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"She was fat?" I am seriously stunned "She runs like four !"

"Well," Chris says, with another shrug "Maybe now Not back then She told me she’d been heavy her whole life, and that’s why she’d never…you know Had a guy before"

Whoa Rachel had still been a virgin post–grad school? Hadn’t she e, even?

Apparently not

"So how long did this go on? This affair," Cooper asks, apparently in an effort to get

Chris sinks down onto one of the black leather couches, not seeot the cushions wet When you’re as rich as he is, I guess things like that don’t h my senior year That’s when I realized I had to start really studying, you know, to get decent scores on h et into law school I told her--Rachel--that I was going to hafta play it cool for a while It seeood tio anywhere, her andaround Richmond"

"Did you tell her that?" Cooper asks

"Tell her what?"

I see a muscle in Cooper’s jaitch "Did you tell Rachel that it couldn’t go anywhere?" he elaborates, with forced patience

"Oh" Chris doesn’t azes "Yeah"

"And?"

"And she flipped onstuff up She picked up my computer monitor and threw it across the quad, no joke I was so scared, I moved in with some buddies of mine off-caain?" A part of me can’t believe Chris’s story Another part of me believes it all too well Not that I can picture Rachel throwing a computertwo girls--and al three other people--either

"No," Chris says "Not till a couple weeks ago, when I got back fro volunteer stuff, as part of the deal I had with my dad about law school Then I walked into Fischer Hall, and the first thing I see is Rachel, up at the reception desk, bawling so or other Only, you know, she’s all…skinny I nearly passed out, let me tell you But she just ss, and all that"

"And you believed her" Cooper’s voice is toneless

"Yeah" Chris sighs "She seeht loss, her new hairstyle, the clothes…I thought it was a good sign, you know That she wason"

"And the fact that she had purposefully set out to get a jobyour parents live in," Cooper says "That didn’t raise a red flag that she ht?"