Diana Peterfreund - Under the Rose

So I took over, happy to oblige any and all of this man’s fantasies. Because it was no longer a secret he’d satisfied all of mine.

I hereby confess:

What happens in the tomb

stays in the tomb.

Over the years, I’d heard many rumors about the wonders to be found in George Harrison Prescott’s bedroom, including, but not limited to: black satin sheets on the bed, mirrors on the ceiling, and a jukebox that only played Barry White.

Negative on all three. Well, there was a little mini-jukebox (which I later learned was a present from his father on the occasion of his father’s wedding), but it held a variety of songs by a variety of artists, and as far as I knew, “Fight for Your Right to Party” didn’t count as a make-out song. The sheets were standard university-issue blue, there was a normal mirror hanging on the inside of the closet, and I was spooning with George on the narrow single bed. His arm was draped loosely over my waist and the stubble on his chin was scratching my shoulder blade.

THOUGHTS I HAD THAT MORNING

1) Wow, did I really do all the things I did last night?

2) My thighs feel a little stiff.

3) This is nice. I could hang out here and cuddle with George all day.

4) Except I have that seminar at 10:15.

5) And I have to pee.

One moment more of relaxing in George’s arms, feeling our entire bodies pressed up against each other, back to chest, thigh to thigh. One moment more of hearing his breath in my ear and relishing his warm hand on my belly. And then I stretched a little and slipped out of bed.

I was buttoning my jeans when he blinked awake. “Morning.”

“Hi.” Dude, was that shyness? Wherefore had I suddenly become shy in front of George Harrison Prescott?

“Are you leaving?”

I giggled. Strike two. “Yeah, I’ve got work to do.”

He rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head. “But I’ll see you tonight?”

My heart rate skyrocketed.

“At the meeting.”

Of course. The Thursday meeting. “George, I always go. Besides, it’s lobster night at the tomb.”

“Good point.” He smiled, but didn’t move from his prone position. “See you later, Boo.”

And that was it. I left his room, got out of the suite without any of his suitemates noticing me (no grist for the Prescott College gossip mill, thank you very much), and made it back to my suite. Lydia’s door was closed; I was safe. It was over.

But it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

The next few weeks passed in a flurry of sexual activity. Ostensibly, I was still taking classes, writing papers, doing problem sets, and working on getting together a thesis topic. But I can barely remember classroom discussions and I’ll be the first to admit my papers weren’t exhibiting their usual level of literary passion.

Josh had stepped up his efforts to discover who was responsible for the leak to the website, and though we each devoted plenty of time to trying to find this guy (or girl, as Nikolos insisted on reminding us at every opportunity), the identity of our leak persisted in eluding us as efficiently as Jenny eluded every Diggirl who tried to corner her into a private conversation. (And, to be honest, shitty as it sounds, the more often she avoided us, the less we all felt inclined to speak with her about it. We already knew how she’d respond.)

We’d decided, en masse, that a formal confrontation, which was the standard club M.O., would be too much for our shy brother to handle, so the best thing to do would be to go to her one by one and express our concern that perhaps her boyfriend failed to treat her with the proper respect. A girlfriend intervention. But she proved a slippery little sucker. It was nearly impossible to contact her outside the tomb, and we never caught her alone inside, or without the trappings of one of Josh’s top-priority electronic missions to track down the traitor.

We weren’t getting very far on that front. Once, when Lydia was out of the room, I asked Josh if he thought it had anything to do with the strange Phimalarlico e-mails all the Diggirls had received at the begining of the year. After all, the patriarchs had also received mysterious e-mails on the private account. And the weird poem had included the lines “Cut through the web in which you’re caught/Learn of the thief who can be bought.” Could that not be a reference to our current scandal? After all, we were dealing with stolen information sold to a website.

“Or maybe it was an even more pointed reference,” I went on. “Remember what Jenny said to Graverob—er, Nikolos the day we found out about secretsofthediggers.com? We still have no idea who sent those e-mails, or what they mean, but what if they were a clue? It’s the first time this has occurred to me. What if the ‘thief’ is a play on his name?”

Josh laughed, thankfully ignoring my slip of the tongue. “That’s a bit obscure, Amy. You’ve been reading too much Dan Brown. But I like your first idea. I’ll ask Jenny to do a little digging into the source of those e-mails.”

“You don’t think it could be Nikolos?”

“He might be the most inappropriately named member of our group,” Josh replied. “One guy who never needs to be a thief. And even if money isn’t the motivation, Nikolos is probably the last guy who’d be interested in further angering the patriarchs. He wants them back on our side, remember?”

I nodded. “So then, who doesn’t have a huge trust fund, and possesses a yen to piss off the patriarchs?”

He met my eyes. “You mean, aside from you?”

The only thing I could guarantee was it was neither George nor myself. We were far too busy to bother with anything so mundane as selling society secrets.

Let me lay it on the line for you: George Harrison Prescott is insatiable. We hooked up between classes, after Rose & Grave meetings, before dinner in the dining hall. We hooked up in his room, in my room, in an entryway bathroom shower stall, in the library stacks, and, on one incredibly ill-advised occasion, in the Prescott College Common Room. On the very same couch, I might add, where I had previously resisted his considerable charms.

It never got old. We’d be in the middle of some fascinating political debate at a society meeting, and all of a sudden I’d catch myself reminiscing about some particularly enjoyable interlude, flush scarlet, and look over to Puck, who was almost always watching me, and certainly knew exactly what kind of naughty thoughts were going through my head. As soon as we were released from the tomb, we’d sprint back to his place, and stay awake until the wee hours doing everything but debating. Or we’d be sitting there in the dining hall, having lunch with all our Prescott College friends, and I’d feel his hand on my thigh. His gorgeous copper eyes would glint at me, and next thing I knew, I was talking about some non-existent reading I had to do that afternoon and George would mention a load of laundry and off we’d go—this time to hook up on the counter near the griddle in the momentarily abandoned Prescott Buttery.

George never ran out of places where he wanted to have sex with me, nor out of ways in which to do it, and, to my credit, I didn’t spend much time thinking about who else he might have done there or how. I didn’t spend much time thinking at all. Brandon would have been so proud of me; he’d always insisted I overanalyzed every situation I was in, destroying it before it ever had a chance to blossom. But with George, I was living entirely in the moment. He was beautiful and fun and sexy as hell, and I really didn’t care what else he was up to as long as he kept making me feel the way I felt whenever we got together.