by
Aimee
(aimeed@earthlink.net)
The actual year of her birth was to remain forever obscured in the mists of time, known only to herself and the DMV, and she for one tried her best to forget from the day she turned twenty-five. Maybe she was starting a little young, but hell, she had to be prepared.
As usual, it was nothing big. She got a card and a lovely scarf from Maxwell and Sarah to mark the occasion, and Niles baked her a cake and put ten candles too many on it. "Pul-leeze," she told him. "The candles represent my age, not the number of years since you've had sex."
C.C.'s mind was on two things that day: the long-dreaded Annie II auditions with a few hundred screaming brats singing off-key, and how best to begin lying about her age. She never gave a moment's thought to the actual day of her birth. No one had ever told her anything about it.
B.B. Babcock chose to deliver her last child at home. Stewart steadfastly refused to have that mess conducted in their bed, cold though it was, so she delivered in one of the townhouse's guestrooms. They tried to persuade her to go to a hospital like a normal person, but she wasn't going to go any place that depressing to deliver her last child. And she knew it would be her last, because as soon as it was born, she was leaving the cold bastard husband who'd given her this and her other two children.
She went into labor in the middle of a rousing swing party at their townhouse, and when informed by her husband that she was to waste no time getting her ass up the stairs and into bed, and no she could not stay just one more dance, she obeyed resentfully. Stewart and their butler, Simmons, helped her to the second floor room where she was put to bed. The doctor, handily enough, just happened to be one of the guests, and he promised to be there as soon as he'd grabbed some cocktail shrimp to keep his energy up.
B.B. grabbed Stewart by the lapels of his tuxedo and snarled, "Just keep his alcohol level down!"
Stewart left quickly to hurry the stupid bastard up, and met his two older children outside. Seven year old Noel and three year old D.D. watched in wonder and curiosity as their mother prepared herself to give birth in a voluminous pink dressing gown with feathery trim.
"Go back to Bobo," Stewart told them sternly. They reluctantly but unquestioningly returned to their nanny. It never occurred to them to question.
Chastity Claire Babcock wasted no time making an entrance. Fashionably late was not her style. At 3:30 a.m. on November the second, during a raging thunderstorm, precisely five and a half hours after her mother went into labor, C.C. expressed her displeasure with the world around her for the first time, and for the first time, the world leapt to obey. Her squalling cry pierced all the way to the nursery on the other side of the third floor, where Noel whispered deviously to D.D., "I bet she'll be prettier than you are." It was two weeks before D.D. again dared to whine when Nanny Bobo brushed out her long, strawberry blonde hair.
As soon as B.B. was presentable, the party moved in there.
"So where's the baby?" asked her cousin Donald. "It's her party."
B.B. shrugged. "Bobo's got her, darling. That's what a nanny is for."
"No," said C.C. mutinously. "No, Bobo." She shook her short golden curls for emphasis.
"But love, all you have to do is go downstairs and give Mummy a kiss, smile pretty, and come back up and you can read stories or listen to records until bedtime." Bobo was desperate. She'd been ordered to have C.C. put in a brief appearance at her mother's party, but it was getting late and C.C. was adamant about not going downstairs.
"Screw Mummy."
Bobo gasped. She slapped C.C.'s hand sharply, causing her to recoil in shock. Nobody slapped C.C.! "Never say that again! Where did you pick that up?"
Bobo knew exactly where C.C. picked that up. It was from her handsome, incorrigible father. Stewart had only bitter words for the woman who'd taken off to go travel as soon as she recovered from C.C.'s birth. "What the hell does she mean, she doesn't want the responsibility? What responsibility? That's what we hired the damn nanny for!"
C.C., now two, had been shuffled off to her mother's newer, pinker townhouse as soon as B.B. showed up back in New York City over a year and a half later. The now divorced Babcocks communicated entirely through secretaries, lawyers, and Bobo.
"Go home to Daddy," said C.C.
