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The thing about Ivy League schools is that they’re supposed to be difficult to get into.
It’s a lottery, right, a crapshoot, or something pretty damn similar statistically. Princeton, for instance, has a 5% acceptance rate. Forget selective—it’s elite. It’s prestigious. The chances of Princeton admitting two students from the same school, from the same wave of applicants, into the same class of roughly 2000 students—well.
The chances are astronomical.
Astronomically great at fucking her, that is.
The day after Ivy Day is a Friday.
It’s supposed to be a fantastic fucking day. Devi wakes up to a flood of congratulatory texts from relatives she hasn’t talked to in years. She picks out the oversized black quarter zip that she bought in the sixth grade when she finally visited Princeton’s campus for the first time, the one with the orange school crest on her right chest. She rereads the acceptance letter, which had been printed and taped haphazardly on her wall after the excitement yesterday, because it’s a big deal, okay, that she got into her dream school. And she’s happy about it. She’s absolutely over the moon.
She is, at least until approximately 7:40 in the morning, when Ben Gross shows up to class.
He’s wearing a Princeton hoodie and a matching shit-eating grin.
“Did you have a good Ivy Day, David?” he asks innocently, then gestures to indicate acknowledgement of her sweater choice. “Congrats, by the way.”
Devi can barely form a coherent sentence. There’s a specific kind of visual dissonance that she has to grapple with: Ben Gross, academic arch-rival; Princeton University, her dream school, the beacon of a liberal arts education.
He looks awful in orange.
He takes her silence as a sign to take the seat next to her, even though it’s not.
“I can’t believe this,” she finally spits.
“Mm?”
“You? This?” She gestures at his hoodie and guffaws. “This is a joke, right? You’re not going to Princeton.”
Now he looks at her askance. “What, you didn’t see the tiger emoji in my Instagram bio?”
“I thought it was a typo,” she bites, then adds viciously, “Or the mascot of a little Ivy.”
She takes undue amounts of pleasure in watching him visibly flinch at the thought.
“You know, it’s not your school.”
“Yeah, I know, I’m already reconsidering,” she sneers.
“That’s not what I mean. You’re allowed to go to Princeton,” he says. He’s giving her a look that’s amused, concerned, and a little condescending, though she suspects that he doesn’t mean to show it. “Like, you realize that if you get in, you are allowed to go. It’s not contingent on whether or not someone else happens to go as well.”
She avoids looking directly at him. Ben’s smug smile reminds her of the sun, in that it has the same way of causing permanent eye damage. She also desperately avoids noticing the way that he fills out the hoodie with his broad shoulders, and instead focuses her energy imagining infinite blissful scenarios in which his hoodie is colored Harvard crimson. Yale blue. Dartmouth green.
Anything except Princeton orange.
“Maybe things can still change,” she reasons, mostly to herself. “Results came out yesterday. There’s still a deposit to be paid, housing to be sorted out, waitlists to get off of—”
“Well, sure, I haven’t committed officially yet.” He leans close to interrupt her, his voice smarmy and low. “But my heart’s committed.”
She’s suddenly overcome with a deep, irresistible desire to either break all the bones in his body or commit arson.
Her heart hasn’t committed on which to do yet.
“Hearts are fickle, Gross.”
“Not this one,” he disagrees. Then he smirks. “You look cute in that quarter zip.”
Of all things, she somehow understands that he’s being sincere about the compliment. It’s odd how well she can read him. She’s especially good at it when he’s being a human asswipe.
He buys a lanyard next.
“Paid your deposit for Princeton yet, David?” he asks a few afternoons later, jogging to catch up with her in the hallway after class. “Taken the time to get over yourself?”
His keys are in his pocket. The lanyard, a bright orange nylon stripe with the school name printed on it in a regal uppercase serif, flutters, slaps against his jeans when he runs. It’s not subtle. Then again, Ben never is.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Devi says once he’s caught up to her.
“For someone who was paralyzed, you sure can run,” Ben breathes. He slows to a saunter with a long-suffering sigh. “But you can’t run from reality.”
“No,” she concedes, “but I can go home and forget about your existence.”
“Sounds bleak.”
She picks up the pace. He matches her tread with ease.
“Look, I just don’t get it, is all. It’s your dream school and all you could talk about every time someone even mentioned the word ‘future’.”
