Skyler
I’m used to the way lonely feels.
Growing up, I was an outcast, a nerd, the girl who hung out with her poor family and didn’t have more than a handful of friends — if you could even call them that.
When I wasn’t playing poker with my parents, I was studying or coloring or listening to music in my room.
Sometimes I would ride my bike around town by myself, just listening to the wind breezing through my hair.
When I came to Palm South, all that changed.
With a snap of my fingers, I altered that past and became a new me — the me I’d always felt like I was inside. I embraced my sass, my courage, my fearlessness and channeled it into being the girl I’d always known was simmering there under the surface.
With my sisters in Kappa Kappa Beta always around, and practically every boy on Greek Row begging for my time, I never had another lonely day.
Until this summer.
How I could have lived in such a blissful heaven for a full year only to tumble down from the clouds and slam into the dirt is beyond me.
Kip felt like the safest, most sure thing in the world.
Now, I don’t know him at all.
The Kip I love wouldn’t have forgotten our one-year anniversary, or the date he’d planned.
The Kip I love wouldn’t have had his hands on another girl’s hips while she was naked in a shower, whether it was for work or not.
The Kip I love would have listened to me, would have understood my anger and hurt.
And more than anything, the Kip I know would have found a way to make it right.
It wasn’t that he didn’t try, I suppose. He called. He texted. He came by the house. When I finally did decide I was ready to see him and hear him out, he apologized.
But not for what he did.
For how he’d made me feel.
It was a monstrous slap to the face. “I’m sorry I made you feel that way,” as if I was being irrational, as if he still stood firm in his delusion that he was right and I was wrong. I knew I wasn’t a saint. I knew I could have handled that situation better than I did.
But he couldn’t even see it, couldn’t see Natalia for the games she played, couldn’t see how him putting her and the show before our anniversary killed me.
The show about our love.
How ironic.
He went right back to filming, editing, producing — like everything was fine. It wasn’t until he showed up one evening and tried to kiss me and I pulled away that I think he realized a simple apology wasn’t going to be enough.
“I need some time,” I’d told him. “And some space.”
I could close my eyes now and still see the hurt in his eyes, the deflation of his shoulders, could still feel the way his lips pressed against my temple at the same time one lone tear slipped down my cheek.
That was the last time I saw him, almost two months ago.
I threw myself into recruitment, into my last semester as president, into making damn sure I leave this sorority in even better shape than I found it. Spending time with the girls helped, too, and now that we’re in the thick of Rush week, I’m distracted.
Distracted, but lonely.
Even in a house full of my sisters.
Even at night when Cassie and I curl up in my bed and talk and laugh and reminisce.
Every minute I’m awake, every second I’m alive — I’m lonely.
Because my other half, that person who completed me and made me feel whole for the first time in my life is gone.
And I don’t know if I’ll ever have that piece of me again.
“Sky,” a voice says, shaking me from my haze as I filter through the profile binders of the potential new members coming through the house tonight. It’s the last night before we make our bids and hope they pick us for their top choice, in return.
I turn in my chair, finding Ava, our recruitment chair, with an apologetic grimace on her beautiful face.
“Sorry to bother,” she says instantly. “But, um… you have a visitor.”
I frown. “Is it one of the other presidents?”
“It’s Kip.”
All the blood drains from my face, my stomach roiling violently.
I clear my throat. “Be right down.”
She nods, her eyes sympathetic as she closes the door and leaves me alone.
I take a moment to check my reflection in the mirror, smoothing my hands over my elegant, short black dress.
It’s a halter top with thin straps and a body that hugs all my slim curves.
My favorite accent is the slit that accents my toned thigh, and the strappy high heels I paired with it.
My hair is pulled back in a delicate braid, my makeup applied to perfection, natural and light, but with enough precision to stun.
Pref night is perhaps the most important of all of Rush week. It’s our final chance to convince the girls we want that this should be their home for the next four years.
It’s also the most emotional night for the seniors, as they realize their time here is coming to an end, and a new chapter is beginning.
Without them.
I blow out a soft breath, succumbing to numbness as my feet carry me blindly down the hall, the stairs, and out to the front porch where Kip is leaning against one of the tall columns, his hands in his pockets, eyes on the cement ground.
