Nate text her a couple days after their encounter, stating the party was across the street in one of the frat houses at nine on Saturday. It was relatively early for a party. If Cat was actually interested in him, she’d show up for a bit. Instead, she claimed she worked too early on Sunday attend. Hopefully that would suffice.
Though she didn’t work that weekend at all. She didn’t work the entire finals week, in fact, because she was a freshman, and freshman didn’t have to work during finals week. Apparently it was the only boon they got; upper-classmen got holidays, they got finals week. She was fine with that, though, because her finals were done by Wednesday, which meant she could go home early.
With her excuse to avoid Nate lined up, and her hopes high for getting a few extra days out of Christmas break, Cat’s excitement reached its peak on Friday.
Two hours before communications; two hours before her presentation.
And if Peter didn’t show up, she might actually murder him. But to her immense relief, he did, and she was able to breathe again.
“Thank God,” she muttered under her breath when she saw him step through the elevator doors. She waved at him to get his attention, though he saw her immediately, as if his instincts told him that the bane of his existence was through the doors and to his right. Peter stepped through the very quiet library; it was packed full of students, but everyone had their heads buried in books or laptops and muttered to themselves furiously in the silence. Cat was lucky to get a table at all.
Peter sat, a little stiffly, across from her and set his backpack on the table.
“So?” he prompted, waiting for her to take the lead. Cat let out a breath.
“I was thinking we could just read each other’s presentations. Even just once. Then it’s fair--I get to look at your points, you can see mine, and we can anticipate any arguments.” She looked at him, hopeful. Did he even know he held her whole future in his hands? That he could end her just by changing his mind and leaving?
“Alright.” Oh, thank you, she stopped herself from saying. As he took out his presentation notes, she had hers prepared for him already, with a few extra notes to make it easier for him to read. Her hands started shaking.
Peter set his cards down in the middle of the table before he took out his book and notebook, and a few colored pens for notes. Cat squinted at him.
“What?” he asked, genuinely curious. She shook her head.
“Just--your side of your dorm room is such a mess. I didn’t catch you for a colored pens sorta guy.” He still held his red pen in his hand, and he glanced down at it, as if she pointed out something wrong. “Anyway--um, here are mine. I marked some things….”
“Oh. Okay. Um, those are mine. They were meant for me, so I don’t know if they’ll make sense….”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” she answered too fast. Cat collected his cards to start sifting through them; she was far too aware of her heartbeat. She needed to focus. She couldn’t get nervous now. The stress hormone was said to make it harder to remember things, and she needed to win this.
For the next half hour, they sat in silence, perfectly reflecting the studious bubble of the library; Peter wrote out nearly all of her notes, whereas she was a little more precise in taking pieces of his argument. Maybe she should have been more aggressive with her note-taking.
He was done eventually, though, and looked up at her expectantly.
“Would it--would it be too much if I asked for us to swap notes right now?” she asked. She was pushing it. Peter raised a brow at her.
“Seriously? You think that’s going to help you?” His response made her jaw drop.
“No need to be a dick about it, I’m just trying to do well--”
“You’re trying to be over-prepared for a debate. Looking at your notes, you’ve got a weak argument and you can’t strengthen that with evidence that I’ve brought up. You just have a bad thesis.” She gasped at him.
“A bad thesis? I do not have a bad thesis--” Peter held up a hand, as if he was going to correct himself.
“Fine, your thesis isn’t bad.” That was better. “But compared to mine, it is.”
“Oh, my God, shut up,” she muttered. She almost forgot to keep her voice down. “If you can’t defend your thesis if I know all your evidence, then you aren’t actually debating. You’re just trying to belittle my point.”
“My point is that you’re not informed enough to make a good point about the topic,” Peter said. “And that if you had all the information, you’d come up with the right opinion.” Cat groaned.
“People don’t disagree with you because they’re stupid, they disagree because they have the right to. Your opinion isn’t ‘just right’--” But Peter interrupted her.
“Except it is in this case.”
“It’s a debate,” she said through her teeth. “There is no right answer.”
“Except,” he repeated slower, “there is in this case.”
“Shut up.” Cat rolled her eyes and tossed his cards back to him. He scoffed.
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“What, are you upset because you’re going to lose the debate again?”
Cat’s hand balled into a fist. “Good God, if you don’t shut up--!”
“You’ll what, complain a little louder to the professor to try and get pity points?” His attitude made her stomach boil in fury. That’s not what happened!
“No I--!”
“That’s what you tried to do last time, isn’t it?” The bastard! He was twisting it around all wrong! Maybe he was trying to throw her off with anger, to gain an edge. God, it was working….
Cat stood from her chair and slapped the table that separated them. “For the last time, if you don’t shut your fucking trap, I’ll--I’ll punch you again!”
He actually laughed at her. Someone in the bookshelves behind Cat shushed them. They flinched.
Peter lowered his voice, confident: “You never punched me.” She grit her teeth at him.
“Yes I did!”
“You can’t reach.” Short jokes, really?
“Shut up. I did it once, I can do it again.” She clenched her fist for emphasis, and he leaned back in his chair to continue laughing at her. If it weren’t for those dimples, she would have caved his face in already. But instead, she felt her argument dwindle just a touch before his voice brought it back.
“You haven’t punched me before!” he said as-matter-of-factly.
“Just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean I can’t wipe that stupid smirk off your face! It was at Hannah’s party! I have Cam and Kelsey and Hannah to back me--” As she said their names, Peter’s dimples disappeared and he stopped leaning, his chair legs clattering against the floor. So now he remembered!
