HEN HIGH SCHOOL ENDED, I couldn’t wait to go off to college. Home had become boring—Jack was married, Lucky was married, Mark was full of himself and Matt was, well, Matt was actually okay, though off at the fire academy fulfilling his destiny. Trevor, too, was away, but at college. I was so bored at home, so tired of the same old classmates, so dismissive of my hometown. I was dying to go somewhere where no one would know me, where I could make my own mark, to be something other than an O’Neill of the O’Neills—Mike’s daughter, Betty’s daughter, MikenBetty’s daughter, Jack’s sister, Lucky’s sister, Mark’s sister, Matt’s sister, the O’Neill sister, the O’Neill girl. I couldn’t wait to be just Chastity O’Neill. No expectations, no legacy, just me and the new college friends I’d make and all those cool professors and fascinating classes. Binghamton University was waiting for me.

Oh, and Trevor. Didn’t I mention that? Right. Trevor happened to go to Binghamton University, too. Just a happy coincidence, I told myself. Definitely not the reason I’d applied there. He was a junior; he liked it; he was a great family friend, so that was a nice bonus, someone to share rides with. That was all. You betcha.

When we arrived at the beautiful campus, I tried to hide my excitement as Mom morosely made my bed and my father glumly inspected the fire exits and sprinklers. I chatted with other girls on my hall, lugged in the tiny fridge that bore the dents and scratches of three of my four brothers, hung up my Dave Matthews poster on my side of the room.

An hour after we arrived, Trevor popped in to welcome me to college.

“Hey, Chas,” he said, grinning, gorgeous, those hot-fudge eyes causing warm things to happen to me south of the border.

“Trevor!” my mother barked. “You’ll look after her, won’t you?”

“Sure, Mom,” he said, slinging his arm around me. I tried not to blush.

“No drinking,” my father growled, angry at the fact that his baby girl dared to leave home (or, for that matter, leave infancy). “No drugs, no idiot boys. You hear the fire alarm, you get the hell out of this goddamn building, you understand?”

“Yes, Dad. Thanks.”

We walked around campus, bought the requisite sweatshirts at the bookstore, admired the big shade trees and lush flower beds. When they could stall no more, my parents trudged toward the parking lot, Trevor and me trailing behind.

“I’ll miss you,” I said. A clamp seemed to circle my throat, and panic zipped up my legs.

My father stared at the ground. “Be good,” he muttered.

I burst into tears. So did Mom. Dad, too. We fell into each other’s arms, sobbing. “Have fun.” Dad choked.

“Study hard.” Mom hiccupped.

“I love you, Mom,” I squeaked. “I love you, Daddy. I’ll miss you so much.”

“Okay, okay,” Trevor said, good-naturedly pulling us apart. “She’ll be fine. We’ll come home soon. Come on, Chas, let me get you drunk.”

“You think you’re funny?” my dad asked, wiping his eyes. “You’re not funny. No drinking, Chastity.”

“And no unprotected sex!” Mom added, buckling herself into the seat, then blowing her nose.

“No sex at all!” Dad yelled. “And no drugs of any kind, young lady.” He got into the car and pointed at me. “No drinking, drugs or sex. You understand me? I will personally kill you if I hear anything different. Love you. Call us tonight.”

As they drove off, it started to dawn on me just how alone I was about to be.

“So, Chas,” Trevor said, “you okay? I have some stuff to do, but I could hang out for a while.”

“I’m fine,” I said, wanting very much for him to hang out for a while but being too much of a tough cookie to actually ask.

“Good girl. Want to have dinner one night?”

“Sure,” I said, still gazing in the direction of my parents’ car.

“Great. I’m in the directory. Give me a ring.” He gave me a quick, perfunctory hug, then loped away. I watched as four girls surged toward him. He stopped, chatted, continued, turning to wave at me as he rounded the corner of the building.

Sure, I’d been dying to get away from the irritating, know-it-all attitude of Mark. From Jack and Lucky’s constant stream of advice and input. I couldn’t wait to go to class, read, write papers, do labs, make friends, have a boyfriend.

But it was surprisingly hard.

I began to realize how much being the O’Neill girl defined me. Here, no one knew why I ate so quickly, showered faster than a Marine, swore with such color and energy. I found out rather quickly that most college boys don’t want to be instantly pinned during a friendly little wrestling match, outscored three to one in a basketball game or thrashed during a pool match.