She grits her teeth. “You don’t have to get it.”
“Okay, fine.” He pauses. “It’s just—it’s weirding me out that you would just back off of something because of me.”
Devi nearly trips.
“Conceited much?” she jeers, trying to catch her breath.
Ben looks at her sidelong. “I don’t even mean it like that. Look, Devi, you know I care about you, and if this is about our—our history, it’s not going to be a problem.”
“Our history?” she bleats.
“You know,” he says meaningfully. He flashes his eyes at her, as if it’s supposed to jog her memory. “Remember? At Malibu?”
Malibu. The mention of it catches her off guard, squeezes a high pitched laugh from her chest.
She doesn’t really remember Malibu. She’s worked hard to keep it that way.
“If you’re worried that I’m too obsessed with you to commit to Princeton, then you have nothing to worry about.”
“Alright,” he relents. “Promise?”
He studies her face to find the answer; she cocks her head at him.
The frustrating thing is that she’s just as easy to read as he is.
Ben's face spreads into a helpless smile anyway.
“By the way, I like your hair today,” he tells her, his hand at his neck. He’s grinning now, his smile boyish and open like a golden retriever dog. “All tied up. You look like you could kick my ass.”
She knows that this is also a compliment. It seems like the sort of thing that would be a turn-on for him, after all.
Trent hosts a spring break rager that weekend.
Devi attends, of course. She keeps up appearances. That’s why she wears her red tank top with the scalloped lace edges and a jean skirt that she’d hemmed two inches higher with a pair of crafting scissors.
She arrives at the party late by exactly three hours, and everyone is in the backyard, already halfway on the journey to alcohol poisoning.
Fabiola and Eleanor had decided not to attend this party because they were on a double date with their significant others. Getting drunk without them is more pathetic than fun, so the party loses its dynamism fast. She pours herself a cup of water, makes the rounds, and finally lingers in the deserted kitchen near the punch bowl until she realizes that she isn’t alone anymore.
It’s Ben. He’s extremely drunk, but at least he’s not wearing any Princeton merchandise for once.
He greets her with an unctuous, sloppy tilt of his mouth.
“Are you drinking tonight?” he asks her.
“No,” she responds without explanation.
“Too bad. You look like you need a drink.”
She stares back, unimpressed.
“You look like you need a slap across the face,” she offers. “And platform shoes.”
He clutches his chest, wobbling. “Tough hit.” He pauses, then adds thoughtfully, “Fair hit.”
She watches him take another long, hungry gulp from his solo cup, and wonders distantly about whether or not she should cut him off. She also briefly wonders how many drinks he’s had alright, and then she lingers on an internal, unbidden curiosity about why he’s getting so wasted. She knows that he hates the way alcohol tastes, and he’s always been a lightweight.
But she’s annoyed at him, so she doesn’t tell him to stop.
“So I was wondering,” Ben slurs, drawing out the vowels, “if you had committed to Princeton yet.”
She takes a tiny sip of her water. “Why should I tell you?”
He gives her a look.
“You are such a pain in the ass,” she grumbles.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He waves it off. “You’re just taking a hell of a long time to do the inevitable.”
He fixes an expectant, significant look at her. Devi flounders for a moment, unwilling to dignify the grounds of the assumption but still responding to him despite herself.
“I just don’t understand you,” she says. “I don’t get why you applied. Or care about this so much.”
“Applied where?”
She resists the urge to groan loudly. “Why did you apply to Princeton?”
He fixes his face into a tipsy version of pensive consideration for a moment.
“I applied because I have a gigantic crush on this girl who never shuts up,” he finally says, in a tone that sounds both mocking and reflective. “But I’m going because of salt water taffy.”
He then pauses for her reaction, like he’s waiting for the second part to piss her off.
She keeps her face impassive. “Salt water taffy,” she repeats.
“It’s a Jersey thing. There are too many Jersey things that I know.” He hiccups. “The state bird is the American Goldfinch. Also half of the state is chemical plants, and the other is just, like, prep schools. And something about blueberries?”
Devi doesn’t bother trying to stop from rolling her eyes; trust Ben to rattle off trivia while heavily intoxicated. This might have been endearing if she weren’t already so irritated.
“That’s completely irrelevant to Princeton.”
