Chapter 5
Chapter Five
RIVER
This was a mistake.
Accepting Lola’s invitation and convincing Carson to join me was a poor decision on my part. She wasn’t lying about it being a small get-together. I’d thought we were walking into a mini-party, filled with loud music and wrong decisions. Instead, we walked into a hangout of childhood friends.
Turned out everyone in the room had grown up in the same town, one not too far from here, and all ended up in college together.
As they laughed and shared stories from years ago, I felt out of place.
They were a tight-knit friend group, the type that finished each other’s sentences and enjoyed themselves together like this was the best thing since sliced bread.
Personally, I couldn’t imagine having a friend group as large as theirs, with over ten people. When I was part of a group of six in elementary school, that shit became a mess of lies and betrayal.
I think they wanted a few new friends to add to their group, but as I sat and listened to Lola ramble about her encounter with a stranger a couple of days ago, it wasn’t making me want to be their friend. Instead, it was making me miss my childhood friend.
It was ironic that Trevor, the resident of the apartment we were all in, lived in the same building and on the same floor as Alex, and it was even more ironic that we ran into him.
At this point, I wondered if it was fate trying to push us together.
No matter what I did to stay away, circumstances forced me back to him.
It was like the universe didn’t realize I was staying away for his own good—like it never believed me when I said it was torture to have him just within reach, but not be able to have him.
I almost burst into laughter watching his battle with the vending machine.
His immediate thought to fight it was predictable and hadn’t changed since we were ten, even down to the embarrassment he felt after.
It was so fucking cute that I couldn’t stop staring, making myself look like even more of a weirdo than I already did.
When I helped him fix the issue for his niece—who was much bigger than the infant I last saw her as—the irritation morphed into an expression that twisted something inside me. His muscles tensed, and his body froze, but that wasn’t what got me. It was the clear hurt in his eyes that did it to me.
I was an asshole, but I’d rather be the asshole than the reason he got hurt—and I meant more than emotionally.
“So, like, River,” a girl named Faye spoke as she smacked on her chewing gum, “what was going through your mom’s mind to name you after a body of water?”
I shrugged, thrown off by the out-of-the-blue question. “I don’t know. She liked it, I guess.”
“Do you like your name?” She inquired, crossing her legs and leaning forward.
Before I could respond, another guy chimed in. I couldn’t remember his name, but I recognized him as one of my teammates.
“Do you have a sibling named something like Lake or Ocean?” he asked.
The room erupted with laughter, though I didn’t find it to be all that funny. It was an unoriginal joke that I had been hearing since I understood the English language. Ironically, my mom used to say that if she ever had a daughter, her name would be Rain.
I sipped the cold beer in my hand. “I was an only child until I met Carson.”
A smile spread across Carson’s face. “I’m the fourth Moore.”
My parents certainly saw him as their son, and Car viewed them as his parents.
Even without official adoption, the love was still there.
He listened in school, never lied, and helped my mom with the dishes.
Basically, he was the less chaotic and slightly more focused version of me. A good influence.
A slew of giggles followed Carson’s statement. Not sure I’d ever met more giggly people than these.
“Riv, did you know that guy in the hallway?” Another teammate, Trevor, asked me.
I kept my eyes on Trevor, trying to ignore the intense stare from Carson beside me. He'd been trying to get me to tell him what my deal was with “the kid you can’t stop staring at like a freak,” but I refused to give him any details other than saying we used to know each other.
“Uh…” I muttered. “No. Why?”
“It seemed like you knew each other,” Trevor spoke lightly. He took a large swig of his beer, finishing the bottle and tossing it into the trash can.
“That’s Salem’s roommate,” Trevor’s girlfriend spoke, twirling her hair around her finger as she sat comfortably on her boyfriend’s lap. Then she gasped. “We should’ve invited Salem tonight.”
I wish we had invited Alex, too.
“Poor guy has to share an apartment with Salem?” Lola asked, her tone bitter and somewhat repulsed. “I would hate my life.”
Carson, always ready to hear the drama, perked up. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s a slob that doesn’t care about anyone but himself,” she declared as a matter of fact. “And I know he’s your teammate, so I don’t care if you tell him I said that. I’m sure his roommate is stuck picking up after him like he’s his maid.”
After Lola calmed down, the conversation shifted to a cheerleader-versus-basketball-player debate.
The girls claimed cheer was ten times more difficult than “tossing balls into circles,” as Lola called it.
The guys obviously disagreed, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to the conversation to chime in. My mind was elsewhere.
I’d bet it’s easy to guess where that elsewhere was.
I made it to communications on time. I would’ve said it was because I cared about my education and was eager to learn, but I’d be lying.
I had already settled in my seat when Alex arrived, hair tousled and clothes twisted like he got dressed in the dark. He glued his eyes to the ground, avoiding accidental eye contact with me.
My eyes followed him to his usual seat on the opposite side of the room from me. He sat with the same two guys in the same spot each class.
The professor began lecturing for a long, grueling twenty minutes.
