34. Eli
Eli
I still have paint under one fingernail on Monday morning.
I noticed it in class first: this thin pale-yellow crescent caught at the edge of my thumb, and for some reason it nearly makes me smile right in the middle of a lecture on something I’m absolutely supposed to be paying attention to.
I scrape at it with the corner of my notebook, but it doesn’t really dislodge.
Of course it doesn’t. That fucking paint got everywhere over the weekend, even though Julian insisted he knew what he was doing, and I insisted I wasn’t incompetent with a roller.
It lasted about fourteen minutes before I managed to get a streak across my forearm, a drip on my shoe, and a line of yellow on Julian’s jaw because he leaned too close, and I decided that was his problem.
He’d looked at me like I’d started a war.
Then, very maturely, he’d painted the tip of my nose in retaliation while standing in my daughter’s partially painted nursery with his shirt damp against his chest and his curls shoved back under a backward cap he’d stolen from me years ago and never returned.
No parents. No court dates. No Celeste. No Blakely. Just Julian’s hands on me, the smell of paint, bright sunlight coming through the nursery window, and the soft yellow walls starting to become something warm enough for Mila.
We kept losing track of actual productivity because one of us would say something dumb or brush too close or reach for the same roller, and suddenly we’d be kissing against a wall that very much needed a second coat.
There are places near the doorframe that probably have fingerprints under the paint.
Mine, or maybe his. I didn’t fix them, and I don’t want to.
Sunday, we finished the second coat and argued about where the crib should go, which turned into Julian measuring the wall three separate times while I accused him of having an emotional attachment to symmetry.
I keep thinking about the weekend while I walk across campus after my last morning class, backpack slung over one shoulder, phone in hand with a text from Julian still open.
Jules: Tell me if you’re going near the bookstore. I need another notebook.
Me: You own nine unused notebooks.
Jules: Those are emotionally unavailable.
Me: You need help.
Jules: You knew that before you kissed me.
The campus feels brighter than it has in months, though I don’t trust that feeling completely.
I’ve learned better than to trust good days like they’re permanent.
I should probably head straight to the athletics building because we’ve got film later, but my feet take me the long way past the student center and toward the bookstore because Julian does need another notebook, no matter how much I plan to call him dramatic about it.
“Eli?”
I’m halfway across the brick plaza when someone calls out to me. The voice is female, hesitant, and close enough that I stop and turn before my brain catches up to why my body already feels wrong.
She’s standing a few feet away near one of the planter boxes, clutching the strap of a canvas tote bag with both hands. Dark blonde hair pulled back in a messy low ponytail, oversized sweatshirt, leggings, and face pale..
“You probably don’t remember me,” she murmurs.
“I’m sorry,” I answer, because lying would make this weirder. “I know I’ve seen you around.”
“Yeah,” she says, looking down briefly. “I was in Celeste’s sorority.”
My fingers tighten around my phone at that name, and the weekend warmth of yellow paint and Julian’s hands suddenly gets shoved behind a door in my mind.
“What do you want?” I ask, the tone of my voice colder than I meant for it to be.
She flinches, but she doesn’t leave. Whoever she is, she looks like every part of her wants to run already, but she stays planted in front of me with her tote strap twisted around her hand.
“I’m not here to start anything,” she says quickly. “I promise. I just saw you and… I’m leaving today, and I didn’t know if I’d get another chance.”
I stare at her, trying to place her more clearly.
Sorority porch. Celeste laughing beside her.
A party at Sigma maybe, the girl leaning close to say something to another girl while Celeste had her nails in my arm and a bright, possessive smile on her face.
The memory slides away before I can catch it.
“How’ve you been?” she asks as if the question hurts her.
A laugh almost comes out of me because what the fuck kind of question is that?
How have I been since her sorority sister left a baby on my doorstep and detonated my life?
Since I found out my own parents thought my daughter’s existence was a moral stain?
Since I started piecing together gaps in my memory that make my stomach turn every time I look at them too long?
But she’s not asking casually. She looks like she already knows the answer.
“I’m alright,” I say, because it’s the only answer I can give a stranger in the middle of campus without losing my mind.
Her eyes shine immediately. “I’m glad.”
“You’re… glad?” I repeat, starting to get angrier.
She swallows. “I mean… I’m sorry. That sounded stupid. I just meant I’m glad you’re still…” She trails off, one hand coming up to wipe quickly under her eye before any tear fully falls. “I heard about the baby. I’m so sorry, Eli.”
My heart starts beating faster.
There’s something in the way she says it that doesn’t fit simple sympathy. It’s too heavy. Not gossip regret or the shallow campus version of oh my God, that’s so messed up. She says it like the apology has been sitting in her mouth for months and poisoning everything.
My voice drops. “Why exactly are you sorry?”
She scans the plaza nervously, then she reaches into her tote. “I’m not—sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just…” She pulls out a small black flash drive, no label, no keychain, just plastic and metal sitting in her palm. “I needed to give this to you.”
I stare at the flash drive as if it might start speaking on its own. The plaza keeps moving around us, which makes the whole thing worse. The world continues being normal while a girl from Celeste’s old sorority holds out a little black object that feels like it could open a trapdoor under my life.
“What is that?” I ask.
Her fingers tremble. “Everything I have.”
