Testing Kate by Whitney Gaskell

right, I forgot. What happened with the professor?” I asked.
    “Shhhh,” Lexi said, glancing around to make sure we weren’t overheard. The Rue was empty, except for a couple of college kids sitting at one table and a pair of young mothers camped out with their offspring at another. “No one can know. Jacob could get in trouble for dating a student.”
    “So I take it things went well,” I said.
    Lexi grinned, looking enormously pleased with herself. “Very,
very
well.”
    “Berk is going to be brokenhearted,” I said.
    “What?” Lexi looked puzzled.
    “Berk. You know…Pete Berkus. The guy you were hanging out with at Tipitina’s last night. He was really into you,” I said.
    Lexi shrugged this news off. “Anyway, after Jacob and I left the bar, I went over to his place, and…”
    “You didn’t tell me that!” Jen exclaimed.
    “I was just getting to it when Kate came in,” Lexi said.
    “What happened?” Jen asked breathlessly. She was on the edge of her seat, leaning forward.
    “Nothing. I mean, we kissed a little, but mostly we just talked and listened to some music. But it was still really romantic. Jacob is amazing. Smart, funny, and—unlike every guy I’ve ever dated—he’s a real grown-up.” Lexi sighed happily.
    “You two are so lucky,” Jen bemoaned. “I miss romance.”
    “I don’t know if having an ex-boyfriend camped out on my couch really qualifies as romance,” I said.
    “Oh, yes, it does. Especially the part where he came to find you because he couldn’t bear living without you,” Jen said.
    “That’s not exactly what he said,” I replied.
    “Just showing up is a romantic gesture,” Jen insisted.
    “Sean isn’t romantic?” Lexi asked.
    “Once you get married, you never get to have a first kiss again. Or that nervous butterfly feeling in your stomach when you see someone you have a crush on. And romance…” Jen paused to snort. “Unless you find it romantic to pick your husband’s dirty clothes up off the bedroom floor for the four hundredth time—because, despite the fact that he graduated with honors from medical school, he can’t grasp the concept of a laundry hamper—you’re shit out of luck.”
    “Hey, chickadees. Shit out of luck about what?” Addison asked, slinging his knapsack on the ground and sitting down at the table. He was wearing a faded black Pink Floyd concert T-shirt, gray sweat shorts, and his black-rimmed glasses.
    “Nothing,” Jen said. “Just girl talk.”
    “Do you want to know what I figured out today? Three hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars,” Add said.
    We looked at him.
    “That’s the answer. It’s like
Jeopardy!
You’re now supposed to say, ‘What is
blank,
’” Addison explained.
    “I don’t know…. Is it the salary of a big-firm attorney?” Lexi guessed.
    “Not an associate,” I said. “Not even Manhattan associates make that much.”
    “It’s the amount I’ll end up shelling out in the thirty years it takes me to pay off my law-school loans,” Addison said.
    Jen sucked in her breath.
    “That much?” Lexi asked. She dropped her pen on her notebook and gave a little shiver.
    “If you borrow the maximum for the entire three years that we’re here. And that’s not counting undergraduate loans,” Addison said.
    “Oh, my God,” Lexi said. “That’s what I’ll owe too.”
    “That’s the upside of being married. I only had to take out loans for tuition, not living expenses,” Jen said. “Which is a good thing, since Sean’s med-school loans are huge.”
    The three of them looked at me, and I flushed.
    “My parents…well, they had a life-insurance policy,” I said. “It wasn’t huge, but it’s enough for me to get through school.”
    This was met with silence, which I understood. It wasn’t exactly as though they could respond with
Lucky you.
    “Am I late?” Dana asked, scraping a chair back from the table and sitting down. Her face was flushed, and her hair was pulled back into a