Likewise, it was harder than I’d imagined to make friends with girls. Elaina and I had been best friends for eons already, that kind of tight-knit, unbreachable bond that kept other friends at a distance. Who needed friends when you had a best friend forever, four brothers, their wives and girlfriends, and Trevor? These girly-girls in their capri pants and tiny canvas shoes, their hair-tossing and flirting, were exotic and mysterious to me. On some level, I wanted to be like them; on the other hand, I knew it was impossible for me, five foot eleven and three-quarters, one hundred and fifty-seven pounds with the legendary O’Neill shoulders, to fit in with the cashmere sweater-set clique.

It was lonely.

At least until crew tryouts, that is. Thanks to Lucky’s tutelage, I aced the first round. Coach put me on the exclusive four, which meant I had three instant best friends, all of whom happened to be upperclassmen and who quite admired those O’Neill shoulders. Suddenly, I belonged somewhere based on my own accomplishments. I was judged only for myself, not what my brothers had or had not done. It felt fantastic. I had finally come into my own.

I was meant to row. No tiny little shiny-haired girls on crew, no sir. Every day, we prided ourselves on being tireless, strong, ruthless, relentless. Burning muscles and sweat-drenched T-shirts were our status symbols. We ate together, studied together, hung out in each other’s rooms.

At the Head of the Charles Regatta in October, the Binghamton women’s four creamed the competition, gliding four lengths in front of the second-place crew, soundly beating everyone who mattered: Harvard and Yale and Penn. Even freakin’ Oxford! We were euphoric. Each of us had been perfect, in sync, our every molecule focused on the row—a study in strength, concentration and unity. Such a victory! Binghamton had never placed so high at such a prestigious event, and we found ourselves local celebrities and campus heroes upon return.

To honor the occasion, the entire women’s crew team was invited for dinner at the dean’s home. It was a posh evening—I even wore a skirt and eye shadow, my teammates assuring me that I did not look like I was a drag queen. Dinner at the dean’s! It was a huge honor. We were all nervous, especially me. I was the only underclassman on the winning crew, the only first-year on varsity, and yes, a lot of fuss had been made about me. So when Becca, a senior, offered me a vodka and tonic before the big dinner, I accepted. Then I asked for another. Never having had vodka before, not having eaten anything all day due to said nerves, well, let’s just say I relaxed quite a bit.

And then it happened. It was one of those stupid and fairly common moves many college students make. Drinking, I was just now learning, seemed to lower my inhibitions and loosen the old tongue, but I was doing okay, being rather charming, in fact, or so I thought. When the dean herself asked me—me!—how it felt to have captured first place, beating some of the best crews in the world, what I imagined was a charming and droll answer fell out of my mouth.

“Well, Dean, those candyass Ivy Leaguers should have been drowned at birth by their parents, seeing that they row like spaghetti-armed third graders! I mean, come on! Did you see those weakling rich kid Harvard anorexics?”

I waited for the roar of laughter from my teammates. None came. Glancing around the dean’s posh living room, I noted that my classmates were…uh-oh…frozen in horror.

I had forgotten—oh, so briefly and so critically—that not only had Dean Strothers attended Harvard, but she had rowed while at school. Furthermore, she had a daughter, at Harvard incidentally, who also rowed. Who happened to be on the very crew we so soundly defeated.

I spent the rest of the evening burning in Dean Strothers’s hate-filled glare, trying not to move, trying to melt into the background, which is rather hard to do, since no one wanted to stand closer than four feet. Our celebratory dinner was ruined, the dean was pissed, Coach horrified and my teammates embarrassed. I wanted to crawl into the river and drown.

When dinner finally ended, some four years after it had begun, I slunk across campus to my dorm. It was Thursday night, and tomorrow there were no classes as part of the Columbus Day break. My crewmates and I had planned to storm the campus center and continue our celebration, but there was no way I was going to do that now. Chances were that I’d be the main topic of discussion, and all I wanted was to be alone.

My roommate had gone home for the long weekend, thank God, and I flopped on my bed and cried, torn up that I’d been so thoughtless, so tactless, so stupid, stupid, stupid. I couldn’t get anything right. I was a bull in a china shop. I had no social graces. I would never ever drink again. I’d finally found friends and now they hated me. I was a blight on the sport. I didn’t deserve to row ever again. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

When a knock came on the door an hour later, I didn’t bother getting up, still sniveling in self-disgust.

“Chastity, honey, it’s me,” said a voice. Trevor.

I hadn’t seen much of him since I’d started six weeks earlier, and when I did, he was always surrounded by friends, usually of the female variety, though he was popular with both sexes. He’d wave, come over for a quick chat, pat me on the shoulder and off he’d go, back to the cool kids, to the fabulous upperclassmen, to the throngs of women who seemed to orbit around him.

