Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 175455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 877(@200wpm)___ 702(@250wpm)___ 585(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 175455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 877(@200wpm)___ 702(@250wpm)___ 585(@300wpm)
“What if mine are better?” he suggests. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but your life plans are mediocre. A mediocre school, a mediocre setting. I know you’ve worked your ass off to achieve it, and maybe that was the ceiling for you before you met me, but it isn’t now. Don’t you get that? I can take you higher. You let me use you all the damn time. Use me.”
I feel like my heart is in my throat, him lecturing me this way. It’s not unheard of for him to call me out, but normally, he doesn’t need to. Normally, I’m not acting like a chicken shit.
I shake off his words and pull up my facts. “If I went to City College, it would cost me $20,000 a year more than the private school in Pennsylvania, Carter. Over the course of a bachelor’s degree, that’s a lot of money. And I don’t want to go to City College, I want to go to the one where I earned a free ride. I like the school in PA, I like the campus—”
“Like, like, like. Do you like me, or do you love me?”
Huffing, I tell him, “That’s not fair. You’re not a college.”
“You love me,” he states. “And I love you. Even aside from wanting to be with you, I want more for you than mediocrity. More than anyone else I have ever met, you deserve it.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I echo his own sentiment right back at him. “People don’t always get what they deserve, remember?”
“Not always, but in this instance, you can. Just let me give it to you.”
I should feel better about the offer I know is coming, but with him offering to help me pay for school if I go here, I have one less excuse. Clearly, whether or not I actually like the school I attend is lower on his priority list than location. “Do you want me to have regrets? You’re askin’ me to go all-in on the success of our relationship, because if I make this compromise, if I go to the school I don’t want to go to and then we break up? I will regret making this decision.”
Apparently unconcerned, Carter shakes his head. “I’m not asking you to make that kind of compromise. I’m not asking you to do anything you would regret in the unlikely event that it doesn’t work out between us.”
“But you are.”
He’s quiet for a moment, holding my gaze, then he says, “I’m not talking about City College, Zoey.”
“That’s the only college in the city that—”
He doesn’t let me finish. He cuts me off and steals all of my words by saying, “I got you an interview at Columbia.”
Everything stops for a moment. I stare up at him, afraid to breathe. He stares down at me, awaiting a response. His words play in my head again, but I can’t entirely absorb them. They don’t make sense—the words are too incredible to be true, aren’t they? I know Carter gets shit done when he wants to, but there’s no way…
He got me an interview at Columbia?
Finally, I manage to ask, “What—what do you mean? What kind of interview?”
“An interview,” he says, meaningfully. “An admissions interview.”
My stomach drops and my head shakes of its own volition. “That’s impossible. I didn’t even apply to Columbia, and they—”
“It’s not impossible, because it’s done,” he says, not bothering to let me argue. Reaching down and tenderly pushing his fingers through my hair, he says, “I couldn’t say anything to you until I knew for sure I could pull it off because I didn’t want to risk you being disappointed, but I’ve been working on it like a pet project. Padded your resume a bit, had Kasey offer you the book reviews so you can list the school paper. Bought you all those ACT books and left you to your studying so you’d hopefully do well enough to meet their general admissions criteria. Letting you have salutatorian can’t hurt. I figured it would help if you met their standards on your own, but I’ve been talking to my Columbia contact about you, stressing that in order to perform as well as I want to for them, it would really help me if I could bring my brilliant girlfriend with me.”
Covering my face with my hands, I tell him, “You probably oversold me. They’ll meet me and be expecting Einstein with boobs.”
“Nah. They know the score. Unless you drool your way through the interview and can’t string a sentence together, they’ll make sure you get in. When there’s a student they want to let in, they search their admissions materials for reasons to justify their admission, and you have plenty.”
“But I’m nobody,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief. “I mean, yeah, I have the grades, but… I can’t believe they want to let me in. Just because you asked them to?”