My pulse goes louder. “Everything you have about what?”
She presses her lips together hard, and for one second, I think she won’t answer. Then she does, and the words come out small but clear enough to land.
“About Celeste.”
My stomach turns over.
I look from the drive to her face. “What do you know?”
She flinches again, not from volume this time, because my voice has gone quiet. Maybe that’s worse. Maybe she hears exactly how close to the edge I am.
“I know I should’ve said something sooner,” she whispers.
“I know that. I’ve been trying to convince myself I didn’t know enough, or it wasn’t my place, or you’d never believe me, or it was already over, or whatever bullshit excuse made me less of a coward that day.
” She looks down at the drive, then back at me with visible effort.
“But then I heard about the baby, and I heard she left, and I just… I can’t keep carrying it.
I’m leaving Blackthorne and going back home. I’m done with all of them.”
My mouth feels dry. “All of who?”
She shakes her head quickly, panic flashing. “I can’t talk here.”
“Then we’ll go somewhere else,” I say, stepping closer before I can stop myself. “Tell me what the hell is on that thing.”
Her eyes fill properly then. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I say, even though my own breathing has gone wrong. “Explain.”
She presses the flash drive toward me harder, and this time my hand comes up automatically because refusing suddenly feels worse than knowing. Her fingers close mine around it with a quick, desperate squeeze. “You didn’t deserve it,” she says.
The words hit me like a fist to the throat in slow fucking motion.
“What did she do?” I ask, and my voice sounds far away even to me.
The girl’s face crumples. “Eli—”
“What did she do?” I demand louder this time.
A few people nearby glance over. She sees them, and fear snaps through her hard enough to make her step back.
“I’m sorry,” she says again, frantic now. “It’s on there. I put what I had on there, okay? Screenshots, the group chat, some videos, what I could get before they locked me out. I’m sorry. I should’ve done it before.”
“Videos?” The word leaves me cold.
She backs up another step, shaking her head. “I have to go.”
“No,” I say, moving after her. “Wait. What videos? What group chat?”
She turns, and I reach for her, not to grab exactly, but to stop her long enough to get one answer that won’t make me look at a flash drive in my hand and imagine the worst possible things alone.
She slips away before I can touch her, darting around two students crossing between us.
Her name still won’t come to me, and that pisses me off in a weird, useless way, because I can’t even call after her properly.
“Hey,” I shout instead, pushing into the moving crowd. “Wait!”
She cuts across the plaza toward the student center, fast enough that her tote bounces hard against her hip.
I follow, but the space between us fills immediately with people coming out of the building, a cluster of students in matching event shirts, two guys carrying poster boards, someone with a coffee who nearly collides with me when I try to dodge left.
I curse and twist around them, keeping sight of the girl’s ponytail for maybe three more seconds before she disappears behind a busier stream of bodies near the steps.
“Fuck,” I mutter, moving faster. “Fuck!”
By the time I reach the edge of the crowd, she’s gone in the most ordinary, infuriating way possible. Lost behind people and doors and movement.
I stand at the top of the student center steps with my heart hammering and my hand locked around the flash drive so tightly the plastic edges bite into my palm.
I think I might throw up as I turn away from the crowd and walk blindly toward the side of the building, needing air that doesn’t smell of coffee and perfume.
There’s a narrow strip between the student center and a line of bushes where people cut through sometimes, but it’s empty now.
I stop there and brace one hand against the brick wall, lowering my head until the world stops tilting.
The flash drive is still in my fist.
I open my hand slowly. It looks harmless lying there against my palm.
Stupidly harmless. A tiny black piece of plastic, the kind of thing people use for class presentations or old photos or files they forget exist in junk drawers.
Not the kind of thing that should have the power to make my chest feel like it’s being pried open.
Screenshots.
Group chat.
Videos.
My breathing catches, and I squeeze my eyes shut because for one second, my mind tries to fill in every blank at once.
I don’t want it to. I can’t let it. Not here.
Not standing beside the student center with my backpack digging into one shoulder and Julian’s unread text still sitting on my phone asking whether I bought his ridiculous notebook.
Julian.
The thought of him steadies me and hurts at the same time. I grip the phone harder and look down at the flash drive again.
I don’t know if I want to know what’s on it—that’s the truth. I don’t know if I want confirmation or proof. I don’t know if I want to find out how many people knew enough to laugh or hide or stay silent while my life was turned into something I couldn’t remember.
But Mila exists, and I love her more than I hate the fear.
If this flash drive has anything that helps protect her, anything that keeps Celeste away, anything that proves what happened wasn’t some story I invented because the alternative was too ugly, then I can’t throw it away.
I don’t have to be brave alone. I don’t have to open it alone. But I do have to keep it.
I close my fist around it again. Then I press Julian’s contact and lift the phone to my ear before I can talk myself out of it.
He answers on the second ring, voice warm and teasing. “If you bought me a notebook with inspirational quotes on it, we’re breaking up before we ever officially announce anything.”
The sound of his carefree voice almost breaks me.
I close my eyes and lean my shoulder against the brick. “Jules.”
Everything in his voice changes immediately. “Eli?”
I swallow hard, staring at the little black drive trapped in my hand.
“I need you,” I say, and the words come out rough enough that I know he hears all of it. “Something happened.”