Chapter 6
Saturday afternoon, I peer through bleary eyes as Madison gets ready to go watch season two of that anime with Patrick. She takes care with her makeup, applying and removing different lipsticks: brown, then red, then berry, then finally another shade of brown.
And she pretends she’s not into him.
She stands up from the desk she’s converted into a makeshift vanity and turns to me.
“I’m leaving. You need to get up.”
“I don’t wanna,” I grumble. It comes out more like I ’on’ wann’.
“It’s four p.m. It’s not healthy to sleep in this late.”
“I ’on’ wann’ be healthy,” I say to be stubborn, but really I’m shocked.
I slept until four p.m.? I’ve never slept that late in my life except when I had COVID.
And I did it on this shitty dorm mattress?
And my back doesn’t even hurt? Eighteen-year-old bodies are wild.
I catch her look and add, “Save your judgment for someone who wants it.”
“Nobody wants judgment,” she says with a snort.
“There are kinks for everything, Madison.”
“Gross.”
“I dunno—I heard Patrick is into some pretty out-there stuff,” I joke, and sit up. I’m only half joking. In a couple years, Madison and I will get over our sex-shame-y upbringings enough to start actually talking about this sort of thing.
I know more about Patrick’s inclinations in bed than I ever cared to.
“Like I said—gross,” she says. After a pause, she continues.
“You didn’t actually hear that, did you?
He doesn’t seem like—” I smile to show that I was kidding.
Even though I wasn’t. There’s no need to scare the girl, and besides, she’ll be fully on board.
“You’re fucking with me. Got it. And even if he were, I wouldn’t need to know—we’re just friends. ”
It sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.
“Mm-hmm. Sure.”
Madison frowns and comes over to sit next to me on the bed.
“Does it bother you that I’m going? ’Cause if it does—”
“It doesn’t,” I assure her.
“I don’t have to be friends with him. I barely know the guy—cutting ties would be easy.”
“Don’t. Patrick’s a good one.”
I don’t want Madison to cut Patrick off, not only because I know they end up together but also because she is now my only connection to Ellie.
The more I think about it, the more I suspect that Ellie ended up with Cat because she was smarter about it than me.
She didn’t hang around him the way I did, always making herself available.
She dated other guys, and even though she later said she’d always had a crush on Ellie, she made sure Ellie didn’t know that, and in the end, he pursued her.
She made herself a scarce resource.
Sure, the analogy is a little gross. And, yes, I’m old enough that I shouldn’t feel the need to play silly games to get a boy’s attention. But when in Rome…
Maybe I came in too hot, sleeping with him right off the bat, but that’s okay. As much as it sucked to see him walk into the dining hall with Cat yesterday, I know I have time. They don’t start dating until next year. I can fix this.
I need to fix this.
“A good one with terrible taste in friends,” Madison says.
“He doesn’t have terrible taste in friends.”
“Evidence suggests otherwise. Maybe I can talk to Patrick, try to gauge why Ellie didn’t call.”
“Don’t,” I groan. “Please don’t bring it up. I don’t want it to seem like I’m pining.”
“Aren’t you, kind of, though? Pining? I can put out feelers—”
“No. It’ll just get back to Ellie. I don’t want that.”
“I doubt Patrick would mention it. Guys don’t talk the way girls do.”
Oh, to be so naive. “Men love gossip as much as women do,” I regretfully inform her.
“Pretty sure they don’t.”
“Trust me, Ellie and Patrick do.”
“You don’t even know them.”
I would respond, but all of my nerves are standing on end, because there it is again…
“Do you smell watermelon?”
“Oh my God, what is with you and watermelon lately? Is this some kind of stroke? No, I don’t—oh. Wait. Yeah, actually, I do. That’s weird, I wonder where—”
But I’ve already zeroed in on our cracked-open window. I jump out of the bed.
“That gets you up? Fucking watermelon?”
Fucking watermelon indeed.
I can see only the back of his head, but I’d recognize him anywhere. Right there, sitting at the picnic table outside our dorm, is Alex Aquino, reading a book and vaping.
“Mother. Fucking. Watermelon.”
Well, this is a surprisingly welcome distraction.
I glare down at him, incensed that I could travel fourteen years back in time to before we even met, and he’s still right there. Omnipresent, hovering around the edges of my periphery at seemingly every moment. Haunting me. Mocking me.
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m halfway down the hall outside our room.
“Joey, wait,” Madison calls, catching up to me. I stop and turn around. She holds up my student ID. “You forgot this. Unless you’re trying to get locked out of the building in your lobster pajamas.”
I glance down—sure enough, I’m in my old favorite pajama set, matching bottoms and a button-up shirt decorated with cartoon lobsters wearing top hats, purchased for me when I was fifteen by my mom at this kitschy beachside boutique we both loved in San Diego.
I’m also not wearing a bra. Madison makes a good point, but… I shrug. Who cares?
It’s just Alex.
I thank her and turn down the stairwell. Madison follows me to the first floor.
“You’re not wearing shoes,” she points out.
“Have fun with Patrick,” I say, my voice singsong.
“How can I have fun when I’m worried that my roommate is losing her mind?”
“Try making out,” I offer with a shrug.