I’d hoped that we would hang out at college, walk across the beautiful campus, have dinner as he’d promised. In my eighteen-year-old mind, our longtime friendship would blossom into something more—a deep and abiding love—and we would soon marry and live happily ever after.

However, it was all too apparent that this would not be the case. Trevor was too enmeshed to seek me out on more than a cursory basis, fulfilling his promise to my parents. It hurt, seeing him so close, so happy, so unattainable.

I told myself I didn’t care. I had crew. I had my own friends. Once crew was over, I would probably even have time for a boyfriend. So Trevor didn’t matter. That’s what I told myself.

But when I saw him standing in my doorway, frowning at the sight of my gloopy mascara and wobbly mouth, I threw myself into his arms and sobbed with renewed gusto. “Stupid…vodka…dean…candyass…stupid…Harvard,” I bawled, and somehow Trevor strung the story together. He’d already heard several versions, hence his visit to my room. He led me to my bed and sat down, pulling me next to him as I sniveled and blew.

“It’s okay, Chas,” he assured me with a smile. “It’ll be legend in another month. It just seems horrible now.”

“No one likes me, Trevor,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I only had my friends from crew, and now they hate me. I’m nobody here. Just a bigmouth idiot with the O’Neill shoulders.”

“I like you,” Trevor said.

“Right,” I muttered, stealing a glance at his face. His lovely, happy eyes smiled at me. “You only like me because you have to, to stay in my family.”

“Not true,” he said, tickling the inside of my elbow. Heat crawled up my arm, melting my insides. I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t, trapped in the familiar tangle of my crush on Trevor Meade, world’s most popular man. “Not true at all,” he said again.

“It’s true,” I grumbled.

“Come on, Chastity,” he said. “You’re great, you know that.”

“Save the pep talk, buddy,” I said, shoving away from him and standing up. Let him go tickle someone else’s arm. One of his girlfriend’s. Jerk.

“Chas,” he chided. “You are. You’re beautiful and smart and funny, and yes, you do have the O’Neill shoulders and they’re gorgeous. Plus, if we need someone to lift a tree off a car, there you are.”

“Bite me,” I said.

He reached out and grabbed the waistband of my skirt and tugged so that I fell (quite gladly, despite my feigned reluctance) back on the bed. “Sit down and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I don’t. I feel sorry for you, having to babysit me in my time of woe,” I answered.

“I like babysitting you,” he murmured.

“How pathetic.”

He didn’t answer. I sneaked a look up at him, and he was just looking at me, a little smile making the corner of his mouth pull up. My breath stopped, and I could feel my face grow hot. Those damn happy eyes dropped to my mouth, and Trevor’s smile faded.

Then before he could break the moment, before he could turn away, I kissed him, and he didn’t stop me. Instead, he pushed my hair out of my face, and he kissed me back, gently, sweetly, his hand slipping behind my head, his lips moving just right against mine, smooth and warm. I gripped his shirt and sighed against his mouth, and knew that as long as I lived, this would be the one perfect kiss that I’d remember forever.

“Chastity,” he said, but I didn’t give him time to say anything else. I just kissed him again.

He tasted like mint and coffee, and his mouth was soft and sure at the same time, and we fit together so wonderfully…he was solid and warm and strong, and so was I. I leaned back, pulling him with me so that we lay on the bed, and the kiss became deeper, less perfect, more urgent. My fingers slid through the smooth coolness of his thick glossy hair, and I opened my lips for more.

Kissing Trevor felt like summer in June…lovely and lazy and hot, what was yet to come stretching out in front of us, filled with possibility. We kissed for ages without doing anything else, tangled in each other’s limbs, kissing and nuzzling and touching until the wee hours. My shirt was unbuttoned a few, and so was his, but that was as far as we went, even though we were both panting and flushed and sweaty and above the age of consent.

Finally, Trevor pulled back. He was lying on top of me, my legs were wrapped around his, my skirt up around my thighs. His dark, thick hair was tousled, his eyes were heavy-lidded, and I could feel the hardness of his body pressed against mine. His arms were shaking slightly. “I should probably stop,” he said quietly, touching my bottom lip with his forefinger. “I should go.”

“Don’t go, Trevor,” I whispered. “And don’t stop.”

