Read Online Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner - Free Book Online Page A

Day.”
    “Congratulations,” she said and emptied her glass.
    “Whoa, slow down,” he said. She squinted at him. Her head was already feeling fuzzy.
    “Don’t tell me what to do. You’re not my father.” Because if you were, she thought, you’d have three days’ worth of stubble and you’d be trapped with a family you hated, and you’d deliver the mail for a living, and your only suit would be twenty years old.
    Steven Day did not look the least bit abashed. “Come outside, Kelly,” he said, as he took a firm grip on her elbow. “Let’s get some fresh air.”
    She made a face but allowed him to maneuver her off of her seat and out of the bar. “How do you know my name?”
    “I’ve been watching you.”
    She stared, trying to place him. “You have? Why?” She realized that she was talking too loudly—it had been noisy in the bar, but outside, the fall air was crisp and her voice was carrying. “Why?” she asked again, more quietly.
    “Because I think you’re beautiful,” he said, steering her down the sidewalk. She could feel his breath against her cheek as he formed each word. “We were in economics seminar together.”
    She remembered meeting a guy in the graduate-level economics seminar she’d talked her advisor into letting her take, but it had been Scott Schiff. Although something was tugging at her memory—a guy in a suit who sat in the back of the room and could turn any question into a passionate defense of the free market, a guy who wore suits while everyone else came to class dressed in jeans and sweatshirts and sneakers.
    Alex Keaton wanna-be, she thought, as she wobbled sideways, almost crashing into a bus shelter. Steven Day steadied her. “Are you all right?”
    Half a dozen of her typical responses bubbled to her lips. Sure! Fine! Great! Instead Kelly sagged against him and let her eyes slip shut. “No, I’m not. Not really.”
    “Are you worried about finals?”
    She shook her head. “Finals are about the least of my problems right now.”
    “So what’s wrong?”
    “Well, for one thing, you didn’t let me get another drink.” She shoved her bangs out of her eyes. All through high school in Ocean City, she’d permed her hair. Her first day at Penn she noticed that nobody else had permed hair. She couldn’t afford to have hers straightened, so after the second day of classes, she found a West Philadelphia barbershop a few blocks off campus. She parked herself in the black leather chair in front of the astonished barber and said, Cut it all off. She had a pixie cut for the rest of college. It was her signature look, and at twelve bucks per trim, it was one she could afford.
    She peered up at him. His face in the darkness hung above her like the moon. “Do you really think I’m beautiful?”
    He nodded at her, very seriously. “Come on. Let’s go to my place.”
    She drew herself upright, mustering what was left of her dignity and her sobriety. “I am not going back to your place. I just met you.” She licked her lips and ran her hands through the mess of her hairdo and peered at him through her vodka haze. “You have to buy me dinner first.”
    “Sit here,” Steven Day instructed, and he parked Kelly on the bench inside the bus shelter. “Don’t move.”
    She closed her eyes and held perfectly still. Five minutes later, Steven Day, wingtips and all, was standing in front of her with a fragrant, grease-spotted bag from McDonald’s in his hand. “Here,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “Dinner.”
    For two blocks, Kelly wobbled past clusters of chattering under-grads and sorority girls all in a row, popping french fries into her mouth and telling Steven the short but tragic story of Scott Schiff.
    “He wasn’t such a good guy, anyhow,” she said through a mouthful of fried potato. At that moment, after the vodka, she felt as though she could tell Steven Day anything, as if nobody had ever understood her the way Steven Day did. “You wanna know what I