The Year We Fell Down (The Ivy Years, #1)

by Sarina Bowen

She walked into my room, looking around as if she expected to see something different. “So…what the hell happened?” Uh oh.

“Happened?” I asked, my face twitching into an unavoidable guilty smile. She rolled her eyes. “Spill it, you. Because you are so busted.” Dana flounced over to my bed and sat down at the foot of it. “When I came home last night, one of Hart-throb’s crutches was on the living room floor, and now it’s gone. Was he in here?” I put my face in my hands. “For a little while.” Dana grabbed my hands and pulled them down. “Seriously? His girlfriend blew him off, and so he came across the hall to fool around with you? And where is he now?”

it.” “Is there another way? Is he breaking up with her, or does he expect you to be his fuck buddy?” “Dana! It isn’t quite as bad as that. You like Hartley.” She looked sad. “I do like him. And I think he…” she flopped back onto my

“Only if you promise not to smile at Hartley. I’ll die if he thinks I spilled my guts already.”

moment that Stacia found Hartley, her face lit up, and she began to prance across the dining hall toward him. His table fell silent, and I couldn’t look away. Beaming, she walked around behind his chair. “Well, give us a kiss, Hartley,” she said in an affected voice,

as everyone watched, he pushed back his chair and stood. Stacia took his

face in her hands and kissed him full on the mouth. And he kissed her back. While his friends hooted, he cupped his hands on her face and closed his eyes. It went on and on.

Dana pinched my hand. “Corey,” she said, her voice low. “Breathe.” But it was difficult, because I felt as if...

“Should we just go?” she asked me. I forced myself to look only at Dana. “No.” It would be too obvious if I got up and bolted from the room. I wi...

What I meant was, I didn’t think it would hurt this much.

Over at Hartley’s table, they’d found Stacia a chair. I could hear her whiny voice. “But Hartley, you said you’d take me to the Christmas Ball.” “And you said you were coming on my birthday,” he returned, humor in his voice.

“You don’t have to dance,” she said. “You are only there to look good in a suit.” “Well, in that case,” he said, his voice humming out the same patient, half-amused smirk I’d heard on move-in day as he dealt with her. He spoke to her the way an indulgent father speaks to his little girl.

Even my hope fairy took up the cause, fluttering between chapters of my calculus textbook, spouting theorems. She put on a tiny pair of glasses and perched on the lid of my travel coffee mug. Even better, she didn’t mention Hart-throb’s name. Not even once.

—Hartley— I woke up on New Years Eve lying naked in what felt like a cloud. In reality, it was a big guest bedroom in the east wing of Stacia’s mansion. I was alone, because whenever I stayed in Greenwich they put me in a room by myself.

If they wanted to pretend that their baby girl would never fill the jacuzzi tub in her private bathroom and then perform a strip tease for me, that was their prerogative. Good thing they’d been out to a lengthy dinner party the night before.

Damn, I’d felt a jolt like never before. That’s for calling me chicken, she’d said. The fire in her eyes when she’d said it made me want to lose my mind. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about it? Seriously, we really hadn’t done all that much. It was just a little hook up. People did that all the time, right? Admittedly,

So now I was lying in my girlfriend’s house, hard as a freaking board, and thinking about another girl touching me.

She closed the door behind her and turned to me with a silky smile. And there it was. Whenever I was here, in the lap of sick luxury, and the princess from Greenwich looked at me like I was the tastiest thing she’d ever seen, it just made my year.

Stacia’s attention meant something to me that I didn’t like to talk about. So it was just as well that talking wasn’t what Stacia wanted from me. She flung herself onto the bed, and then looked right down at the tent I was raising in the sheet. “Well, hello there,” she whispered, her eyes flashing with mischief. “I didn’t know you’d already be…up.” She pressed a kiss onto my shoulder, and then immediately began working her way downward, dragging the sheet with her.

I closed my eyes, but that was a mistake. Because my brain went right back to where it had been before Stacia opened the bedroom door. And so I found myself picturing someone else’s face even as my girlfriend worked me over.

