Wise Men

Chapter 6

It was happy hour somewhere. That logic kept a bottle fixed on my lips and beer down my gullet. Revelin puffed idly on a joint, thoughts swimming in his eyes with each breath of foul smelling smoke. I had one an hour early and it was the only thing that gave me the courage to ask one of the frat houses for a couple of beers. Now I owed them a purposely vague favor in the near to far future, but I could most like outrun them all if it came down to that.

I lay back in my bunk, my ankles resting on the wooden spines at the end and crossed above my feet. A dopey grin on my face, I pictured Vi and Cecilia, carelessly comparing the two woman. Or maybe in my less than somber state I wanted to picture at least one of them without their clothes on without the usual shame and guilt—or the reminder that I was a high school dropout when it came to the scholarly pursuit of dating.

They seemed as different as night and day—Vi was outgoing where Cecilia was timid. Vi was gaining an immunity to Revelin’s act as I had already mustered, where Cecilia fell into the pit with only a last name to grasp. I wanted to figure out which was prettier, but my bias made me sway from Vi. She’d never be pretty, sexy, or beautiful in my eyes. I could look at the two quantitatively—maybe by cup size where Vi clearly trumped Cecilia, but I couldn’t ignore their hips either, a trait that Vi never won in. I decided not to pass up the opportunity for casual chat with Revelin on the topic.

“Who’s hotter, Revelin, Vi or Cecilia?”

Lost in thought, he put no attention to his answer. “Vi, of course,” he murmured before inhaling more weed.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh really.” I swallowed more beer. I didn’t even taste it anymore.

Revelin blinked several times and looked at me. “What? Oh, sorry, I wasn’t listening. I meant to say Cecilia. Why’d you ask such a question anyway?” His confusion didn’t let up as he returned to his thoughts. His eyes looked without seeing but if they did see a thing it’d only be the sickly white of the dorm’s door. I retained a laugh as I finished the last of my beer.

“Any plans for today?” I asked him. We’d already tackled the nonprofit’s finacials—google is a wonderful invention—and we needed some way to get Johnson and Son’s records. It’d probably entail acts that could send me to jail for five years without parole.

Revelin pursed his lips when his phone rang obnoxiously with the Harlem Shake. Putting out his joint and tossing it away, he cast me a fierce glare as I doubled over laughing—knocking several a bottle off of the bed.

“This might be easier than we thought,” Revelin gave me his best demonic smile. “I just got an email with an invitation to Marcus and Cecilia’s engagement party.”

“How’d you get an invite?”

“Cecilia must have mentioned me to her father. My family’s name gets around these circles.”

Huh, the governor’s daughter was less of an uptown girl than I thought she was. I noticed that Revelin had lost his smile as quickly as he had obtained it. “What?” I asked, my speech only slightly slurred. I had perfected at eighteen how to appear sober, but I always forgot how when I got drunk. I had to leave my appearance up to practice and dumb luck.

“Fuck.” He slammed his phone on the table and covered his face with his hands. “My parents are flying in to come to such a prestigious event.”

I scrunched up my nose. “They can’t be as bad as you say.” I had only caught fleeting parts of their conversations. For the most parts, they seemed like any other parents, just colder.

“It gets worse. My mother wants to know if I have a date.” He leaned on the table with a groan. “Does Vi own anything nice?”

“She wore her only formal dress to Il Castello,” I informed him.