“Can you guys do that literally anywhere else?” came a hushed voice beside the bookshelf behind Cat. She twisted around to see a stout girl glaring. “This is a library.”
“Sorry,” she muttered inauthentically. When she turned back to Peter, he wasn’t looking at her. She would expect him to look down in embarrassment or something, but he looked past her, rubbing the back of his neck, suddenly awkward.
“You’ve never punched me,” he repeated quieter, instead. Now he reached for his backpack and began to shove his notebook, his pens, his textbook inside. Cat grabbed the base of the bag and pulled it away from him, emptying the contents onto the table. Folders and a couple smaller books spilled out, and a clunky calculator that clattered louder than anything in the room. The obnoxious shelf-girl huffed loudly, but Cat now had a mission.
“You remember that night, don’t you?” Again, he didn’t act like someone embarrassed by being punched by someone half his size. It left her stomach in knots when he hesitated. “What happened?”
Peter was quick to recover, but she watched his every movement and recorded every twitch of his lips, the millisecond-long furrow of his brows, the way he swallowed as if there was something thick to avoid saying.
And, in the next moment, his face was smooth, he shrugged and was shoving his stuff back into his backpack, more haphazard, more purposefully relaxed, as he stood from his chair.
“Nothing, it was just some stupid game. You couldn’t punch me even if you--” But she would not accept his attempt at veering the conversation somewhere else. She yanked at his bag again, but he held onto the flaps just as tight, finally meeting her eyes.
Cat attempted to make her voice sound lighter, as if she didn’t care, but it certainly didn’t come off that way. “If it’s nothing, why did you lie about remembering it?” Now that she demanded the truth, her hands started to shake again. What could be so bad that everyone would lie about it to her? While laughing?
“I don’t know, it’s not important!”
The bookshelf girl shouted in her whisper behind them, “Shut. Up. I have a test in half an hour!” Peter took advantage of the distraction and stole his bag out of Cat’s grip to zip it up. He moved too fast, and the zipper caught halfway through, but he ignored it and swung it over his shoulder half-closed.
“I’ve got a thing to go to.” No he didn’t. He was delaying telling her a weird secret everyone kept from her--and what for? But it wasn’t just from her. Everyone thought they were keeping it from Peter, too.
“Tell me,” she demanded. She didn’t reach for his bag to stop him, or even do anything but stand there, somewhat resigned. It was enough to make him stop beside the table, eyes on the elevators, one foot already pointed and started.
But something in him released him, and he turned back to her, his voice breathy, “All night you said you were going to shut me up, blah, blah, blah: your usual obnoxious--”
Shelf-girl was relentless: “Shhhh!”
Cat snapped at the girl: “If you don’t know it by now, you’re going to fail anyway!” And before Peter could leave, she pointed at him and glared. “Get to the point.” Peter frowned, and shrugged his shoulders too much for her to believe it was “nothing.” But he ducked his head a little, kept his voice barely above a whisper, and finally looked back to her.
“We were in the hot tub playing Truth or Dare, and someone dared you to shut me up, and instead of punching me like you said you would, you just...sat on my lap and kissed me.” Her heart skipped a beat. His eyes darted around her face, searching hers for a reaction, refusing to settle anywhere in particular. She stood there, taken aback, with raised brows.
“Not a peck, I’m guessing.” She hardly felt the words bubble in her throat.
He hardly shook his head. “No.” The night was too much a distant memory for her to corroborate his story personally. But his hesitation, the way he waited just a moment for her to absorb what he said, left her with more questions. “Anyway I didn’t want to embarrass you without you having any memory of it. It seemed too cruel. Um, I’ve gotta go.” And like that, he finally headed toward the elevator doors.
Cat slowly lowered herself to her seat. She had no memory of this in the least bit. But the way everyone reacted, the way they found it all so funny that morning. The way he got so awkward about it. Peter wasn’t lying. She really did try to full-on kiss him at the party. Good Lord...maybe it was better not knowing, she realized as the familiar twinge of shame framed her stomach.
Cat fished her phone out of her bag and immediately clicked to text Hannah. She had to at least confirm. What if he was just trying to get in her head? Rattle her before the debate? Considering what he did the first try of the debate, this seemed likely. But she doubted it.
With a deep breath, she drafted her text.
Hannah, at your first party of the year when I blacked out, I didn’t actually punch Peter, did I? Now the waiting game. It in the hot tub--when she sat by Cam? She could almost imagine it now. Standing up in the tub, embracing the freezing desert air, stumbling her way across the textured tile and clumsily clutching onto Peter’s bare shoulders as she fell on his lap, straddling him completely.
A buzz from her phone revealed Hannah’s reply: lol!! no. Why? He tryin to sue? The butterflies fluttered fiercely.
Did I try to kiss him? Cat typed back. God, how humiliating. After all that bickering, to throw herself at him in front of everyone, free for the ridicule. It undermined everything she ever said. No matter how good her insult, she was that inauthentic drunk girl that just tried to unsuccessfully get in his pants. She was pathetic. No wonder why he always laughed at her. She was a joke.
Hannah’s reply interrupted her black hole of self-pity: try? lol girl u guys made out for like 5min. everyone kind of went to bed after that bc it was too hard to separate u. but it was so hot im sad u dont remember.
Cat stared at the text until the screen timed out, heart hammering, her breath as if she just ran a mile. She kept reading Hannah’s text over and over again, struggling to absorb what it said.
Oh.