CHAPTER TEN
LINA
“ D id you see the new post on Notes of New Haven ?” Eden asks as we enter the ice cream parlor on Chapel Street, the small bell above the door chiming cheerfully, entirely opposite from Eden’s tone.
Notes of New Haven is one of Yale’s most notorious gossip sites. It’s infamous for its anonymous tips, unhinged commentary, and terrifying ability to know secrets it shouldn’t.
There’s even a saying around campus: Notes of New Haven knows everything .
No one in our inner circle has been caught in the crossfire yet. The closest it’s gotten has been Braxton and Grant, but only because they’re on the football team, which is probably the only reason we are able to find it entertaining.
“Whose reputation has been torched now?” I groan sarcastically as I approach the counter, fighting another yawn.
Eden doesn’t say anything. She simply flips her phone around, giving me a view of the site’s homepage.
The huge, bold title reads:
SUPERMODEL KARA CARR AND BOYFRIEND JACK VOSS’S RELATIONSHIP ON THE ROCKS?
“Oh no.” I bite my lip, dread pooling in my stomach. I definitely spoke too soon, because this isn’t so entertaining anymore. “What did they say?”
Eden scrolls down and starts reading aloud, her voice lowering slightly despite the lack of anyone nearby.
“Sources spotted Kara Carr storming out of Jack Voss’s off-campus apartment late Saturday night, wearing last night’s heels and none of yesterday’s makeup.
Could this be the end for the supermodel and her supporting lead? ”
I snatch the phone from her hand, eyes scanning the text for more.
The article is dripping with speculation—Kara was crying, Jack didn’t follow her, a neighbor claimed they heard shouting.
Classic Notes of New Haven : all rumors, zero context.
Yet, it somehow manages to almost always be true, or at least partially.
What I can tell by looking at the picture is that Kara is not crying, nor is Jack yelling at her. In fact, anyone who knows Kara would say it’s an obtuse assumption. She’s the last girl to cry over a guy. She simply doesn’t have it in her.
The article is clearly dramatized, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that Kara is wearing her heels from the night before, without an ounce of makeup on her face. And she and Jack are clearly fighting.
For us, it’s a pretty normal occurrence. For campus, though, it’s the juiciest gossip around.
“He was just at a party in the city with her,” Eden mutters. “There were pictures. They looked fine.”
Of course there were pictures.
I arch a brow. “And how often do couples look fine right before they explode?”
She looks up sharply. I didn’t mean it as an accusation, but the words land a little too close—a dart hitting just shy of the board’s center.
“You don’t think—” she hesitates, then glances at the door. “ I don’t think they’d break up. Not now.”
Do I see Jack and Kara being together forever? I’m not sure, and that feeling is telling. The fact that I even have to think about it probably says more than any answer I could give.
Every time I’ve noticed Jack being in our apartment, it’s only because I hear him and Kara bickering about something. Their opposing personalities don’t seem to serve them very well.
Usually, their fights are about Kara’s partying tendencies, or how busy she is, or Jack’s tendency to stand down instead of speak up when it comes to dealing with someone as abrasive as Kara.
Let’s just say, it doesn’t give me the utmost amount of hope. Not in the way Meredith and Braxton do.
Which is why I shrug, picking at the edge of a napkin.
Eden is still contemplating. “I don’t know. I think if Notes has wind of it, something must’ve happened.”
“That much is obvious.”
Eden doesn’t get a chance to respond before the girl behind the counter clears her throat gently. “Hi. Sorry. Are you guys ready?”
We jump, too preoccupied to remember we’re standing in the middle of an ice cream shop.
I blink harshly, yawning. For the past few days, my memory hasn’t been as sharp as it normally is. My brain has been in a fog, and I’m not naive. I know it’s because of my lack of sleep, but it also feels entirely out of my hands.
My sleep schedule will fix itself in time, but for right now, I’m forced to endure. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. It’s a flawed rationale, but it’s all I have to convince myself.
