Which is absurd, because it wasn’t like we were doing anything to feel guilty about. Well, I was about to confess my undying love for him.
But he doesn’t know that.
“I came as soon as I heard,” Tad says to me. “About your boss, I mean.” He glances over at the news vans. “Looks like they’re out in full force, huh? The vultures.” He heaves a shudder, then hands me one of the paper bags. “Here. I picked up some lunch for us.”
I take the bag he’s offering, touched by the gesture. I guess. “Oh, you did? Tad, that’s so sweet… ”
“Yeah, I stopped by the student center and picked up two three-bean salads,” Tad says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “And a couple of protein shakes. I figured you might need something high in nutrients after the shock you had—and we had that awful breakfast… ”
“Uh.” Three-bean salad? Is he kidding? Do I look like a girl who could use a three-bean salad right about now? Three-bean bowl of chili with about a pound of melted cheddar cheese on top would be more like it.
And our breakfast hadn’t been awful at all. Unless he means awfully delicious.
Still, trying to be gracious, I say, “Thank you so much, Tad.”
“Sorry I didn’t get you anything, Cooper,” Tad says, with a rueful smile. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“Oh,” Cooper says affably. “That’s okay. I filled up on three-bean salad earlier.”
Tad grins, knowing Cooper is joking, then adds, “Oh, and hey… congratulations. On being an uncle. Well, future uncle.”
Cooper looks confused. “Excuse me?”
I can tell Jordan may have let his fans know about his soon-to-be-expanded family, but he hasn’t bothered calling his own brother. Nice. Also, typical of Jordan.
“Jordan and Tania are expecting,” I explain to Cooper.
Cooper looks horrified—the appropriate reaction, under the circumstances.
“You’re kidding me,” he says. He doesn’t add,What happened? Did the condom break, or something? because he’s too classy. You can tell he’s totally thinking it, though. Because anyone who knows them would think that.
“Yeah,” I say. “Apparently their publicist posted it on their websites this morning.”
“Well,” Cooper says. “That’s great. Good for them. I’ll have to go buy them a… rattle. Or something.”
“Yeah,” I say. Then, seeing that Tad is standing there clutching his bag of three-bean salad and protein shake and looking at me with his eyebrows raised expectantly, I say, “Well. We better go eat, I guess. Before someone else gets shot.”
No one laughs at my little joke. Which I guess wasn’t really all that funny after all. But, you know. Like Sarah says: Often we resort to gallows humor in an effort to break the connection between a horrifying stimulus and an unwanted emotional response.
“Yeah,” I say, taking Tad’s arm. “Okay. So, let’s go eat. See you, Coop.”
And I steer my boyfriend inside.
7
My doctor says there’s no shot
There’s no pill
Your love’s gotta run its course
Gonna make me ill
“Lovesick”
Written by Heather Wells
Tad is concerned about me. That’s what he keeps saying. That he’s concerned.
“It’s just,” he says, “that it could have been you.”
I put down my fork. We’re sitting in the Fischer Hall cafeteria, in a dark, out-of-the-way corner where, if Tad wanted to, he could ask the question he’d shied away from asking this morning, because the time wasn’t right.
Although truthfully, if the time wasn’t right when we were both naked in the shower, the time probably isn’t right when we’re eating three-bean salad a few hours after my finding my boss with a bullet through his head.
“No,” I say. “It couldn’t have been me, Tad. First of all, there isn’t even a window in my office. Remember? That’s what the grate’s for. To let in a little natural light. And second of all, whoever shot Owen obviously had something against him. No one has anything against me. I’m not that kind of person.”
“Oh? And Dr. Veatch was?” Tad laughs, but not like he actually thinks what I said was very funny. Especially the part about the grate. I get that a lot (people not actually thinking I’m as funny as I think I am). “A balding, divorced, middle-aged college administrator?”
“Who knows?” I shrug. “I mean, it’s not like I ever saw him outside of work. Maybe he was selling babies on the black market, or something.”
“Heather!”
“Well, you know what I mean.” I pick through my bean salad with my fork, hoping that through some miracle I’ll come across some stray piece of ham or macaroni something. No such luck, however. Where’s a damned rigatoni when you need it?
“All I’m saying is that there’s a killer on the loose, Heather,” Tad says urgently. “He went for your boss, a man who as far as we know is about as threatening as—as this three-bean salad. That’s all I’m saying. And I’m… well, I’m really glad it wasn’t you.”
I look up from my plastic container with a laugh, thinking Tad’s kidding… I mean, of course he’s glad I wasn’t the one who got shot in the gourd, right? There’s no need actually to say this out loud, is there?
But apparently, to Tad, there is. Because he’s also reaching across the table to take my hand. Now he’s looking tenderly into my eyes.
Oh God. He’s serious. What do I say? What can I say?
“Um. Thanks. I’m… uh. I’m glad it wasn’t me, too.”
We’re sitting there like that, holding hands across our three-bean salads, when Sarah strides up, a mulish expression on her face.
“Hello,” she says, but not in a salutary greeting sort of way. More in a where-have-you-been? sort of way. “There you are. Everyone is looking for you. There’s an emergency administrative housing staff meeting in the second floor library upstairs. Like,now. The only person who’s not there is you.”
I jump up, sliding a napkin over my mouth. “Oh my God, really? I had no idea. Sorry, Tad, I better go—”
Tad looks perturbed. “But you haven’t even finished your protein shake—”