Bobo sighed. "Daddy doesn't want us right now. He's very busy. He needs us to stay with Mummy for a bit."
C.C. said another expletive, this time one that Noel had taught her. Bobo groaned.
Eventually, the promise of a chocolate sweet induced C.C. to be led downstairs to the gathering in the drawing room. It was the aftermath of one of B.B.'s famous dinner parties. Far more sedate than the swing party the night of C.C.'s birth, a B.B. Babcock dinner party was a coveted invitation dispensed only to those who had plenty of money, preferably young people with old money, and were either great fun or so socially "correct" that they could be lepers and they'd still be the best of the best.
C.C. stood shyly in the middle of the room, unable to find the woman called "Mummy." Her long white nightgown sashed in red made a very pretty picture, and several people reached out to hug or smile at her or offer her some treat from the buffet table. C.C.'s smile was shy and hesitant, but she accepted the treats readily enough and submitted to their embraces.
Suddenly the world went all flopsy as she found herself dangling in the air, enfolded in a scented embrace. "C.C.!" cried B.B.. "There's my little girl. I've missed you all day!"
C.C. allowed herself to rest comfortably against B.B.'s considerable bosom, even wrapping her little legs around B.B. and her arms around the swanlike neck. She toyed with a pretty, fiery red curl dangling from B.B.'s chignon.
Mummy was so pretty. C.C. wished that she looked like that, with bright hair that tossed and bounced like a candle's flame, and creamy translucent skin. Mummy was soft and small and moved with straight posture and a slight sway to her hips, and she smelled of flowers.
Just when she was beginning to feel content and comfortable, she found herself back in Bobo's arms.
"Wave bye-bye, C.C.," said Bobo. C.C. turned and waved to the assembled company, her huge eyes following her mother. "Stay," she coaxed. She hadn't known that parties were so bright and exciting.
Bobo laughed. "So you liked the party, did you? Well, there will be plenty more of them. For now, we'll go up to the nursery and have a chocolate candy for being such a good girl."
"Mummy," C.C. protested fretfully.
Bobo gave her a stern look, bearing her up the sweeping, curved staircase until the party could no longer be seen. "Mummy's busy just now," she said.
With a two-year-old's attention span, C.C. soon seemed to forget her troubles when presented a piece of chocolate. She nibbled daintily at it.
Bobo saw that she was still sad, though, and brought a blonde porcelain doll in a blue dress down from a shelf. C.C. loved that doll, which she called Morgan, though she was rarely permitted to play with it, because Morgan was very old and extremely costly.
B.B. had Morgan give C.C. a kiss. "Can I have some candy?" asked "Morgan" in a high-pitched voice.
"No," C.C. said sternly. "Mummy's busy." And she seized Morgan and threw her on the floor.
Playing quietly in a corner, D.D. cast frightened eyes at her sister and wished that Noel was there. He seemed to be the only one that unruly C.C. listened to.
Mummy and Daddy were busy for years. By the time C.C. was old enough to go to school, she was more than aware that "busy" was a synonym for "not interested."
She lived with Stewart most of the time, as did D.D. and Noel when they were on vacation from school. Only on the occasional vacation was B.B. in town, but Stewart quickly shipped her off to her mother given half a chance, for C.C. had acquired the most annoying habit.
She loved business meetings. Stewart couldn't count the number of times Bobo had interrupted him looking for C.C. only to find her hiding under a table or "making pretty" to one of his associates to try and learn what was the amber liquid in the cut-crystal tumblers that seemed to be an integral part of "business."
C.C. adored the scent of cigars, the occasional taste of brandy, but most of all she loved the handsome men in suits talking so urgently about things she didn't understand, but wanted to. Sometimes there were women there, too, sleek, elegant women in black or red or gray, who were as active and "busy" as the men were. Whatever they were doing, they acted as though the fate of the world rested upon its success, and C.C. wanted to be a part of it.