“Whoops.” Eden gives the cashier an apologetic smile as she steps forward. “Sorry about that. Can I please get a scoop of strawberry cheesecake in a waffle cone?” Then she glances back at me.
“I’ll have a scoop of peanut butter half-bake, also in a waffle cone, please.”
The cashier types our orders into the computer, and Eden quickly hands over her card before I get the chance. It would annoy me, but I’ve grown used to it. She is notorious for not letting anybody else pay.
“I have my own money, you know?”
Eden’s still looking down at the article. I bet she’s read it ten times by now. “You know that’s not what it’s about. I just like taking care of people.”
As if that isn’t obvious from how she always takes the lead with cleaning our apartment, leaves sweet notes for everyone on the fridge, and is the first to check if everyone’s eaten. Her caretaker instincts are strong. It shocks me she doesn’t want to be a teacher or some kind of healthcare worker.
I guess, in a way, she still is helping people by doing interior design—catering to people’s every request, making sure every detail is perfect.
“Wait.” I pause and look back at Eden as my ice cream cone is passed over the counter to me. “Is Kara still meeting us here?”
“Yeah. She texted me saying she got held up at her shoot in the city, but that was a while ago. She should be here any minute.”
It’s hard for me to imagine traveling back and forth from New Haven to New York City as much as Kara does. Then again, if I were being offered tens of thousands of dollars per photoshoot, I think I could make it work.
Eden and I take a seat in one of the corner booths next to the window so we can hopefully see when Kara is walking in.
The late-afternoon sun filters through the glass, casting warm, golden rectangles across the marble table. I swipe a bit of ice cream off the edge of my cone before it drips, still distracted by what Eden read.
“Do you think she’ll say anything about it?” I ask, not looking up.
“I mean, she kind of has to, doesn’t she? She can’t expect us to not have seen the article.”
I’m not sure how accurate that is. For the time we’ve lived with her, Kara has very rarely confided in us. I don’t think it’s on purpose, like she’s avoiding something. I think it has more to do with how self-assured she is.
Everything about her is calculated: her makeup, her words, her silences. She knows how to smile without giving anything away—how to be upset without letting a single tear fall.
It’s not that she doesn’t trust people. It’s that she doesn’t need to.
And I’ve never taken the time to question it. Maybe because it’s what makes the two of us so similar.
I run my fingers through my hair. It’s something I find myself doing often when I don’t have a precise answer. “I guess we’ll see when she gets here.”
Leaning back against the cushion of the booth, I lick at my ice cream as I continually glance out the window.
“I’ll never understand why people think ice cream is only a summer dessert,” Eden says, taking a bite out of her waffle cone.
I shake my head. “It’s truly such a tragedy. Worse than the fate of Prometheus, punished for giving fire to humanity. I couldn’t imagine not enjoying this all year round.”
It became absurdly clear within the first few weeks of the semester that Eden, Kara, and I all have a moderate ice cream addiction—one none of us are afraid to indulge in. Throughout the week, we average three or four bowls or cones.
Maybe it wasn’t intentional at the beginning, but when we came to know each other’s mutual love of the treat, it became a habit. We’re either meeting up at one of the ice cream shops in town or serving ourselves from the gallon in our freezer late at night.
This is our second time this week.
“Oh, there she is!” Eden points toward the window where Kara is passing by.
There might as well be a sign above the door that lights up saying, “ Brunette bombshell has entered,” with the way she commands the room.
Kara pushes open the door with her shoulder, making the bell on the door jingle again. She’s wearing baggy light-wash jeans and a plain, light gray long sleeve. Her dark hair is in a sleek ponytail, and her usual gold, staple jewelry has been replaced with silver.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says as she slides into the booth beside Eden, placing her designer tote on the bench with a thud that feels a little too intentional. “Train was slow.”
We both wave her off. Her schedule is more packed than Eden’s and mine. There’s a higher probability of her being late. It’s simple statistics, really, and we can’t hold it against her.
“Are you getting anything?” I ask.
She hikes one of her shoulders, leaning back. “Maybe in a minute.”