The math just didn’t add up for me, because she was so awful. Beautiful and awful. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand why he’d want to undress the equivalent of a swimsuit model. But the investment seemed strange. Even during our brief New Year’s call he’d confessed to being at a very boring party with her. Why do that?

logical conclusion was that the allure of her gorgeous body more than made up for the pain of spending time with her.

his body that I wanted. We had fun together — lots of it. We sparred and we joked. I knew he enjoyed my company. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind. But obviously it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. And I couldn’t help blaming my disability. A whole Corey Callahan — with two working legs, and none of the baggage that comes with being broken — might have been enough to shift me

Operation Forget About Hartley was underway. O.F.A.H., for short.

co-ed inner tube water polo team?”

The Beaumonters stopped being afraid of me, and so I had to pass more often than I shot. Then, just before the whistle, the Turner captain flipped me the ball when I was right in front of the net. My hope fairy, dressed in a bikini, did a quick little cheer with silver pom poms. And I slipped the ball into the corner before the oaf knew what hit him.

“I’m sorry, Hartley. Really.” Just then, Stacia sashayed out of the adjacent door, where the ATM machines were. “Evening, Daniel,” she said. Then she took Hartley’s hand and steered him toward the library. Without a word to me, of course.

I didn’t think it was all that weird that Corey didn’t call me once over break. Ours was not a phone-based friendship. But when she got back, she didn’t stop by. And then the ditched lunch, and the dropped class? It couldn’t all be coincidence. Corey was avoiding me. Why would you complicate our friendship? She’d asked me that question, and I’d given her some smartass answer. But, hell. If I knew she was going to drop me like a puck, I wouldn’t have gone there.

calf and set it down onto a stair below me. Then I did the same with my other one. Then I pressed myself up with my arms and dropped my butt down onto the next step. Then I started over — move one leg, move the other, scoot down a step. And so on.

After they passed by and out of sight, I descended quickly to the bottom stair. “You know,” he said, stepping around me, fetching my chair and pulling it over to the bottom step. “You made that look easy.” “Great,” I said, wiping my dirty hands on my pants. “But I just hate…”

even finish the sentence for fear that I’d start crying. I hated being that girl who crawls away from the party. I hated being the girl who needs rescuing. I hated being Hartley’s little gimpy pal. Watching The Princess Bride over and over again was much more palatable than this brand of mortification.

When I got her to her own room, I hung back in the doorway. She wheeled into the empty common room and then turned her chair around to face me. The silence between us felt unnatural, and her pretty face was as sad as I’ve ever seen it. I fought the urge to cross the room and… I don’t know what. The urge to take care of her was nearly overwhelming. What I really wanted to do was gather her up and hold her. It didn’t seem fair that the best person I knew would be so sad and lonely on a Friday night.

Without thinking, I took two steps into the room. Fuck. What I really wanted to do was run my fingers through her hair, and kiss the place just behind her jaw. And then, kiss a few dozen other places. Fuck. Me. All I did, though, was to place a single kiss the top of her head.

“Indeed,” he agreed. “I was just telling Corey about the neighborhood brawl. She missed it.” He leaned in. “It began with Stacia shrieking ‘Nobody dumps me, Hartley!’ for all the world to hear.” I felt my heart skip a beat, and Dana gasped. “He dumped her?”

“Shake off that hangover, Callahan. We have plans tonight.” My pulse leaped. “Since when?” Hartley put two hands on the table and bent down, his eyes level with mine. “Since now.” Before I could register my surprise, his lips were on mine. The kiss was gentle, and over much too quickly. He straightened up, leaving me reeling. “Don’t make me beg, Callahan. It’s hard on the knee.” And then he walked away, into the kitchen.

Hartley? Yes, beautiful? Where are we going tonight? You’ll find out later, he replied. Dress is VERY casual. Take your sticks, not your chair. We’re riding the van. Meet me @8 at Beaumont gate. I spent the day with an entire flock of butterflies in my stomach.