Each of these forays into the world of adults, however, was followed by a roaring, ceiling-crashing tantrum when C.C.'s childlike ambitions were laughed at by the grownups and she was pronounced "pretty" and "precocious" and Bobo was sent for to carry her back to the nursery.
Soon enough, however, school put an end to C.C.'s forays into the world of investing. Despite continual pleas by Bobo, Stewart decided that since B.B. wouldn't settle down and take her half of the responsibility for C.C., that responsibility would have to belong to a suitable boarding school.
C.C. was terrified, but with her usual bravado, she faced the new situation head on, and with the innocence of a child and the arrogance of one who has never experienced authority before, she assumed that her topsy-turvy world could be made the way she wanted. When she and her classmates pronounced the food "icky," C.C. demanded something better. She also demanded a room with only one roommate. This business of having to share her living space, including the bathroom, with three others, was totally unacceptable to one who had always had a nursery suite to herself.
Neither C.C. nor the adults who gaped at her behavior understood it, but what she really wanted was security. She wanted to know that there was something reliable in her life over which she had at least a little control, and her every request was met with disbelief, amusement, or anger.
Stewart was called, and Bobo was sent to investigate.
C.C. stood before her in the headmaster's office, hair pulled primly back into a low ponytail, wearing a quiet blue and green plaid skirt, starched white shirt, and blue cardigan, the school uniform.
"C.C., you cannot behave like this!" Bobo wailed. "There are some things even a Babcock must do, and one of those is obey the rules! This is the best private school in New York, please don't get yourself kicked out!"
They had a long talk, or rather Bobo had a long talk at C.C., about the responsibilities as well as privileges of being a Babcock. C.C. slowly came to understand the value of finding the advantages in any situation even when the situation couldn't be changed to suit her wishes. When she was an adult, Bobo explained, as a Babcock she would have everything she ever dreamed of. Now, she must bide her time and wait. Now she had to play by others' rules and be who they wanted her to be. But someday the world would be hers, and every beautiful exciting dream would come true.
Noel reluctantly agreed with Bobo when C.C. ran to him crying. "Dry your tears, C.C. Bobo is right. Part of being a Babcock is having a lot of things others haven't got. We're very lucky that way. But there are also more rules for us than for others because there's this huge name we have to live up to."
C.C. scowled. "You mean, I get pretty dresses and horses and other things because I'm special, but I also have to be good all the time because I'm special?" It was as close as her five-year-old mind could come to grasping what they were trying to explain.
"Sort of. It's just easier if you follow the rules. Come on, I'll bet you a new record that you can't arm-wrestle me."
Now this C.C. could understand. Happily, she pounced on her brother and promptly lost her favorite record, but she was smiling again nonetheless.
C.C. eventually came to love school as the only security she had ever known. Vacations were awkward because she barely knew her parents. The first time she went to visit her mother, she couldn't even find the way to her room.
Besides, she finally got to know her brother and sister, who attended the same school. D.D. was eight, a charmer with strawberry blonde curls and the same large blue eyes as C.C. Noel was twelve, inquisitive, gawky, and already indelibly stamped with the label of "nerd." He was, however, a walking encyclopedia of social correctness, and C.C. soon came to rely on him to guide her through those treacherous waters known as "society." Since D.D. had little interest in the world of academia, Noel became C.C.'s best friend, idol, and tutor, the only person she could ever remember who always had time for her and approved of her.
C.C. could remember little of the next ten years of her life. One year blended into the next into the next. With each, she was a little taller, a little more polished, a little less open. She couldn't say how it happened exactly, but one morning she awoke in her bedroom and found herself sixteen, not a girl anymore but a debutante.
A look in the mirror generally found her pleased with what she saw. Despite a voluptuosity that she interpreted as plumpness, she held the promise of great beauty, the kind that ages well. Her eyes were a vivid, arresting blue, her skin a healthy, smooth ivory. She had a small nose, a wide mouth given to naughty, catlike smiles, and strong yet delicate bone structure. She would have been kittenish if not for the high, defined cheekbones and slim, arched brows that gave her the look of the trueborn aristocrat. This took her out of the realm of "pretty" and into the realm of superb. She was not the kind of beautiful that made boys come running; no, she was far too patrician for that, but she was certainly noticeable.