He swallowed and gazed at me, serious and quiet. I could see him weighing the intelligence of what we were about to do, what we had already done, could see his hesitation. Because I’d loved him for so long, been crushed by my yearning for Trevor for so damn long, I slid my hands under his shirt and pulled it over his head. “Please stay,” I said, kissing his beautiful neck.

“Are you sure, Chastity?” he asked, his voice hoarse. I could feel his heart thudding against mine.

“Yes,” I said. Then he was kissing me again, hotter and more urgently than before, his hands in my tangled hair. And I was sure, because after all, I’d loved him for years. Wanted him for years. Wondered and wished and longed for him for years, and having him there on the narrow twin bed, on top of me, I felt more right than I’d ever felt in my life, before or since.

The hot shock of his skin, the smoothness of his back, the noise he made deep in his throat when I bit his shoulder…it all made me hot and tight and dizzy…and so happy. My heart was absolutely certain. When he rolled over so that I lay on top of him, his hands threading through my hair, he smiled at me, and I thought I’d come apart with joy.

He was my first lover, though I knew I wasn’t his. And afterward, instead of making some excuse of how he had to go or maybe this was a mistake, he just slid down a little so that his cheek was resting over my heart, his arms still tight around me. “Are you okay?” he whispered after a few minutes.

“Yes,” I whispered back. “Are you?”

He laughed and lifted his head to smile into my eyes. “Never better,” he said, and I knew I’d love him forever.

For two days, we barely left the room. We got hungry, of course, and when my supply of M&Ms, cream cheese and Wheat Thins ran dry, we went to a diner in town, sitting next to each other in the booth, talking about classes and people and even my social gaffe. We avoided mentioning my family, but otherwise, it was like I always imagined it would be. Once, just when it felt like we’d backslid into pure platonics (during a discussion of the Yankees’ postseason), Trevor touched my cheek, his voice stopping midsentence, and I could tell that he thought I was beautiful and desirable and lovely. I blushed fiercely, feeling the sudden need to look away. Trev laughed that low, naughty chuckle that I’d always wanted to hear directed at me, and my heart swelled with so much emotion that I thought I might cry from pure happiness.

On Sunday, we reluctantly parted, needing to do some studying. “Come to the game with me,” Trevor suggested. The Bearcats were playing at home, and what could be more romantic than the two of us snuggled under a blanket in the stands, holding hands at the football game?

“Okay,” I agreed instantly.

In the doorway, he cupped my face in his hands, studying me. “Chastity, I—” He paused, frowning a little. For a second, my heart stuttered in fear, but then he smiled. “I’ll see you later,” he finished, kissing me softly. He started down the hall, stopped, came back and kissed me again. “I’m really leaving now,” he said. One more kiss, a nuzzle, a hug, a final kiss. Finally, I shoved him away.

“Get out, you big lug.” I grinned, practically floating with happiness. He smiled back and finally ran down the hall. Then I forced my pheromone-saturated brain to focus on my Canterbury Tales paper.

I WAS A LITTLE LATE GOING TO the appointed telephone pole in the stadium parking lot. Trevor’s back was to me, and I broke into a happy run, fully intending to tackle him, nuzzle his neck and possibly cop a feel. But when I saw who he was with, I lurched to a halt.

It was Matt.

“Hey, Sissy!” he bellowed, running to give me a huge hug. I squeezed back hard, realizing just then how much I’d missed him. My boyfriend and my youngest brother, my two favorite men in the whole world.

“Hi, Matt! What are you doing here?” I smiled at Trevor. He didn’t smile back, his eyes flickering between Matt and me. In his pockets, his fists were clenched. My heart fell to the asphalt with a nearly audible thump.

“I thought I’d come for the game, hang out with Trev, see how you’re doing,” Matt said, his face flushed with the cold. A few of the cashmere set circled like vultures, and Matt’s gaze bounced toward them. Oh, he would make a killing this weekend, looking the way he looked and now a fireman to boot.

“Great!” I said. “Trevor and I were gonna catch the game together, too, right Trev?”

“Yup. That’s right,” he answered, forcing a smile.

That was all it took. I knew in that instant that Trevor and I were not going to stay together.

We found our cheap seats and sat huddled, me in the middle, for the duration of the game. I cheered for our guys, asked Matt questions about work and the academy, about Mom and Dad, and Trevor did the same. I didn’t let myself think about the warm length of Trev’s leg against mine, how I already knew and loved his smell, how his unshaven cheek had left beard burn on my chest. I forced myself to be just Matt’s sister, the O’Neill girl, just one of the guys.

