Finally everyone slid “Almost a Lady” out of their short stacks and put it on top. My stomach dropped as if I’d just crested the tallest peak on a roller coaster and was about to barrel down the other side. Hunter’s head was bent. If he hadn’t been reading my story before, now he was.

“Manohar,” Gabe said, “why don’t you get us started?”

Manohar glanced up at me and smirked.

Uh-oh.

“First of all,” he said, “I wanted to check something. Am I reading this right? Did this Captain ‘Vanderslice’”—he made finger quotes—“get his family jewels shot off in the war? Isn’t that stolen directly from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises?”

“I beg your pardon,” I said haughtily. “That’s like saying you can’t have somebody cross the street in your scene because James Joyce wrote about somebody crossing the street one time. All of literature and only one character can get shot in the nuts?”

Everyone around the table leaned in. I focused my anger on Manohar, but I could see the other students in my peripheral vision and feel them as the air in the room got hot. Only Hunter lounged in his rich chair, reading my story, cool as ever.

“Now you’re using the term ‘literature’ very loosely,” Manohar said, with more finger quotes. “It reads like a romance novel.” He tossed imaginary long hair over his shoulder. “‘She saw him from across the room and knew he was the one for her, the stable boy.’”

“Do you read a lot of romance novels?” Summer asked him.

Several guys hooted with laughter. I would have smiled, too, if I had not been on my deathbed.

Manohar turned bright red, but he was laughing. “I—,” he began.

Summer was not laughing. “Because you would base that judgment on something, right?”

I felt bad that she was talking out of turn instead of me, disobeying Gabe on my behalf. On the other hand, she was a lot cuter than me, and harder to be angry with. Manohar only tilted his head while she ranted.

“Everybody knows how a romance novel goes—,” he began again.

“Not if they’ve never read one, they don’t,” she insisted.

He talked over her. “All I’m saying is that there’s no place for that kind of crappy writing in an honors creative-writing class.” His voice rose at the end of his statement because several girls gasped when he said crappy. “I know I’m not the only one in this class who thinks so. You’re not supposed to write a romance novel for an honors creative-writing class.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, wishing the angry tears out of my eyes.

“How could you miss it?” he insisted. “In high school, didn’t people make fun of you for writing romance novels? Even for reading them?”

“Of course they did.” My hand pounded the table. Everyone jumped, including me. I removed my hand from the table and sat on it. “My mistake was assuming that when I got to college, people would not be such assholes. Heaven forbid I pursue a career writing romance novels. Romance is only fifty-three percent of the paperback market, and I would hate to earn a steady income while the rest of you are living in your parents’ basements, writing novels about dead wolves—”

“Hey!” Kyle exclaimed.

“—getting rejected from The New Yorker, and cutting yourselves.”

Two boys on the other side of Summer laughed together. I could see them over her head. One of them said a little too loudly in a faux drawl more reminiscent of Tennessee than Kentucky, “Heaven forbid!”

“You’re assuming this is publishable,” Manohar told me. He’d seemed cocksure before, a superior intellect cutting down a Southern girl in class. Now his black brows pointed down in a V. “This is not publishable. You could read it out loud and make a drinking game out of knocking one back every time it says bosom. And I don’t think any story you turn in for an honors creative-writing class should contain even a single instance of the word nipple.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I shouted over the laughter, “but there’s nothing in the syllabus for this class that says we can’t write nipple.”

“Because that’s understood!” Manohar exclaimed.

“Is it?” I asked. “Maybe you’re just bothered by nipple personally.”

“Everybody is bothered by nipple,” he said, karate-chopping the thick table with each syllable. “Serious writers know this. You would not find a nipple in The New Yorker.”

“She didn’t write this story for The New Yorker,” Summer said.

Manohar gestured widely with both arms. He hit Brian in the chest and didn’t seem to notice. “Exactly!”

I shook my head. “I don’t think this is about my story at all. I think it’s about you, Manohar. I can tell that reading this story made you uncomfortable, and I wonder why that is. Either you’re a very curious virgin, or you want a stable boy of your own.”