Her body was unfashionably curvy, and she had already embarked on what would be a lifetime of dieting to try and narrow her round hips and reduce her deep cleavage to more manageable and less blatant proportions, for C.C. did things to a sweater that few girls could compare to and few boys could fail to notice.
She didn't realize it, though, because it had been so drummed into her that fashionable and pretty were synonymous, that she yearned after a tiny, willowy body and didn't notice that she had the old-world magnificence of an eighteenth century French courtesan.
C.C. was a perfectionist, rigid in her adherence to routine and convention. To all outward appearances, she was an excellent, if rather too forward, example of what a young well-bred woman should be. She could walk down a grand staircase with a heavy book on her head, wear diamonds with careless ease and grace, conduct a conversation on any topic acceptable to the person she was trying to charm, and keep a smile pasted on under any circumstances. C.C. often privately thought that she wouldn't be surprised if the school someday blew up and she was borne off to the morgue a perfectly groomed, calmly smiling corpse.
No one is only what he or she seems, however, and C.C. was privately concerned that she was, deep down, exceedingly vulgar. She had a tendency, when off her guard, to smile too widely, laugh raucously, and let rip with sarcastic remarks just for the fun of exercising her formidable wit. Then, of course, there were those breasts of hers. And C.C., who had always sought entry into the exclusive and exciting "old boys network" that existed even in school years, had discovered entirely new dimensions to her favorite playmates. Kissing sent little ripples of pleasure down her spine, and as for anything beyond kissing, well, wow. Enough said. There was only one thing she knew of at sixteen that she hadn't done, and the old-fashioned streak in her told her she'd better save that one for her husband, or at least for when she was old enough that it wouldn't be the end of her career if she got pregnant. It might be the seventies, but she was still a Babcock. There were standards.
About two weeks after her sixteenth birthday, an unexpected event occurred: she got a telephone call from her mother at school to say that B.B. was in town and wanted to have lunch and go to the theater, just the two of them.
"Shit," said C.C. in annoyance.
"It was horrible, Maria. She says it's already time to start thinking about husbands. She told me that if I can catch a husband and get married as soon as I graduate, I don't need to worry about going to college and having a career."
Maria's jaw dropped, despite the gum in it. "What century is she living in?"
"Ours," C.C. replied sourly. "Unfortunately."
"So if you had such a terrible time, why are you lit up like a Christmas tree?"
"The theater," C.C. replied dreamily. "The lights, the music, the feeling I get just being on Broadway. I wish I could be an actress."
"Why don't you?" Maria asked.
"Because I have all the artistic talent of a dead dog." And just to prove it, C.C. treated her roommate to an a cappella rendition of the entire first act of Carousel, singing all the parts from soprano to bass herself.
She could really sympathize with poor Guinevere. Where were the simple joys of maidenhood?
C.C. was delighted to hear her brother's voice on the telephone. He was in his first year of graduate school in philosophy at Northwestern, but he was still her confidante and an amazing source of the most delicious gossip. Noel's steady pipeline of on dits had done amazing things for C.C.'s popularity.
Sure enough, her favorite relative had news. "Want to hear the latest?"
"'Bout who?"
"Dee."
"Who -- I mean, what has our dear sister done now?"
Noel grinned at her cattiness. "She is engaged!"
C.C.'s jaw dropped. "To who?"
"Paul Beckinger."
"Freckles? D.D. is gonna marry him? Ugh, that means she'd have to -- with him -- ugh!"
She could just hear the deviously pleased look on his face. "Don't I know it. And want to know what else? It gets better!"
"Ooh! Tell me!"
"He is already fooling around with that redheaded scholarship student."
"Carole?" she gasped in scandalized delight.