Trevor relaxed a little at some point, realizing that I wasn’t going to announce the fact that he’d deflowered the sister of his two best friends in the world, the girl who happened to be the daughter of his surrogate parents. He didn’t speak to me much, though, talking over my head to Matt instead, offering only commentary about the game to me. He couldn’t seem to look me in the eye for more than a second.

When the game was over, Matt said, “Chas, we’re gonna hang out at the pub, okay?”

I was not included, I could tell, being underage and, well, the sister. I glanced at Trevor. He looked away, his jaw tight. “Okay, guys,” I said. “See you in a couple of weeks, Mattie. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” he said, hugging me.

Trevor managed to make eye contact. “Bye, Chastity.”

“See you around!” I called brightly, punching him on the shoulder.

As I left them, I heard Matt say, “Check out that girl in the red jacket. You know her?”

I paused, wanting to hear the answer. “Not yet,” Trevor answered with a laugh.

I started walking again. Sure, he was probably just shooting the shit with Matt. But he didn’t…I could tell…he wasn’t…

The tears were coming hot and fast, so I kept my head down and ran to the library, found a deserted bathroom and cried, my heart open and raw, big bellowing sobs that bounced off the walls. When a librarian came in and asked me if I needed to go to the infirmary for a sedative, I got myself under control, splashed some cold water on my face and went back to my room. I changed, went for a ten-mile run and made my decision.

When Trevor came to my room that evening, any doubt I’d had was cleared up by the misery on his face. “Hey, buddy,” I said with forced cheer. I suggested we go out, because even though I was resolved, I didn’t want to break up in the same room where we’d been making love all weekend. We walked to a bench under a particularly beautiful chestnut tree and sat. The branches rose and then curved downward, nearly to the ground, and the golden leaves sheltered us from passersby, and the dark made what I had to say a little easier. Beside me, Trevor sat stock-still, staring straight ahead, tense and quiet as a cat.

“Trevor,” I said, taking his hand, “I think we might have made a mistake.”

His shoulders dropped. There was no mistaking the utter relief that lightened his expression. “I was just about to say the same thing,” he admitted.

Funny how pride makes you tough, sometimes. I turned to face him a little better and swallowed hard. “Look, Trevor, you mean the world to me. But when I saw you with Matt, well…” My voice broke, but I coughed to cover. “We’re young and foolish, and our whole lives are ahead of us, all that crap.” I swallowed again. “We probably shouldn’t be doing this.”

I thought I sounded pretty good, given that my heart was in an increasingly tightening vise. I tried to smile, succeeded, and watched as Trevor nodded, jamming his hands in his jacket pockets.

“Chas, I should’ve…I should never have…” He swallowed. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault,” he said miserably.

“I think it’s both our faults, okay?” I whispered. “You’re not to blame. It’s just that there’s too much to lose, don’t you think?”

He looked at me, his face so terribly serious and grim. “It’s not that…that I don’t care about you, Chas.” He looked down. “Because I really do.”

The leaves rustled in the breeze, a dozen or so drifting and swirling to the ground. One landed on his hair, and I reached up and took it. “Oh, me too, Trev. But the last thing I want is to have things be weird between us. So maybe we should just get while the getting’s good.”

His face looked so sad. My throat was killing me with unshed tears, my muscles were taut and ready, my pulse was racing. With my whole being, with every corpuscle, I wanted him to object. To say, No. I can’t. I love you, Chastity. I have to be with you. Instead, he nodded. “Yeah. You’re right, Chas.”

We sat in silence a few more minutes, me trying not to swallow too loudly. Then Trevor put his arm around me, hugged me fiercely, so hard my ribs creaked, and let me go.

Standing up, he looked to his left, the direction of my dorm. “Want me to walk you back?” he offered, his voice rough.

“No, no. I, um, I’m gonna run to the library for a book. See you around, big guy.”

I waited until he was out of sight to cry, silent, endless tears that dripped off my chin, cursing my own stupidity. In my hand, I still held the leaf from his hair.

Oh, I knew we’d done the right thing. In that first moment when I saw him with Matt, I knew everything. That he was terrified that being with me would cost him the O’Neill family. That things would change if he were Chastity’s boyfriend. And what about the future? How many eighteen-year-olds marry their first college boyfriend? Inevitably, we’d break up, and what then? Where would he go at Thanksgiving? Would my mother welcome him if I was sobbing in my room because Trevor Meade dumped me? Would Dad think of him as his fifth son if he knew that Trevor had slept with his little girl?

Trevor had already lost a family. I wouldn’t make him an orphan again.