Manohar’s mouth dropped open. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. All the guys in the class moaned, “Oooooooooooh!”

Except Brian, who raised his hand and said, “Um, no, that would be me.”

And except Hunter. I was fairly certain Hunter hadn’t joined the moaning. I dared not turn my head to look at him. My face burned with anger at Manohar, and shame that he’d made me lose my cool and attack him with a joke worthy of my grandmother’s stables, and worry about what Hunter would say.

I read Gabe’s lips rather than heard him. “We never discussed what kind of writing was acceptable for this class.”

The students hushed themselves as if he’d stood up and banged his fist on the table, even though he’d spoken in his usual soft voice, like he was out having coffee with one of us and telling us about catching a wave in the Pacific. Now there was a little murmur of question: What had Gabe said? Had he said something about Erin’s kind of writing? But nobody wanted to be the one to admit they hadn’t been paying attention. After all, it was only our second class.

“To Erin’s point,” Gabe said, “there is no genre specified. I hope each of you will feel free to explore the kinds of stories that move you, and to hone your craft for your own purposes. To that end,” he turned to Manohar, “our critiques of each other’s work need to be constructive.” He turned to me, and I tried not to shrink back. “And we need to respond to those critiques in a manner that leaves the floor open to honest communication.”

The air was thick with tension, all eyes on me. If this had been high school, I would have sat there in silence and mortification.

But you know what? One year of age—I won’t say maturity, considering how I’d just lost my temper, but at least age—had changed me. And the publishing internship was a carrot held just beyond my lips, motivating me. Gabe had been taking notes the whole time Manohar and I argued. I should have been more careful about what I said in front of him. I had written a story about Hunter and I didn’t know whether he was going to blow my cover.

So I forced a smile and said, “Gabe, I’m truly sorry. I see now how I sounded, and I promise I’ll do better next time. It’s hard to be one of the first!”

He nodded, and Summer and some of the other girls laughed nervously. Manohar sneered down at my story.

I wrote INTERNSHIP in block letters in my notebook, as a reminder.

“Brian?” Gabe prompted. “What did you think of Erin’s story?”

“I enjoyed it,” Brian said. “That was some stable boy.”

I swallowed and did not look at Hunter and doodled curlicues around INTERNSHIP.

The girl next to Brian said the first line of my story was the funniest thing she’d ever read. Beside her sat Kyle, the guy who’d written about the wolf. He said my first line ruined my whole story for him. The next two people made similarly contradictory and therefore useless comments, and then came Hunter.

But Gabe skipped right over Hunter to give him more time to read, and asked for commentary from Isabelle.

The remaining girls said they liked my story. The remaining guys did not. I didn’t care anymore. My debut as a New York author was ruined already. Now I was only concerned with whether they’d noticed that the stable boy I’d written about was actually the stable boy sitting at the end of this very table. An uncanny likeness, they would say! An amazingly accurate description! Obviously written by someone infatuated with Hunter Allen!

But slowly I realized that nobody would figure out this story was about him. Nobody would suspect me of putting a character in my story who, one class period later, randomly showed up in the class. They wouldn’t even know we knew each other.

Unless he told them.

Summer took her turn, rushing to my defense with such enthusiasm that it was clear she was speaking as my roommate, not as a fellow writer. “Oh, and one more thing.” She looked straight at Manohar. “Nipple!”

The class laughed. I grinned at Summer and she beamed back at me. At that moment I loved her very much and almost forgave her for the brouhaha over my clothes earlier.

“Hunter, what did you think?” Gabe asked.

Everyone in the room looked at Hunter expectantly.

I looked down.

“Oh, I shouldn’t comment,” Hunter said, one side of his mouth curved up in a charming smile and one dimple showing.

I did not actually see this because I was staring down at David thumbing Rebecca’s nipple. I did not have to see Hunter’s charming smile to know it was there.

He went on, “I haven’t had a chance to read it closely enough.”

“You commented on the first two stories,” Brian pointed out.

“They were shorter,” Hunter said.

“This was a long story,” Isabelle affirmed. “I nearly had a heart attack when I saw it in the library. It’s thirteen pages long. For me, writing five is like pulling teeth.”

