Why didn’t anyone tell me I was dressed inappropriately?
Meanwhile, Sterling’s father lifts the martini glass to his lips and takes a sip. There’s something about the way that his lips curl around the rim of the glass that would make him the perfect guy to cast as a villain in one of those cheesy vampire movies.
I can already see the charm that Sterling must have been trying to warn me about—this guy is rude.
It’s all I can do not to turn tail and run.
But I need this. I need to at least try.
So, against every instinct screaming inside for me to do the opposite, I square my shoulders, lift my chin, and steel myself for whatever this man decides to throw my way.
Chapter Twenty-One
I can already see that this whole exchange is going to take much more finesse than I expected—though in all honesty, it shouldn’t come as such a surprise.
I guess I thought that maybe this guy was just an ass to Sterling, the way that some parents can be super awful to their own kids but then look picture-perfect to the rest of the world. I hate those kind of people—hypocrites. But this guy seems to be a real jerk all around. That doesn’t bode well for me if this is the guy that I need to impress.
I suddenly wish I’d picked someone else—anyone else—to single out.
But it’s too late now.
“My apologies,” I say with the most cordial voice I can manage, even though what I really want to do is spit on his fancy shoes. “I must have interpreted the term gala more loosely than it was intended.”
He suddenly explodes with laughter to the point that his drink sloshes around in the martini glass that he is still gripping in his hand, and I wonder how many cocktails he’s already had. I’m guessing it’s been a few, quite a few.
It’s one of those “call the kettle black” situations, since he obviously missed the memo on the fact that the review board members are supposed to at least stay sober enough for the invited students to talk to.
“I’m sorry,” he says, still laughing. “But the fact that you find it to be an anomaly that you’ve interpreted something loosely is severely amusing to me.”
What the hell is this guy’s problem?
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I say hesitantly. I’m already getting a really bad feeling about this whole interaction. I wish that Sterling was here and that he hadn’t wandered off to go and hide somewhere.
He’d know how to handle this.
He’s probably the only one who’d know how to handle this.
“Oh, come now,” he smirks. “Surely you can’t expect me not to know who you are, Aubrey. Your reputation precedes you, and not in a good way if I might add.”
Here it comes. All of the other men in the group are now staring at me and listening in on our conversation. Why aren’t there any women on the review board? That doesn’t seem fair at all. There should be an equal number of women on all boards that make decisions about the colleges … right?
“You are about as loose as they come, from what I hear. Not only did you have problems at your last school, but now you have the very same kind of problems here with a member of the staff, too? A counselor I think it was? Granted, Mr. Peters is a good-looking man, but he is much too old for you.”
He stops speaking for a second, takes another sip from his glass, and then continues in a way that leaves my mouth hanging wide open. “Even if his head was turned by a tight little body like yours, I can assure you that it wouldn’t have helped you in the least to have spread your legs for him. The review board doesn’t look kindly upon that sort of thing. And before you have any ideas of trying to ask me to lift your hold, you should know—there’s no place for girls that try to sleep their way to the top at Brown.”
I feel as if I’ve been slapped. Right here, right in the middle of the swirling dresses and tuxedos of the gala.
It’s like I’m in a dream turned nightmare, stuck in some sort of surreal moment in which nothing is as it should be. I want to say something to correct the mistruths that have been spread about me, but I hesitate.
I leaned into them this semester, so my word probably doesn’t mean squat to him. I look around at the other men. Some of them are now looking at me with condescending looks of disdain, and the ones who aren’t, are looking at me as if I am a fresh piece of raw meat that they want to take a bite out of.
What a bunch of predatory assholes.
A bunch of predatory assholes who could, I realize with a reeling sensation, not only deny me an early exit from Ridgecrest—but keep me from returning to Brown like I was supposed to next fall.
It’s for that reason, and that reason only, that I swallow the last pieces of my pride and force my voice not to completely crack in front of them.
“I can assure you that whatever rumors you have heard about me, they’re wrong.”
“Oh?” he says mockingly. “Then what exactly is the truth, Aubrey? You say that you’re friends with my son, correct?”
I nod my head without saying anything. I really should have listened to Sterling when he warned me against mentioning him.
“Platonic friends?” he pries further.
I’m not sure what to say to that. If I lie and tell him that Sterling and I are nothing more than the equivalence of platonic classmates, and