When he lifts those cerulean blue pools and locks his gaze on mine, my bones lock up, stopping me mid-stride a good four feet away from him.
My skin heats as he drags his gaze down the length of me, and he shakes his head slightly as he pushes off the banister to stand tall. “Sky… Jesus,” he breathes, running a hand over his scruff. “You are so goddamn beautiful.”
Everything in me wants to melt.
I want to swoon, to run to him, to fold myself into his arms and press my lips to his.
But my heart refuses, making me cross my arms and clear my throat, instead. “Thank you,” I say flatly. “Do you need something? I’m kind of busy.”
Kip doesn’t wince, but I see the pain my words inflict regardless. He never was able to hide his emotions from me.
“We finished the show.”
He waits for me to react, and when I don’t, he presses his tongue into his cheek, steeling a breath before he continues.
“I mean, we finished filming. We still have some post-production to do, but it’ll be done back at the school before we turn in the final product.” He swallows. “I think the mini-series will be live on the web by the end of November.”
“Congratulations.”
I can’t help how flat the word is when I release it, can’t help that I’m already turning to leave, but Kip’s hand shoots out to hook my elbow, stopping me in my tracks.
“Skyler, I’m leaving,” he breathes against my neck, his body inching closer and closer. “I’m going back to California. Please,” he pleads, his voice breaking. “Don’t make me leave like this.”
I close my eyes against the pain splitting my chest, against the urge to weep.
“What do you want from me, Kip?” I ask on a breath.
“Forgiveness.”
I turn then, pulling from his grip on my arm. “Forgiveness for what, exactly?”
I need to hear him say it. I need to hear him say he was wrong, that he understands why I was upset — why I still am.
Kip rolls his lips together, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose before he hangs his hands on his hips and looks off in the distance down Greek Row.
I shake my head. “Kip, what happened that night… what happened all last semester… it killed me.”
His nose flared, eyes watering, but he wouldn’t look at me.
“Whether you realize it and want to admit it or not, you chose the show over me.” I swallow. “You chose her over me.”
“Natalia is a professional.”
“Natalia is a bitch,” I correct, not even a little sorry when he finally looks at me with a frown etched in his brows. “She’s conniving and smarter than you give her credit for, and she knew what she was doing.”
“Why are you attacking her? You’re the one who picked her for the part!”
“And that was my mistake. Now, can you admit to yours?”
Kip pinches the bridge of his nose on a long breath. “Skyler, nothing happened. I was directing them through the shower scene so we could get it right. Natalia was there because I asked her to be, she wasn’t trying to—”
“You forgot,” I interrupted, and my bottom lip trembled as I waited for his eyes to meet mine once more.
“You forgot to pick me up. For our date. For our anniversary. And then I walked in on you touching another woman, naked, in the shower. Let me ask you this, Kip. If it were me who forgot, who you had to track down, who you found holding another man in the shower — would you be okay with it?”
“Skyler, it’s work. It’s nothing—”
“Don’t do that to me,” I say curtly. “Don’t make it seem like I don’t support you, like I haven’t always supported you.
I understood when you needed to move across the country to go to the right school to get you where you want to be.
I understood even when you came back here and you explained that I wouldn’t see you much.
I understood when your time was wrapped up in filming.
I even understood why you didn’t see it at first, the way Natalia looked at you, the things she was doing to make sure I felt threatened.
” I swallow. “But I have a right to be upset over what happened, and I deserve a proper apology.”
“I’m sorry,” Kip says quickly, reaching for my hands. He holds them up and presses his lips to the knuckles. “I’m sorry for hurting you.”
I nod, biting my lip.
It still isn’t enough.
“I have to go,” I whisper, pulling my hands from his. “It’s Pref Night and I have a lot to do.”
“Skyler, please,” Kip begs when I turn. “I don’t want to leave like this. I… I don’t even know what we are anymore.”
I pause with my hand on the front doorknob, my breath hitched in my throat, tears swelling in my eyes until the wood panel blurs.
“That makes two of us.”
I open the door, close it behind me, and press my back to the wood, smoothing my breaths as much as I can as I listen to Kip shuffle off the front porch.
Then, I lose it.