"That's the one. He's got it bad for her, but he also wants D.D., so he's marrying the one and banging the other."
"At least he's marrying the right one," she said viciously.
Noel laughed, agreeing completely. He was the only person on earth who fully approved of her, because he was just as stuffy, catty, and sarcastic as she was. "So, are we going to tell her?"
"Umm, when she apologizes for telling people I'm not a natural blonde. Listen, Noel, I've got to get to lab. I'll catch up with you later for the latest."
C.C. ran off in the opposite direction of the lab, to D.D.'s room. D.D. was always making her life miserable because D.D. was prettier. D.D. was tiny, slender, had a little heart-shaped face and a sweet smile. Boys flocked to D.D., and she took a sadistic delight in rubbing it in C.C.'s face. In all her seventeen years, C.C. had never admitted to the secret admiration she felt for her sister's beauty and popularity.
D.D. had dug herself a big hole this time. C.C. couldn't decide whether it would be more fun to pop her bubble or wait for D.D. to find out for herself.
Oh, damn, she hated these attacks of conscience, but she was going to tell D.D.
"Look at her," B.B. said to Stewart in irritation. "She's so irritating! She'd be gorgeous if she didn't have that awful prissy attitude! She's all Babcock. There's no sexy there at all. The only things she's got that any other girl doesn't have are some brains and a bitchy tongue!"
"Gee, wonder who she got that from!" Stewart said dryly to his ex-wife.
"Who'll marry her?"
"Lots of boys will want to marry her."
"For what, her straight-A average?"
"No, for the ten-million dollar trust I'm going to settle on her for her eighteenth birthday."
B.B.'s eyes lit up. "Stewie, you monster. Are you trying to sell your baby girl?"
"Beebs," he said, knowing how much she hated that nickname. "I am a businessman. I am merely enhancing the packaging on a product to entice more customers to take a look."
B.B. smiled at him for the first time in fifteen years. "Stewie, you are clever."
It was nearing midnight at the last ball of the debutante season. Young, bold, and now fabulously wealthy in her own right thanks to a generous trust fund, C.C. had fended off more suitors than she could count, though realistically she knew it was her money and connections they wanted, not her. Most of them decided she wasn't worth the grief after she delivered a carefully planned attack of witticisms that left them feeling like they'd been placed in front of a firing squad. She supposed she ought to feel bad about it, but C.C. was fighting for her independence.
Now, she was trying to avoid the crowning jewel in her tiara, every debutante's ultimate goal. His name was Harry Winston, and they'd known each other since childhood. His family went back for centuries and just got richer with every passing generation, largely from marrying heiresses like C.C. Harry was a nice guy with a great future as a businessman ahead of him. He was handsome in a rather pretty way that didn't really get her heart pounding, he had every possible athletic accomplishment and social grace you could want in a man, and he was after C.C. Babcock in a big way. She had a vague feeling that unlike many of her suitors, he actually felt something for her. But she was going to Bryn Mawr in the fall to study business. Having a husband would probably put a slight crimp in her plans.
C.C. had her future all planned out. She was going to graduate at the top of her class in college, find a good job as a business manager or financial planner, preferably in some fairly entertaining field where her life would be about more than just numbers, and as soon as she had settled her career, she would find that husband her mother kept harping about, settle down, and have gorgeous, brilliant babies. By thirty, she'd be a power to contend with, married to a power to contend with, and have future powers to contend with being walked in the park by their nanny.
She felt a little trepidation when she ended up sitting out several dances because most of the young men had already tried their luck with her and found that she gave no quarter. A kiss or two, that was all, and C.C. danced nimbly out of the jaws of matrimony, for during a girl's debutante season, it had to be assumed that any overtures might end at the altar. C.C. made sure they ended at the front door instead.
Harry Winston, with whom she'd already danced twice, brought her a cup of punch. "C.C., you look like a vision tonight. Almost angelic."
C.C. laughed up at him as he stood over her chair. "But you're too smart to fall for that, aren't you?"
