Chapter 6
CHAPTER
SIX
SLOANE
The chill in the air makes me shiver and I duck my chin into my lilac hoodie. Sweat cools along the back of my neck from my lifting session in the gym. I tighten my long, honey and ash blond ponytail, letting the fall atmosphere wick away at the perspiration.
Strolling across Ely’s campus at this hour is one of my favorite mundane things to do. No one is about, the sun hasn’t yet risen, and the orange lamplights illuminating the cobblestone and brick make this place look like something out of a fairytale or a fantasy.
I think of the framed photos I have of Edinburgh on my walls and dream of Scotland.
I’ve never been; never traveled anywhere outside of the States, but as soon as I graduate, I’m going.
I’ve been saving for years now. First from fast food jobs in high school, waitressing my first year at Ely, and now from any clothes I can resell online.
The internships I’ve had the past couple of semesters have made it hard to fit in part-time work and I love my clothes, so the savings have gotten smaller but I’m sitting on a good amount.
I slip my phone out from my hoodie pocket as I walk by a fountain with a tiger prowling in the center, water spouting from its open, sneering mouth.
The spray of water feels good along the side of my face and I sit down on one of the black iron benches that’s close enough to feel the condensation but not enough to get too wet.
My glutes already ache and it’s a twenty minute walk from here to my apartment so why not chill a second?
I’ve got hours before my first class, a deep dive on brand management.
My phone has no new texts which, considering it’s not even six in the morning, isn’t surprising, and all my social media notifications are turned off so I don’t get addicted.
I’m going to work in marketing, I know how the game works.
A yawn escapes my lips and maybe I shouldn’t have gotten up so early but I haven’t been sleeping well lately so I needed to get moving or else I’d rot in bed.
The sleeplessness will eat at me if I let it.
I go through periods of staying up entire nights, unable to focus in class without huge effort.
I think it comes from the fights. All the screaming and breaking I heard growing up in the night. It leaves a mark.
Not that I’ve mentioned my insomnia to anyone. Some things are better left unsaid. I learned that from being in a big family.
Speaking of, I open up my message thread with my older sister, Heather, and look at the most recent photo she sent me of my nephew, Rome. Rome is sitting on the floor surrounded by what looks like Heather’s Star Wars Lego set, completely demolished, Rome’s tiny fist closed around a chunk of pieces.
Heather
Had to pry them from his hands one by one.
I smile in the darkness, the fountain in front of me a welcome white noise from any less-than-positive thoughts.
I’m not even Rome’s mother but when I first saw the photo, I thought with panic he might eat the Legos and choke on one.
Heather was a doting, if overprotective, older sister, but still… anything can happen, right?
I swipe out of the thread. This is not conducive to relaxing, and last week when I went to a sunrise yoga class, the yoga teacher told me she could “see” anxiety in my form and I needed to spend more time “doing nothing.” She said the circles under my eyes would lessen if I did.
I haven’t gone back to any yoga since then.
Next, I make sure I texted Remi back last night.
She told me Lyle is moving into sleeping half the night away and jokingly asked for me to babysit while she had a date night with Cortland.
They pay an older woman on their street to help out so I know there’s no pressure, but I do want to see Lyle soon.
Maybe most of all, though, I want to see Remi.
I stare at our goodnight texts and close my eyes a second, thinking about mentioning Storm to her. Does she know he stayed over at my place the other night? She didn’t mention it, or tease me about it, so I don’t think so.
Part of me feels guilty even considering talking to her about him. He was one of the guys who had sex with her a few years back, when she was drunk and couldn’t consent. I know she doesn’t feel anything for him, and she lives with him, but is my stupid crush some kind of betrayal?
I take a breath, open my eyes, and type out a text before I can regret it. She’s hopefully asleep now anyway and I know she always has her phone on do not disturb so I won’t have to deal with the consequences of it for a few hours.
I need to talk to you about something. Not bad. Don’t panic.
She will, just as I would, but I want her to be looking at my messages before I give her any kind of big reveal.
Feeling more agitated and less relieved, I keep scrolling through my texts and open up my last conversation with Storm.