It’s only then that I notice she’s not wearing makeup. Not like usual, at least. Her skin looks raw in places, like she wiped the remnants of her photoshoot off in a hurry, and there’s a dullness behind her eyes that not even concealer could fix.
Eden doesn’t bother easing into it. “So… you’ve seen it, right?”
Kara’s jaw tightens. “If you mean the charming little essay about my love life on Notes of New Haven , then yes, I’ve seen it.”
She says it like it doesn’t bother her. She says it the way Kara says everything: with practiced indifference.
I glance at Eden, unsure who should press first, but Kara answers before either of us can ask.
“It’s not true,” she says, voice low. “Not all of it. We had an argument. That part’s real. But the drama? The storming out and sobbing in the street? Please .”
Yeah, I knew that would be way too out of character for her.
Eden raises an eyebrow. “But you did leave, didn’t you?”
Kara’s smile is thin and exhausted. “Yeah, I left. Because if I stayed, I was going to say something I’d regret. I was doing the smart thing, and Jack knew it too.”
“And now?” I ask carefully.
“I don’t know. We haven’t talked since.”
“That was Saturday,” Eden says.
“I know.”
Silence settles over us, and I realize suddenly how rare it is to see Kara unsure of anything. She always has a plan. A pose. A punchline.
This version of her, unguarded and quiet, is jarring.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I offer gently.
“Very true!” Eden smiles brightly. “We can just eat ice cream and pretend the internet doesn’t exist.”
“Tempting, but my career kind of revolves around the internet. No privacy to be found.”
I’m not sure what to say. Anonymity is a luxury most people take for granted.
Kara never had that. Not since the first Vogue feature.
Not since people started knowing her name before she even introduced herself—despite her mother’s best efforts to stay as private as possible once she transitioned from walking runways to working for Vogue.
She reaches across the table and steals a bite of Eden’s cone without asking. Eden doesn’t flinch, which feels more like affection than anything either of them could say out loud.
“We’ll figure it out,” Kara says eventually, the statement so vague it could mean anything. Her tone says she’s not ready to go deeper. “Okay, that is delicious. I’m going to get my own.”
Eden and I both watch as Kara walks up to the counter and orders a bowl with three scoops of ice cream.
“How she can keep that body is truly a work of art,” Eden says dreamily.
We’re still gawking when Kara returns to the table, a spoonful of ice cream already in her mouth.
“Can you tell that I have about a pound of gel left in my hair?” she asks, smoothing a hand over her ponytail.
“It looks a bit… stiff,” Eden surveys. “What did they do to it?”
She squints, like even the memory is painful. “The producer wanted to make it look like I was underwater, which required nearly an entire bottle of gel being put in my hair. I’m seriously going to be in the shower for hours trying to get this out tonight.”
“I call dibs on showering first.” Even though we all have our own bathrooms, the hot water isn’t exactly plentiful.
“I might as well put some water over the stove and boil the gel out of my hair.”
“No, no,” Eden quickly rejects. “You can’t do that. Your hair is too pretty!”
Eden’s one of the rare redheads who treasures her hair, and in turn, she treats everyone else’s like it’s just as valuable.
“Don’t worry.” She holds up a hand. “I’m not insane.”
I tilt my head at her. “That’s questionable.”
“I’m a supermodel , of course you think I’m a little crazy. You’re supposed to.” She polishes off her ice cream quickly before asking, “Can we get takeout before we go back to the apartment?”
Eden and I both gawk at her but nod nonetheless.
Kara stretches her arms overhead with a yawn. “Okay. I have a biochem project due tonight, and I need to steam this out of my hair before it hardens permanently.”
We all stand, shuffling out of the booth. Eden tosses our napkins and spoons, and I hold the door open as Kara heads out first, yawning as I do.
There’s something so easy about this feeling. Despite everything else threatening to overshadow the happy moments in my head.
Being in our college town, getting ice cream and takeout before heading back to our apartment. We laugh as we walk down the road toward our favorite burger place.
We may not need burgers, but it’s clear that we need this.