Through the general murmur of approval that ensued about the wondrous length of “Almost a Lady,” Manohar spoke to me across the table. “Congratulations. You have written a very long story.”

I shot him the bird.

Gabe grabbed my hand, lowered it gently to the table, and patted it twice without looking at me. He cleared his throat. The class quieted, and he prompted again, “Hunter?”

Hunter had been talking to Isabelle. Now he glanced up at Gabe, then turned his shoulders deliberately to me and met my gaze. He smiled.

I had known Hunter for a long time. This wasn’t his charming devil-may-care smile. It was tight and false.

He would never deliberately show it, but I suspected he was furious with me.

“Erin,” he said, “I am from Long Island, but I’ve spent some time around Churchill Downs, in Louisville, and I’ve been to parties with horse people. You’ve captured that experience perfectly.”

Isabelle said, “Her story’s set in the eighteen hundreds.”

Hunter nodded, eyes still on me. “The parties haven’t changed.”

“All right, Erin,” Gabe murmured. “It’s finally your turn to talk.”

I opened my lips. I’d had so much to say in defense of my story thirty seconds before. But I could not think of a single retort with Hunter watching me through those clear blue eyes, wearing that tight smile. He had never been to a race party as far as I knew. The closest he’d come was the night of the Derby last May, when he whistled to me from the yard and handed me my music player and earbuds, which I’d left on the shelf in the stable office. Now he was reminding me that my horse farm was his now. My horses, my house, my parties. Over the summer he’d probably thrown the parties himself.

I looked down and drew fireworks exploding out of internship. “I said everything I wanted to say when I spoke out of turn.”

“You’re sure?” Gabe asked me. “Going once, going twice

”

I bit my lip and nodded.

“It’s a big deal to go first,” Gabe addressed the whole table, “and I think all these authors deserve a round of applause.”

There was applause, and cheering, and somebody shouted, “Nipple!”

“Write hard,” Gabe said, “and I’ll see you Thursday.”

Chair legs raked back on the hardwood floor. Everyone burst into the conversations they’d been too repressed to have with each other on their way into class—before Hunter had arrived to loosen them up. Amid this bustle of leaving, Gabe inhaled deeply through his nose, portly chest expanding. He fished a tie-dyed bandanna out of his pocket and touched it to his forehead.

“Aw”—I was about to say “Gabe” but stopped myself since I still wasn’t sure what to call him—“is that because of me? I’m very sorry to make you mop your brow.”

He chuckled. “The first critique session is always the hardest. And some semesters are harder than others. I’ll make it. Don’t worry about me.” He was still smiling as he slid me his copy of “Almost a Lady,” rolled out of his chair, and left the room. But I wondered: did he mean I should be worried instead about myself, my writing, my grade, my career?

As people passed behind me to escape the room, they dropped their copies of my story in front of me. Normally I would have paged through them immediately to read the comments, even though I’d be late for work. But I needed to speak with Hunter. And he was flirting with Isabelle. I strained to hear them over the babble of other voices.

“Calculus is kicking my ass,” he told her.

“Going too fast for you?” she teased him.

“No, it looks vaguely familiar from high school. This TA, I don’t know where he’s from, but

”

“He has a very interesting accent in English?”

“Was he speaking English? I honestly do not know.”

Isabelle laughed. “Complain. He shouldn’t have been put in front of a class if his students can’t understand him.”

“I don’t want to be the one who strips this guy of his fellowship.”

Yeah, right, play the empathy card. Hunter was good at making people think he cared, until he stabbed them in the back.

“Get one of those computer programs that teaches you a foreign language,” Isabelle suggested.

“That would be a really good idea if I knew what language he was speaking.”

Hunter was funny. This was a funny conversation I should have been having with him instead of this bitch, and who did she think she was?

Standing, I forced the copies of “Almost a Lady” into my book bag along with my thirty-pound calculus book and my fifty-pound book for early American literature survey (not my favorite period, lots of puritanical preaching about virtue, bleh!) and my laptop. Manohar was standing next to his chair, too, watching me and still smirking at me.