"Of course. You're the same girl, after all, who ran Carole Gulliver's undies up the flagpole at school when she slept with your sister's fiancé."
C.C. shrugged. "Hey, Harry, it's called Babcock solidarity. I couldn't let her marry him."
Harry shuddered. "Remind me never to get on your bad side."
"Never get on my bad side, Harry."
Harry dropped down next to her. "So when is D.D. coming home from France?"
"She already is. See her over there, playing the sophisticated divorcee? I must admit, the role suits her well."
"Yes, it does. Listen, C.C., I've been wanting to talk to you about something serious."
Oh, lord, here it comes, she thought.
"I graduate in two weeks and start at Stafford & Kensington in August."
"And you want to know what I'm getting you for graduation? You know I'm good for a fountain pen." C.C. laughed nervously.
"No, C.C.," he said earnestly. "Look, I know you're planning on going to college, but I have a better idea. Let's get married. I'd buy you the Jacksons' mansion since they're moving to Boston, remember the one you always said looked like the mansion on Dark Shadows?"
"And when we went visiting there a few years ago, I went hunting for ghosts and you cowered next to the crudite," C.C. reminisced.
"Yes! If you insist on going to college, you could go someplace here in the city, but there's really no need. You'd never have to lift a finger."
C.C. was sorely tempted to lift a certain finger in his direction right then. But she forced herself to be patient. "Harry, I've tried not to lead you on, but if I have to be direct, I will. I am going to Bryn Mawr in the fall. I don't have any interest in marriage right now. Perhaps in five years when I have a degree and a job, I can start thinking about marriage, but now is not the time."
Harry just looked confused. "But C.C., it's a brilliant idea. We'd be great together."
Then where are the fireworks? The excitement, the longing, the connection? If we're so perfect together, why don't you love me?
But C.C. was entirely too practical to voice such thoughts. Instead, she answered icily, "It's not the right career move for me, although I can see how it would be a perfect move for you, considering that my father gives all his business to Stafford & Kensington."
She bit her lips at once, knowing she shouldn't have been so sharp. She expected an angry retort, but Harry just wilted. "All right, if that's what you want." He got up and walked away.
C.C. was left stunned and numb. She went through the motions of a dance with her father, who babbled on about business and never noticed a thing until he was escorting her back to her chair and B.B. exploded on the scene.
"Do you know what she's done now?" B.B. hissed at Stewart. "This is all your influence, you greedy bastard. She's just like you!"
"What did you do, kitten, bet Noel he couldn't get a date with Carole Gulliver?"
C.C. laughed her loud, raucous laugh, then quickly stifled herself as people began to twist their heads to stare at her.
B.B. glared at her. "Don't you dare laugh at a moment like this! Stewart, she's refused Harry Winston!"
Stewart frowned at C.C. "Are you sure you know what you're doing, C.C.? He's one of the most eligible men in the city."
"I'll marry after college," she said stubbornly.
Stewart sighed. If there was nothing he could do, then that was that. He'd made the effort.
B.B. glared at her recalcitrant, unrepentant child and her unsupportive ex-husband. "Well, there are a few things neither of you know," she said darkly, "And when you find out, you'll wish you'd thought about this more carefully."
C.C. and Stewart shrugged, and he went off to dance with his so-called "business partner," a lithe redhead named Alexia who thought that a solid portfolio included a nice array of sketches.
Toward midnight, the band was quieted for a special announcement.
Alexander Winston stepped up to the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a wonderful occasion, and an event which has occurred tonight has made it all the better for two happy young lovers here. I am delighted to announce the engagement of my son Harry . . . to Ms D.D. Babcock."
C.C. stood in stunned silence, pinned like a butterfly under glass. From the stage, Harry shot her a look that was half-regretful, half-triumphant. From the corner, B.B. Babcock glared darkly at her, as if to say, This is all your fault.