Lola and I whispered back and forth the majority of the time—she was good company.
Eventually, she took out her notes, accusing me of distracting her when she needed to pay attention.
I let her listen since I was going to need someone to give me the notes later.
“Now that I’ve finished the lesson, I will give you a couple of minutes to choose your groups,” the professor said.
Get into groups? Dammit, I should have been listening.
Lola couldn’t stop herself from laughing at my confusion. Her manicured hand rubbed my shoulder condescendingly. “We have a group assignment, and he’s letting us choose who we want to be with.”
“Oh, I forgot about the group project,” I said as if it weren’t the only reason I started showing up to class again in the first place.
Classmates began conversing and finding each other. Lola leaned over to me. “It’s groups of three, so we need one more.”
My eyes fell on Alex like clockwork. I knew he’d end up in a group with his friends, but the stupid side of me had hoped he would join mine. Who was I kidding? Even if he didn’t have his friends, a group with me would be the last he would consider.
But as I watched the three of them mingle, a lone guy approached.
He spoke something to one of Alex’s friends, but they were too far away for me to hear, and I was a bad lip reader.
His friend—I believed his name was Rory, based on hearing others call him it—nodded at the guy, his smile ever so friendly.
Rory turned to Alex, who was staring back at him, obviously lost.
Don’t tell me he’s about to…
Rory’s arms gestured obnoxiously as he explained something to Alex. It was like he was trying to soften the blow of whatever he was saying by overdoing his movements and flashing a friendly smile.
Alex paused, and I could tell that what he had just heard had caught him off guard. Standing up from his seat, he nodded with a forced smile. The other guy didn’t waste a second taking the warm seat that wasn’t his, and now Alex’s eyes scanned the room for a new group to be part of.
My expression morphed into one filled with both anger and disgust. I usually loved being right, but this was the one time I wished I were anything but. What kind of friends were these?
At this point, everyone was in a group of three, except one other group and us. Standing in the middle of the room, he looked like a lost puppy, and it took a lot to call him over. I couldn’t avoid him one moment and call him over the next.
Our eyes met, but not for long. His jaw clenched before he tore his eyes away and settled on the one other unfinished group. Alex would rather do a project with strangers than with me, and I couldn’t lie; it hurt.
“Isn’t that Salem’s roommate?” Lola asked me embarrassingly loudly. “What’s his name again?”
“Uh, Alex.”
“Alex!” she shouted, catching the attention of the entire room. Waving a sporadic hand in the air, she yelled, “We have two!”
Alex rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, a blush creeping onto his cheeks. If Lola had shouted my name like that, I would have also been embarrassed. Honestly, the embarrassment he felt was most likely the only reason Alex started our way.
“Why would you do that?” I groaned.
“We have two people and need three.” Her hair bounced as she shrugged.
I slapped my hand to my forehead, and Lola shook her head, not understanding what the big deal was.
I waved her off and got comfortable in my chair, already knowing this project was going to be a headache.
The last thing I needed was to spend a bunch of time around Alex.
Trying to keep up the memory loss act was about to become a hell of a lot more difficult.
Alex took a seat beside Lola, his hand gripping and tugging at the ends of his hair. He kept his eyes on the professor while he quickly went over the project rules, and so did I. Most of the answers about the assignment could be found on our computers, so we wasted little time.
Once we were left to mingle, Lola introduced herself to Alex. “I’m Lola, and that’s River. I don’t know if you remember us from a few days ago when we met your niece in the hallway. She was so cute!”
A small smile painted his lips. “Yeah, I do. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m glad you joined us.” Lola flashed a warm smile. “Gosh, I hate presentations.”
Feeling left out of the conversation, I said, “It’s a communications class; presentations are kinda the whole point.”
She rolled her eyes and ignored my comment. “Alex, give me your number. We should meet up tomorrow and get a head start. The project is seventy percent of our grade, so we don’t have any room to slack off.”
Lola handed Alex her phone, already opened, with the contacts for him to put in his information.
“Tomorrow is the one day of the week that I don’t have practice, and you want me to spend it doing work?” I asked dryly.
Lola ignored me again. “Alex, are you free?”
Alex blinked as he tried to remember. “If you guys don’t mind my niece being with us.”
Lola’s eyes lit up. “Of course I don’t mind; I love kids!”
“I don’t mind either,” I added, though no one asked me. Alex looked at me expressionlessly, almost as if he thought it was crazy that I had even opened my mouth.
He stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder, focused on me but speaking to Lola. “Where are we meeting up?”
“My dorm works,” Lola replied.
“Cool.” After waving goodbye, he spun on his heels to make for an exit, but he stopped himself. Turning his head over his shoulder, his gaze landed on mine. “Thanks for letting me be in your group.”
I watched his back as he left, and I wanted to go after him, but that really contrasted with the whole detached and nonchalant attitude I was going for.
His friends had scored a ticket to my shit list, but the sick part of me wanted to thank them. There was no more avoiding Alex.