Chapter 2 #2
A million questions flood my mind, but none that seem appropriate to ask. Not that I’d have the courage to ask them if they were. It’s just very…unexpected.
“Now to the juicy stuff,” he says, rubbing his palms together as he reads the next question. “If you had twenty-four hours left on this earth, who would you spend them with?”
“No one,” I mutter without thinking, but as soon as I realize I said that aloud, my face turns the color of a tomato.
Wes’s eyes widen in surprise, and he leans forward in his chair. “No one? Not family? Friends, maybe? Boyfriend?”
I nearly choke at that. Instead, I shake my head.
Wes tilts his head to the side, regarding me curiously. “Well, why?”
I swallow, wishing I’d made up a lie. Any lie. “I don’t know,” I say, shrugging my shoulder. Even though I do know. If I had twenty-four hours left on this earth, I wouldn’t search out anyone. I would keep to myself and then quietly disappear. No fuss. No big deal. I would just…cease to exist.
I doubt anyone would even realize I was gone.
“Come on,” he coaxes, a smile at the corner of his mouth. “You can tell me. I’m an amazing listener, I swear. World-class secret-keeper, too.”
“P-please just forget I said that,” I mutter, tripping over my own tongue, and if possible, my cheeks turn even redder. Again, he doesn’t acknowledge the stutter.
“How about you give me an alternative answer then?” he asks. “If you had twenty-four hours left on this earth, what would you do with them?”
His eyes are too intent as they search mine, and it sends a shiver of apprehension down my spine. I quickly look away, hating myself for being like this. For freaking out the second I’m under any kind of male scrutiny.
For good reason.
“Mac and cheese,” I mumble, barely able to hear the sound of my own voice over my pulse pounding in my ears. “I’d eat my weight in it. White cheddar Kraft mac and cheese, specifically.” When he doesn’t say anything, I shift anxiously in my chair. “Your turn.”
“If I only had twenty-four hours left to live, I’d just want to spend time with my family, I guess,” he says, which makes me regret my answer of mac and cheese. I mean, really. “Watch football with my parents. Play games with my sister. Hang out with my nephew. Simple stuff like that.”
I squint up at him, wondering if this is some kind of front. His answers are the exact opposite of what I expect him to say, and I can’t figure out what to make of them. I can’t decide if he’s tailoring them to his audience or if he’s speaking from the heart.
Tailoring them, obviously, says the cynical voice in my head. Don’t be an idiot.
“Alright, enough about me,” he says. “What are your hobbies?”
I frown because design is my hobby, but that seems too nerdy to admit to someone like him. “Um, I like to read,” I tell him, glancing down at my hands. “I’m pretty boring.”
“Please.” The desk creaks as he leans closer. “I happen to find you fascinating.”
My head snaps up, caught off guard. “Y-you do?” I wince, but he only nods, looking like he’s biting back a smile. I clear my throat a little and try to get the next word out right the first time. “Why?”
He laughs. “Your eyes. When you finally work up the nerve to look at me, they say tenfold what your mouth does.” My mouth bobs open, but when nothing comes out, I snap my lips shut, not sure what to make of that statement.
Wes grins like I just proved his point. “See? You’re trying to decide how offended you should be. ”
My brows pull together. “Lucky guess.”
He shifts closer, lowering his voice. “You didn’t want to come to Stratus University.
I could tell by the pained look in your eye during your first response.
You like design, though, way more than you’re letting on with your answers.
Maybe too much in your opinion. And the entire time we’ve been doing this assignment, you’ve been trying to determine if I’m completely full of shit or not.
I’m not, just so you know, but I totally understand the concern.
” He leans back again, chuckling at my stunned expression. “So, what kind of books?”
“W-what?”
“You said you like to read. What kind of books?” My face flames, and he smirks, looking down at his notebook. This time I’m able to make out his handwriting as he scrawls romance books beside the question number.
“How did you…”
“Your blush. Says it all.”
Before I can process that little response, Markham stands up from his desk and claps his hands together.
“Alright, everyone. My lecture ran a little long, and it looks like none of you are wrapped up yet. Homework is to read chapter one of the textbook, and we’ll finish up these interviews next time.
” Around us, students start getting to their feet.
“Hey, hey. Move the desks back where they started before you go, you hooligans.”
I close my laptop, then stand to rearrange my desk. After tucking my computer away, I slip on my thick, winter coat and sling my backpack over my shoulder. Following the girl in front of me, I head for the door—
“Hey, Ivy,” Wes calls, loud enough that a couple students turn. My face heats from the unwanted attention, but I pause my steps, glancing back at him. He winks. “See you Thursday.”
My cheek twitches because was that really necessary? But I nod before scurrying out of the room, questioning how in the hell I’m going to survive another class across from this man’s overly perceptive gaze when the only thing I want is to disappear.
Not in the mood to tiptoe around my roommates and hibernate in my bedroom, I hide out in the library.
Seated at my usual table on the second floor, secluded from the rest by monstrous bookshelves, I spread my assignments over the wooden surface.
My Wednesdays are packed this semester—Color: Theory and Application in the morning, Survey of Western Art just after lunch, and Basic Mathematics in the late afternoon—and it’s important that I stay on top of my workload.
Not that grades matter to my parents. I could graduate summa cum laude, and they’d still be disappointed that I’m majoring in design instead of something “useful” like my brothers.