“It is relevant, trust me. I got into Princeton, so I know.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“You know, I thought that knowledge would be more applicable,” he’s rambling leisurely. “Memorizing state birds and—fucking—culinary specialities. I just figured that all of this shit was important to—uh, that girl I had a crush on. So I cared a lot about it. She never shut up about it. Princeton University. And Princeton is in New Jersey, so.”
It surprises her how unsurprised she is by this sentiment. She doesn’t flip out. Her heart rate stays exactly the same. It should come as a lot greater of a shock that he had just confessed his crush on her multiple times within the minute, but the confession just feels like an observation that she’s already compartmentalized, or an agreement they had agreed to leave unsaid all this time. Like she’s known already.
She studies her water while considering her responses.
“If you really care about this girl,” she says, “maybe you should just not go to Princeton.”
He waves an unfocused index finger at her in response. “Maybe the girl should wonder why she’s allergic to the thought of me going to Princeton with her.” He raises his eyebrows at her, like it’s a legitimate concern, like he’s concerned about it. Her temper flares. “Maybe she needs to figure her shit out.”
He pisses her off expertly when he’s sober, but today she’s learning that he’s exceptionally, olympically talented at doing it while inebriated.
“Listen, all I’m saying is, clean breaks are for cowards,” he’s saying now, leaning a little too far toward the counter. “Baggage is good. Baggage is important. For growth. Yeah?”
He’s not slick. Not when he’s this drunk. Devi can feel her cheeks burning, but she’s not sure whether it's out of anger or bewilderment.
“Anything else?”
He squints, thinking.
“There’s a saying, right,” he drawls finally. “Something about how your shirt would look great on my floor?”
She gapes at him.
He winks, careless, lazy, slow, but she doesn’t buy it. He’s none of those things.
He finally gets under her skin with the baggage talk.
To be more precise, he gets under her skin with a specific uncovered memory, the reminder of Malibu: the breathless, earnest kiss that conspired in the front seat of his dad’s Porsche in sophomore year, when he waited for her after she spread her dad’s ashes. She was emotional and hormonal and he touched her hair a lot. He slobbered a bit on her too. She didn’t mind it back then.
Even though she swears that she had forgotten the details a while ago, they come back eventually, like recalling a vivid dream.
To his credit, the kiss was admittedly—scenic. Memorable. Deserving of a reprise.
A cheeky tiger sticker finds its way onto his laptop.
“Forgive me for having a little school pride,” Ben retorts when she points it out. He sits behind her in history, so she has to turn toward him to effectively make fun of him. Sometimes their seating arrangement makes her feel self-conscious, like she should be sitting straighter or sweeping her hair to the side so he can see the creamy length of skin on her neck.
“Please. I have school pride. Way more than you.”
“Remind me, what college are you going to?” He stretches, tilting his chin up and looking over his nose to get a better view of her backpack. It’s performative. “I couldn’t tell.”
Devi ignores the bait. She’s getting worse and worse at ignoring him, but she figures that it takes practice, right? It’s a muscle.
“I still don’t get why you had to choose Princeton,” she hisses over her shoulder. “There are literally thousands of other schools out there, and you just happen to take the one college that I was going to go to—”
“Not your school,” he cuts in mildly.
“—and there’s no reason for you to be so upset about getting rejected from Harvard that you would spite me by going to Princeton, of all places.”
He waits for her patiently to stop, before correcting her, subdued, “I was accepted at Harvard.”
She whips around to stare at him in disbelief.
“What,” she says.
“Uh huh.”
“This is a joke,” she accuses. “You’re joking.”
He’s watching her as if he’s observing a unique species of animal, clinical and fascinated, like she’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. It almost makes her forget why she’s yelling at him.
“I thought you cared about were rankings,” she continues after a beat, sputtering. “And Harvard—Harvard is Harvard. I mean, according to US News Rankings, Harvard is always first. And you always care about that sort of thing.”
He lifts his shoulders in a shrug. His eyes stay on hers, focused and steady; his gaze is a steely, deep blue.
“I figured out my priorities.”
She supposes that’s a compliment too. Against her better judgement, she blushes.
Right as she gets home she pays the commitment fee herself, stares at the confirmation screen, and then calls Ben. He picks up after the first ring.
“I mean, I was always planning on going,” she finds herself admitting.