Noel, Stewart, and Harry were the only men she danced with at D.D.'s wedding in late July. The only dance she really enjoyed was the one with Noel, when they made fun of the bride's daisy-covered gown, the groom's weak chin, and the ice sculpture, which had an unfortunate accident. When it began to melt, the swan's once proud neck dipped lower and lower and finally broke off altogether.
"I hope that doesn't happen to him on his wedding night," quipped Noel.
"I hope it does," C.C. retorted.
C.C. was relieved to leave for college two weeks later so she didn't have to stomach watching Harry and D.D. pretend to be in love. On her way out of town, she had the limo driver stop at Vidal Sassoon. It wasn't her regular hairdresser, but she didn't want anyone to find out what she was doing.
C.C. needed to change. She needed to be someone other than prissy, doll-like debutante C.C. with the right looks and the right lineage and a fat pile of cash. She intended to mold her future to her own design, and she would start by obliterating her resemblance to the well-bred statue who evidently existed only to marry and have children.
The stylist cut her long hair bluntly off at her shoulders. She then brought a series of color swatches. C.C. compared them to her skin tone then selected carefully. "That one," she said, pointing to a medium brown.
"This is gonna hurt," groaned the stylist. Covering C.C.'s silky golden mane with brown dye was almost physically painful. It was definitely aesthetically offensive.
When she was finished, those blue eyes still stared out at C.C., but the darker hair turned her from an attention-getting junior sophisticate to a serious, studious-looking businesswoman who was moderately attractive but nobody's debutante. C.C. was firmly convinced that she had put her socially prominent past behind her until it came in handy for business purposes. Believing somehow that this would make her just like other girls, she went off to school to start the rest of her life.
C.C.'s freshman year roommate was a sweet English girl named Sarah Rush who reminded C.C. of nothing so much as a delicately pretty doe. Sarah had long, "naturally" blonde hair and a quiet demeanor that hid an insatiable spirit. They got along surprisingly well, despite the unlikely combination of a sensitive, romantic English Lit major and a hard-nosed, practical business major. Sarah had a talent for seeing the emotions that C.C. tried to hide, and C.C. had a talent for involving the shy Sarah in every sort of mischief from TP-ing frat houses to keeping a lecherous professor from getting tenure by revealing his "tutoring sessions" with several freshman girls.
She couldn't, however, get Sarah involved in anything that pertained to boys.
"Sarah," C.C. told her one day about a month after school started, "If I find out you're into this whole lesbian chic thing, I'm going to be very upset."
Sarah laughed lightly, loving C.C.'s wit. "Oh, no. It's just that no one can compare to -- well, someone I know from home."
"A boyfriend?" C.C. was intrigued and wounded that Sarah hadn't shared this tidbit before.
"No," sighed Sarah. "He's several years older than me, and he's never even noticed I'm alive. He's just a friend of a cousin's. But I'm so in love with him, C.C."
How could you be in love with a man who never gave you the time of day? C.C. wondered. But Sarah was still talking.
"Here's a picture of him with his butler," Sarah said, pulling a photo out of a drawer.
C.C. gasped. The man had dark blonde hair and a rakish grin like the very devil himself. He was standing next to a slender-muscular dark man who was also drop-dead gorgeous, but in a more refined, conservative way. "He's utterly gorgeous."
"Isn't he? I like his hair best. It's so thick and dark, and that flippy thing it does is so adorable," sighed Sarah.
C.C. was mildly surprised to discover that Sarah's mysterious love was the dark one, though she didn't know why. "Wow, Sarah, he is hot." And he was. He had deep, dark eyes and a generous mouth, but Sarah was right. It was the flippy thing that did it. Nevertheless, the butler wasn't bad either. C.C. didn't feel too embarrassed about mistaking the servant for the master. After all, it wasn't like she was ever going to meet either one, but she had a healthy feminine appreciation for both.
"So what's this paragon of manhood's name?" she asked, tapping a long fingernail on flippy-thing man.
Sarah sighed again. "Maxwell Sheffield," she said worshipfully.
Go on to Part Two
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