I take a quick sip of my fourth beer.
“Dinosaurs must be pissed,” I muse.
Harper reaches out and puts a hand on my arm.
“They’re dead,” she says gently. “Hence the reconstructions.”
“Which are wrong, because fuck feathers on dinosaurs,” Margaret chimes in.
“I think they’re spectacular,” says Victoria. “And fun.”
“Dinosaurs are not fun,” insists Margaret. “They’re impressive. And awe-inspiring. And scary. And not feathered.”
“You forgot fabulous,” teases Victoria.
“And funky,” I add.
“And…” Harper says, then blinks. Then narrows her eyes. “…flippant. Nope. Sorry, guys, my brain’s out of words, I’m just gonna sit over here for a few minutes and be quiet. Few? Is that anything? No.”
“She turned in her Taciturn paper ten minutes before we came over,” Victoria says.
“It was Tacitus, and I hate him,” Harper says through her hands. “I hope he’s in hell.”
“He probably is,” I say comfortingly.
“Thank you.”
“Speaking of things we were doing ten minutes before we got here, Thalia, what the fuck,” says Margaret, who’s the furthest through her fourth beer.
The table suddenly gets very quiet.
“What?” I ask, a bad feeling already worming its way through my stomach.
“You were not in the library. I went there to see if you wanted to walk over together,” she says.
“I ran some errands after I finished my last paper,” I say, drunk and defensive. Then I point at her. “And I don’t have to tell you were I was. Fuck off. I wasn’t running errands, I was in a secret location that I’m not telling you!”
“Not a secret,” Harper says, looking down at the table.
“One last time to say thanks for the A?” Margaret asks.
Victoria puts one hand over her eyes.
“What the fuck?” I ask.
“We know Josh the frat boy is really Caleb the professor because we’re not morons,” she says, taking another drink of her beer and rolling her eyes.
“And you think I got an A because we’re dating,” I say. Anger flares in my chest, but I force myself to hold it back.
“Oh, come on, I was kidding,” she says, smirking at me.
She wasn’t kidding. We’ve been best friends for nearly four years, I know when she’s kidding.
“What a funny joke,” I say. “Thalia’s not smart enough to get an A so she has to date the professor! Ha ha!”
“Sure, dating,” she says. “That’s what you’re doing.”
“Margaret, shut up,” Harper says softly.
“Sorry, are you the only one who gets to call it that?” I ask. “When the rest of us go sleep with someone we’re supposed to say ‘hey I’m gonna go bang this dude’ but you, Margaret, get to call it dating?”
“You don’t get to call it dating when it’s your professor,” Margaret says, and drains her drink. “Calling it dating implies there’s some level of —"
“Enough,” declares Victoria, putting her half-full drink down loudly in the center of the table. “You two can talk about this when we’re not all shit-faced because we’re damn well not doing it now. Margaret, don’t be a bitch. Thalia, stop lying to us about Josh the frat boy, we’ve all seen Caleb drop you off at one in the morning at our apartment and walk you to the front door. Maggie’s at least right that we’re not morons.”
I drink.
“Don’t call me —”
“Quiet, Maggie, or we’ll do it for real,” Harper says. “Thalia, I think it’s weird that a professor is into a student but honestly he seems very sweet and you seem happy to be getting nailed by this dude, so power to you.”
“This dude who you think gave me an A because I’m letting him nail me?” I hiss, leaning forward over the table.
“No one thinks that,” Victoria says quickly, shooting a glare at Margaret. Margaret won’t look at me. “You’re obviously capable of getting your own A.”
“And your own D!” Harper says, brightly.
No one laughs.
“Sorry,” she says.
I close my eyes and lean my back against the booth behind me, but that just makes everything spin unpleasantly, so I hold my head upright, keep my eyes closed.
“Fine,” I say, without opening them. “Fine. Yes, there is no Josh the frat boy and yes okay fine it’s actually Caleb but it’s not in exchange for grades, it just sort of happened, and yes I know it’s bad, but…”
I don’t know but what. All I know is that I shouldn’t have had this fourth beer, end of the semester or not. I know that admitting that we’re together even to my closest friends feels like I’m betraying Caleb, but lying to them about it felt like I was betraying them.
“…but I like him?” I finally say. “I don’t know, you guys, I just like him. That’s all. I like a guy and he sort of happened to also be my calculus professor, and now he’s not any more and if you could please just keep this quiet until June, that would be really cool, okay?”