was. He’d encouraged the night out, saying, “I’ll be here when you get back, baby girl.” That term melted me in a puddle at his feet and he knew it.
“Like I told her. Nothing.” Eyeing Tiffany, I noticed she was doing her best to avoid looking in Ren’s direction.
“You’re mopey,” she accused.
Ren laughed. “She’s probably moping still about the grade she got in Ribbons’ class. Her final dropped it.”
I frowned at the reminder. “I didn’t deserve a C on that paper. It was well mapped out and researched. I spent way too long making sure she’d have no reason to critique it.”
Tiffany snorted. “You’re upset about school? It’s over. Isn’t that why we’re celebrating tonight? You shouldn’t even be thinking about anything other than alcohol, which begs the question of how many drinks have you had because it’s clearly not enough.”
I rolled my eyes and sipped at the one I’d been nursing for half an hour. It was warm and too sweet, but I didn’t want to give them an excuse to order another. “Ribbons hates me, so I wanted to prove to her that I could talk about topics related to my father and do it in a professional, well thought out manner. And she still nearly flunked me on it.”
The paper had been on political scandals in New York City. I’d even referenced Malik’s case that she was so willing to bring up during our one strange conversation, which was where I discovered that her late husband had been put out of work after he was accused of stealing the money George Malik was responsible for taking. Apparently, their life had been swept up in the scandals she’d long since studied, making her hate the situation more. I wasn’t sure how her husband had died, but a few articles I came across had mentioned suicide, and in that moment I’d felt sorry for Professor Ribbons. Nobody deserved to lose people they loved and cared about. I knew that all too well.
The more I’d researched George Malik and other cases similar to his, I’d cringed at the implications found in the thousands of reports online and pushed past the suggestions reporters and police had made that everything he stood for was no different than my father when his time in court had surfaced. And as if all that work I’d done to collect information about Malik hadn’t been cringeworthy enough, I’d even included pieces from my father’s case because of the current nature of it. Just to prove to Ribbons I wasn’t shying away from right and wrong because I was a Saint James.
All I could picture during it was my father being carted away too many times. I watched him get guided out of our old house, court rooms, visitation rooms, and eventually, the funeral home. How many times did I need to relive that torture, that emotional discord, just to get other people to see that I was a victim too?
When I saw that C in the corner of the paper in bold red ink and a circle around it, I felt defeated. Shattered. Maybe I should have talked to her, tried arguing for a better grade or asking why she’d given me that one at the very least because it wasn’t like I took an approach that was questioning her belief system. If anything, I was agreeing with her about how screwed up our justice system worked. I couldn’t though. I was tired of chasing after people for answers.
Logically, I knew the paper was thought out and researched and edited so many times the facts were drilled into my brain. Ribbons didn’t like me, and whatever potential she said I had was gone. Maybe it was non-existent to begin with. And when Theo had woken up in the middle of the night to find me working on the paper in the living room, he’d told me something that I’d only agreed with after getting the paper back. “Why bother obsessing over impressing her, Della? You should never waste your time on people who are set on misunderstanding you.”
He’d been right. Again. I didn’t tell him that though and told him to go back to bed instead. Theo, of course, didn’t listen. He sat on the opposite end of the couch with his feet propped on the coffee table, the TV on the lowest volume, and Ramsay curled on his chest. He’d fallen asleep keeping me company while I finished proofreading the paper.
It was Ren who pointed out, “You still got a B- in that class. I know people on the team who took it and walked out with Cs and Ds despite studying their asses off. Tommy, you remember him right? He was the guy who…” He winced. Tommy had been the guy at the frat house who’d noticed I was acting off. After being drugged, presumably. “Anyway, he’s a political science major and said all her classes were tough.”
“Doesn’t Ribbons hate everyone?” That came from Tiffany, who wasn’t completely wrong. It seemed like she disliked me more thanks to my bloodline.
“Yeah, well…” I shook it off, brushing a hand down my face and curling hair behind my ear. “It doesn’t matter. I care about my grades and doing well.” And making everybody like you even though it’s humanly impossible.
“You’re such a nerd,” Ren chuckled when he saw my disgruntled expression. He downed his last drink and looked around as a few women eyed him from the table over.
Tiffany noticed too, making a face at him like she couldn’t believe he was even giving them his bedroom eyes. “What’s going on with you and what’s his face? You guys aren’t tickling each other’s fancies anymore?”
I smiled at her pretending she didn’t know Ben’s name but hid it behind my glass when she eyed me with a narrowed gaze in warning.
Ren flashed her a sultry smile. “It wasn’t our fancies we were tickling on each other, baby. Why, are you jealous?”
The gagging came instantly from both me and Tiffany, but mostly from her. I wasn’t sure what to think about them. They’d become fast friends but flirted more times than I think they realized. It was cute…and maybe a little weird. Only because Tiffany was insistent that she and Ren were nothing more than friends and never would be. And Ren…well, he hadn’t offered me his opinion on what he thought about Tiffany, which left a lot to interpretation.