“How many times do I have to tell you—” she begins, then stops as I push open the door leading from the stairwell to our dorm’s lobby. She follows me through it.
“I know, I know. You’re not into him. But consider this—what if you are?
What if you like Patrick, you just don’t want to like Patrick?
I know you have some vision of yourself where you’re a woman who dates men like…
I don’t know. Chris Evans or Chris Pine or any of the Chrises.
And let me just say—you absolutely could.
But Patrick is a good guy. Just admit that you like him and save yourself a whole lotta heartbreak. ”
I exhale, kind of winded from my speech.
“I don’t know why you’re all up Patrick’s ass,” she mutters.
Speaking of Patrick’s kinks…
“I’m going this way.” I point to my right. “Patrick and Ellie’s dorm is that way.” I point to my left. “I’ll see you when I see you.”
I walk away as Madison cries, “How the hell do you know what dorm they’re in?”
“You told me,” I lie.
“Pretty sure I didn’t.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I walk out, breathe in the warm fall air, and approach Alex.
“Those things’ll kill ya,” I remark as he takes a drag of his vape. I don’t wait to be invited before I sit down across from him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He doesn’t reply for a long moment, just takes me in. I do the same.
His wavy black hair is a couple inches longer than he’ll wear it in the future; his brown eyes are warm and rich in the light of the sun. His skin is a few shades darker than my own, probably because he does things like sit outside reading on Saturday afternoons.
The right side of his mouth curves up in something that is not quite a smile. “That so?”
“Vaper’s lung is no joke.”
“Vaper’s lung,” he repeats, trying it out.
“It’s like smoker’s lung only less cool.”
“I’ll have to look into that,” he says, closing his book and setting his vape on top. He regards me like I’m a puzzle to figure out. Ha. Good luck, buddy.
“There won’t be much written about it for a few years. But you can trust me.”
“You pre-med or something?” he asks, leaning forward. His eyes gleam with intrigue.
Oh, there’s a shade of Alex I’m familiar with. Alex the flirt.
I never noticed when we were younger, but he looks a few years older than he actually is, five-o’clock shadow in full force. He would probably have no problem getting into a bar with a bad fake ID.
“Or something,” I say.
“So psychic, then,” he says.
Ignoring him, I push forward. “It’s really rude of you to vape here, right outside our windows. Secondhand smoke and all.”
“Smoke?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Secondhand vapor,” I amend lamely.
“Are you asking me to leave?” he asks. I shrug, because now that I’m down here, sitting in front of this boy who hasn’t actually, technically, done anything to me yet, telling him to leave feels a bit harsh.
In my silence, he begins to gather his things.
I glance down at his book and groan: It’s 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.
Of course it is. “God, you would spend your Saturday reading Murakami.”
He pauses and perks up. “You like Murakami?”
Does liking movie adaptations of his short stories count as liking Murakami? Because other than that, my only Murakami experience is that, while I was dating a guy who liked him, I picked up one of his books, made it fifty pages in, and gave up.
And the movie adaptations I liked haven’t come out yet.
“Not at all.”
“Oh,” he says, sounding only slightly disappointed.
“The women he writes tend to be plot devices to help the men on their journeys,” I say, recalling a criticism I read online to assure myself it was okay to DNF a modern literary classic.
“Possibly a fair point. I’ll take that into consideration.”
Bothered by how understanding he’s being, I continue. “Murakami fans are some of the most pretentious men I’ve ever met. Men who see real women as nothing but plot devices—”
“Have I done something to you?” he asks, sounding genuinely bewildered.
Well, of course he is. A strange girl just came up to him and started bashing his taste in books for no discernible reason.
I sigh.
“No, you haven’t done anything.” Yet.
“So you’re attacking my taste in literature just for the hell of it?”
“I’m sorry—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“Because I gotta say, I’m kind of into it.”
I can’t help the laugh that I bark out at that.
The sound of it makes him grin, and I find myself searching his eyes for…
something. His words remind me of our conversation the night I died, his reaction to my insults.
You always did know just what to say to get me going.
The realization hits: Alex Aquino, whether eighteen or thirty-two, has a thing for being insulted. A possible shame kink? Intriguing.
“I’m Alex,” he says, reaching out with his right hand. I stare at it a moment before I take it. When I do, I remember the last time we touched, right before—well, right before.
I push the thought aside, and another time his hands were on me comes to mind.
He always did have such great hands.
“Joey,” I say, my voice a bit shaky. “It’s short for Josephina, but I prefer Joey.”
“Josephina. That’s a pretty name,” he says, and lets go of my hand. “Well, Josephina, you wanna tell me what you’re doing walking around campus in your pajamas and no shoes? Did you see a guy out here reading Murakami and think, I must rid the world of one more?”
“No.” I laugh. “I’m actually… a vicious sleepwalker. Just—cannot be contained.”
“Right. Got it,” he says, nodding quite seriously. “In that case, you wanna tell me what you were doing sleeping at—” He checks his phone. “Nearly five in the afternoon?”
“It is not five. It’s—” I check my own phone. “Four twenty-two.”
“I said nearly.”
“In thirty-eight minutes. In what world is that nearly anything?”
“So I’m dramatic. My question stands,” he says with a laugh, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and suddenly I’m laughing too.
God, was he always this adorable?