I haven’t seen him since he left my apartment early on Sunday morning, three days ago, and grabbed me by the hand and pulled me to my door so I’d lock it after he left.
He texted me that evening.
Stormy
Thank you for letting me sleep over.
It seemed like such a rigid, polite text when Storm Leary is anything but.
Not that he’s ever been rude to me exactly, but he’s hard edges and standoffishness and it’s not like we hooked up or anything.
I didn’t think he needed to thank me. But I did fall asleep in his arms on the couch and maybe it was the best sleep I’d had in a long time even if he startled more than a few times while he dreamed.
It was still peaceful. Even with the gun on the table.
I rub my thumb over the screen and imagine his eyes when he got to his feet and pulled the weapon from his waistband. They were wild but glassy, like he wasn’t really there.
My chest tightens and I don’t know why. We’re friends, if that.
I shouldn’t be so concerned about him. And the things he’s into, I can’t associate with.
I have goals. I want to own my own marketing agency, maybe make it international, and having a drug dealer boyfriend might make my ambition a little difficult.
Boyfriend.
Despite the chilly autumn air, my neck and cheeks flush hot and I swipe out of my messages and turn my screen off. We’ve never gone on a date, and yeah, maybe he sucked my finger and pretty much begged me for more but I wouldn’t kiss him because I know this will go nowhere and…
I would have slept with Dax, though, wouldn’t I? I still might. And I don’t see myself marrying him. He’s too full of himself. Not a narcissist, just not able to focus on me the way I want a man too. It doesn’t change the fact I like sex though, and he’s hot, so why not?
And why don’t I feel the same way about Storm? Obviously if he randomly came over because he knew I was tipsy and he was probably horny, he sleeps around, so it would be fine if we hooked up.
Why didn’t I? I was on my period but if I wasn’t, I still wouldn’t have.
Is it because I know he’s too magnetic? If I slept with him, I might never want to stop?
I lift my eyes to the fountain, gazing into the blue-green pool full of pennies and bigger coins.
The only thing I have on me are the keys to my apartment in my matching lilac sweats.
No money to make a wish. But I could do one anyway, right?
Simply close my eyes and yearn for something?
The poets would, and while I love business books and business plans, Keats and Byron and Coleridge are my secret loves.
I close my eyes.
I take a breath in.
What do you want, Sloane Stevens?
My older brother, Caspian, used to ask me that all the time.
Caspian is getting his MBA at Harvard. He knows exactly what he wants and he drilled ambition and goals and plans into me.
But sometimes I’d look to Henry and long for his wildness.
The way he drifts with no intention, being solely himself, even if it hurts people, even if it makes them joyous. Either way, he doesn’t change.
Mom is much the same. It’s why she’s cheated on my dad so much.
And Dad isn’t innocent, either. I think he has a girlfriend in Vancouver, the way he flies to Canada frequently for “work” despite the fact no one really seems to know why pharmaceutical sales would be transnational.
Different laws for different countries, even though ours are similar.
But Mom leaves it alone because she’s rarely home herself.
She owns a furniture chain. Locations all up and down the East Coast.
Dad is more discreet; Mom is more brash. Caspian is focused, Heather loves being a mother and she’s nurturing and selfless, while Henry is selfish. What am I?
What do I want?
What do you want?
I hear footsteps. A runner’s gait. It snaps me out of my wish making and I pop my eyes open, my fingers clenched tight around my phone as I lift my head. But there’s no one there and when I hear even breathing, in and out, I turn my head to look over my shoulder.
A woman.
She’s beyond the circle of brick by my bench, a patch of damp grass between us and the cobblestones she’s jogging along.
She has midnight black hair, pulled up high in a silky ponytail, and she’s slender in stature, but I see the muscles of her triceps as she runs, visible beneath the black compression shirt she’s wearing.
In fact, everything is black: her outfit, her shoes, her hair, the ink on her arm.
Clouds of cold bubble from her lips and I wonder if she’s a student.
Something about the self-possessed way she carries herself through the orange lamplit glow of Ely’s dim campus, she seems more likely to be a professor, although she’d be the youngest one I’ve seen here.