“I hope you’re happy, Ivy.”
“Are you doing this to punish us?”
“Don’t ruin your life like this.”
Inserting my headphones, I hunker down for the next couple hours, coming up for air only when I’ve exhausted my brain’s mental capacity for understanding the difference between permutations and combinations.
I close my textbook and leave my sheltered little corner in search of the bathroom. Walking through the more populated area of the library, I spot my third dormmate, Quinn, seated across from her boyfriend, a junior whose name I can’t remember.
She gives me a small wave of acknowledgement, and I return the gesture.
Quinn doesn’t have an issue with me (that I know of), but she’s scarcely ever at the dorm.
She spends most of her time with her boyfriend in his off-campus house, and I really only see her when she’s packing or unpacking an overnight bag.
Pushing open the door to the women’s room, I freeze in my tracks. The dark-haired girl primping at the sink glances up, eyebrows raising as she catches my reflection in the mirror. I recognize the butterfly tattoo on the back of her neck instantly.
Shit.
Alexis Cane turns to face me, and I clench every muscle in my body in an effort not to step backward, away from her. Seeing my former friend standing in front of me drains the air from my lungs, and the memories assail my mind before I can stop them.
I see us, gossiping during weekend coffee dates. Suffering through gym class and sophomore English. Laughing in the car on the way home from school. Texting about crushes and parties and any random shit that popped into our head.
And then I see us in the school bathroom at the end of junior year. I remember her screaming in my face as the walls crumble down around me and my world implodes, along with our friendship and what little was left of my sanity—
I shove away the memory before my brain malfunctions.
“Oh, wow, Ivy,” Alexis says, her nose wrinkling. “I forgot you go here.”
“H-hi,” I force out, and my face flames when I stumble over the word.
I haven’t seen her in months, and only then in passing on the quad, but she looks the same as she always does.
Beautiful. Confident. She always was that girl, the one others gravitated toward.
There was something magnetic about her. Something inexplicably compelling.
Maybe it was her apathy toward authority figures, or the way she could wear anything and somehow look like a model.
She had an uncanny ability to make you feel cooler from a single shared eye roll, and a composure around boys that the rest of us lacked.
I don’t want to think about that, though. I really don’t want to think about that.
The stall door at the end of the row swings open, and a blonde I’ve never seen before emerges. Her eyes shift from Alexis to me as she walks to the sink. “Everything good, Lex?”
“Oh, yeah,” Alexis says, leaning her hip against the counter. She gives me a painfully slow once-over. “You look…kind of depressing. No offense. College really doesn’t agree with you, does it?”
My mouth twitches down—I can’t help it—because I have no response to that.
Alexis’s eyebrows raise, and she glances between me and the stall like she’s figured something out. Her eyes spark with cruelty. “Oh, you weren’t…you’re not…there are better ways to drop a few pounds than sticking your finger down your throat, Ivy.”
My mouth pops open, and I scramble for a comeback, tripping over my words again. “I-I wasn’t—”
“You hardly had any to lose.” She looks at her friend—my replacement. “In high school, boys used to drool over her tits like bloodhounds. It was disgusting, but you really took advantage of it, didn’t you, Ivy? You just couldn’t fucking help yourself.”
Her words make my stomach jolt. “I don’t—I didn’t—”
“Save it,” she snaps. “I guess you don’t have that problem anymore, do you?” Her eyes turn pitying, but not before they flash with utter disdain.
There’s nothing left of my former friend.
No compassion. No concern. Growing up, I always felt sorry for anyone who got on Alexis Cane’s bad side because she was relentless in her contempt.
If you were in her inner circle, she’d make you feel like the most important person in the world, but the moment you crossed her…
the moment you crossed her, she’d make you regret it for the rest of your life.
“It’s okay, Ivy,” she says. “Madison and I will give you some privacy.” She steps toward the door, then pauses and begins rifling through her purse.
She pulls out a case of Altoids and makes a big show of placing two on the counter, next to the sink.
Then, she looks me dead in the eye and smiles. “For after.”
Alexis and Madison walk past me, not even trying to hide their snickers as they exit the bathroom. The second the door swings shut on their lingering laughter, I lunge into the stall closest to me and dry heave over the toilet.
Nothing comes out, but my vision goes hazy around the edges, and I stay crouched until my stomach settles.
My face crumples, and my chest feels like it’s ripping open, the pain like shards stabbing through skin and bone and tissue, straight to the heart.
I press my hands to my sternum and close my eyes.
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.
Stratus was supposed to be my escape from those painful high school memories, but how can I start fresh when the past keeps coming out of nowhere? How can I move on in college when I’m barely getting by?
Six. Five. Four. Three.
Impossible. It’s impossible.
Two. One.
I spend too much time in the bathroom, drying my tears, catching my breath.
I keep my head down on the walk back to my table, and my hands shake as I stuff my books back into my bag. As I rush toward the exit, I think I hear Quinn call my name, but I’m probably imagining it.
Why would she, after all? I’m not worth her concern.
I’m not worth anyone’s.
When I make it back to the empty dorm, I lock my bedroom door, change into my grungiest sweatpants, and cocoon myself in my comforter. With no solid defense against the world, the past, and the memories that haunt me, all I can do is cry.
So that’s what I do.