How to Love by Katie Cotugno Read Free Book Online

used at the restaurant, with round slices of lemon floating inside. It seemed weirdly glamorous for school. Most of the faculty carried plastic travel mugs with bank logos on them.
    “Have you given much thought yet to college?” she asked finally, sitting back in her uncomfortable-looking chair and gazing at me shrewdly. She’d put the pen and paper back down on the desk.
    “A little,” I told her, which was a lie. In fact, I thought about college constantly, of where I might go and thepeople I might meet there. There was, at this very moment, a course catalog from Northwestern on my desk at home so well-thumbed it was basically falling apart, the writing program bookmarked with a neon yellow Post-it. I could have recited their arts and sciences requirements from memory. “But I’m only a sophomore, so I figured I had some time.”
    “Well,” Ms. Bowen said, “that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been looking at your records, Serena, and they’re really impressive. A 4.0 GPA every semester you’ve been here, straight honors track since last year. I’d like to see you participating in an extracurricular or two, but the fact is that if you stay on this track, keep taking those APs and doing well on them, you could be eligible for graduation a full year early.” She leaned forward a bit, almost conspiratorial. She looked excited for me. “Is that something you might be interested in working toward?”
    It took me a minute to absorb that information.
A full year early. Eligible for graduation
. I stared at her for a moment, blinking; in the outer office I could hear the sounds of the copier jamming, an assistant’s frustrated
dang
.
    Ms. Bowen took my hesitation as reluctance; she cocked her glossy head to the side, the same sympathetic pose I’d imagined earlier. “Of course, you certainly don’t have to,” she amended. “I know plenty of students who wouldn’t want to miss out on being a senior, and everything that goes with it. I just wanted to let you know that you had the opt—”
    “I’d love to,” I interrupted quickly. I thought of airplanes and huge, drafty lecture halls, locks on cages springing free. “What do you need me to do?”
    *
    What Ms. Bowen needed me to do was pretty simple, at least for the time being: keep doing well in my classes, make a list of the schools I wanted to apply to, and get myself an SAT study book. “We’ll find you some volunteer work for the summer,” she promised, eyes shining like maybe she was just as excited about the prospect of pulling this off as I was. “Beef up your transcripts a bit.”
    *
    In May, two of the waitresses quit, so on top of the extra studying I worked like a demon, three nights a week and then doubles every weekend. I lived in black pants and a starchy white shirt. My father and Roger bought Antonia’s when I was a little girl and I’d been waiting tables just about that long, knew the menu and the regulars all by heart. The truth is, I’d always liked being there: the place all tin ceiling and subway tiles, white linen tablecloths like a hundred communion dresses. There was always a band set up by the bar.
    The guys playing tonight were some of my favorites, a quasi-ridiculous oldies ensemble who covered a lot of Sam Cooke, and I sang along under my breath while I zipped a couple of credit cards through the computer beside the bar. Sometime during the second verse I realized I wasn’t alone:Sawyer was leaning against the hatch and watching me, a wry, secret smile on his face.
    I snapped my jaw shut, blushing and surprised: Sawyer wasn’t even
working
tonight. He hadn’t been on the schedule. I hadn’t done anything nice to my hair. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, street clothes. He was giving off the heat from outside. “Don’t tease,” I ordered, bouncing back after a minute, trying like hell not to let on that my feelings for him hadn’t let up even a little, though he’d been dating Allie for