“I know, Devi,” he says.
The consistent study dates after school happen inadvertently, like a gradual mistake. She doesn’t even realize when it becomes a regular part of her routine: Ben pretends that there’s some urgent reason to invite her over, she accepts his offer to drive her after school without any critical questioning, and when she can’t find any more flimsy excuses to stay she takes a Lyft back to her parked car at school in a strange, non-sexual walk of shame.
Devi doesn’t really know how to feel about it, but what she does know is that the Princeton bumper sticker on his car is what displeases her the most about the whole thing.
“You couldn’t just get a Coexist bumper sticker like everyone else?” She points at the peeling crest when Ben’s car comes in sight. It’s tacky and jarring on the glossy surface of his Mercedes Benz. “You’re like a walking advertisement for this school.”
“How else are pedestrians going to know that I’m attending an Ivy League college?”
“I think even a student driver sticker would maybe be more practical. You know, since you suck at driving,” she taunts. “Or maybe baby on board, for greater accuracy of character?”
He bends down and presses his nail against the edges to smooth the sticker flush onto the bumper, but his efforts are futile. “Same difference. They’ll understand that this car has got precious cargo on board.”
The teasing is like a game now. Ben’s not bad at it.
“So what are we doing today?” she asks, opening the passenger seat.
He flicks a nonchalant glance over the top of his car as he shoves his belongings into the back seat.
“I barely have any homework, so maybe we could just hang?” he suggests.
She stares at him, frozen in place.
“Just hang?” she repeats.
“Yeah?”
“Not even going to go with an excuse this time?” she asks, a little disbelieving. “No story about extra credit? No paper you need my opinion on?”
His cheeks redden, but he pins a look at her, a blue-eyed gaze that is knowing and exasperated, weary, as if he’s waiting for her to hurry up and figure him out. It reminds her a bit of that kiss in Malibu, when he had pulled back afterward and asked her to call him the next day.
“Who are we kidding, Devi?” he says in response.
The thing is, though, that he’s not wrong. They’re just creatures of habit, is all.
Ben has a giant Princeton banner hanging in his room, right above his bed. It’s overkill and Devi tells him so.
“You don’t have one on your wall?” he asks, genuinely confused, blinking owlishly. He’s watching her from his spot on the floor against a wall, while Devi perches on the edge of his mattress, facing him. They sit like this most afternoons now.
“I have a taped up acceptance letter and a polaroid of me on campus. Still waiting on a picture frame.”
He nods and stretches his legs, straightening them strategically around strewn pens and papers. Their stubbornness and perpetual academic rivalry had led both of them to condemn the concept of "senioritis" at the beginning of the year, but right now late April feels too close to the end of the year for either of them to take the work too seriously.
They keep up the pretense, though. They decisively spread out their homework across his room and pretend to do it. They quiz each other on information that isn’t even going to be on the test.
Then they talk about the future.
“I wonder what my social life at college is going to be like,” she ponders out loud.
“Probably terrible,” he predicts.
She ignores the comment, of course. “I’m going to rush a sorority,” she declares. “And obviously I’ll be attending all of the civic and social justice clubs on campus.”
“Naturally.”
“I’m going to go to so many parties. I’ll get blackout wasted every weekend. My social life is going to be crazy, Ben, off the charts.” She points her gel pen at him. “Try not to be too clingy while we’re there.”
He puts his hands up. “Hey, you’re the one spending every afternoon in my house.”
“It’s charity work,” she bites without venom.
Ben scoffs out a laugh.
“You know, I think I’m gonna start over in college. I just feel like I’ve outgrown everything from high school.” He lifts his gaze to the ceiling as if deep in thought, and then his eyes are back on hers, mocking and playful and fond, always fond, when he adds, “Don’t take it too personally when it’s me leaving you behind.”
They both know that he would never do that.
They watch each other for a moment, the silence easy and intimate. Ben has his legs drawn in now, his forearms resting on top of his knees. He’s in khakis and a Princeton T-shirt.
Everything he wears is orange these days. She doesn't mind it.
“You know,” she says finally, twisting the hem of her shirt up, shyly, purposefully, “I think orange is your color.” She purses her lips, tilts her head coyly. “It suits you.”
It’s technically a compliment, but it’s definitely more of an invitation.
His answering smile splits his face wide.