Again by Lisa Burstein Page B

line.
    My sad, compartmentalized life was not
funny to him, not something to joke about.
    Tristan had nothing against my
volunteering at the humane society, he even helped out sometimes. He just
didn’t like what he called my using up all my emotions and time on furry
beings instead of human ones.
    “We can’t all have underclassmen
throwing themselves at us,” I said, hitching my bag higher on my shoulder and
trying to walk faster.
    “We can’t?” I heard a smirk in his voice.
He hurried behind me. “I swear you’ve got to pick a better hobby, dude, or at
least one that doesn’t have a dinner bell.”
    “You know they need to get fed at five.”
    “Um, yeah,” he paused, “that’s why I
said that.”
    We’d had this conversation a lot, but it
didn’t stop Tristan from wanting to continue to have it, from me continuing to
defend myself.
    Volunteering at the humane society was
the only thing from my freshman year I’d kept in my life besides Tristan. It
was the one good thing I’d done at this school. There was something about
animals. The way every day was a clean slate—the way they needed you and didn’t
demand anything other than that you cared for them.
    “You could buy them a whole new facility
with your trust fund. Why don’t you do that so we can actually go out for
dinner tonight?” Tristan asked, using his very own puppy dog eyes.
    “I could probably buy them twenty
facilities.” I had a lot of money, an obscene amount. The kind of money that made
people hate you. Made you hate yourself.
    “Exactly,” he said.
    I didn’t bother responding, because
doing this was not about the money. The humane society was the one place in my
life that wasn’t.
    My relationship with my parents had been
all about money, even before Jeanie. If I could go back to when I was a kid on
one of those rare holidays when our staff was with their own families and my
mom was forced to make us grilled cheese she burned and my dad pretended to
like, I would have.
    Things were so much simpler before I
understood they would rather pay to take care of me than actually do it
themselves.
    “You could also buy them twenty
companions,” he said, because we’d had this conversation so many times.
    I nodded, but I needed them, too. They
reminded me I was human—so little did after Jeanie, after everyone saw me as a
monster. The cats and dogs at the humane society only saw me as love, as help,
as someone they could count on.
    “Speaking of what you should be doing,”
he smiled, “how’s Kate?”
    My stomach plunged at hearing her name. “Wow,
there’s no beating around the bush with you,” I said, my cheeks burning in the
cold.
    “I tend to avoid the bush.” He snickered
and made his eyes wide. “Actually, speaking of—”
    “Stop,” I said, holding my hand up, “don’t
even go there.”
    “What?”
    “I’ve barely even talked to her, let
alone gotten close to whatever you were about to say.”
    “You should probably get moving,” he
said. “Isn’t that like step one in male-female mating ritual?”
    “I’m pretty sure that’s step seventeen,”
I said, our dorm finally in sight.
    “Sounds like you’re doing something
wrong.”
    I probably was, but what the hell was I
supposed to do? After rejecting me when I’d asked her to be my study partner, I
kind of got the hint. My freshman year had at least taught me how to take no
for an answer.
    “Hello,” he said, moving his hand in
front of my face when I didn’t retort, “earth to Carter.”
    “She made it pretty clear she wants me
to leave her alone.”
    “How convenient for you,” he smirked.
    “If it matters to you so much, why don’t
you ask her out?”
    “For you?”
    “Who am I, Cyrano de Bergerac?” I asked.
    “Your nose is way sweeter than that,
cutie pie,” he replied, trying to give me a coochie-coo with two fingers.
    I smacked his hand away.
    When I didn’t respond to his joke he
continued. “It’s your last semester. Sue me