CHAPTER 6
Miley’s POV:
The rain in New York doesn’t just fall; it bleeds down the glass of a tinted Uber window like old oil on an exposed engine block.
I had my AirPods jammed in so deep the plastic was beginning to ache against my cartilage, the volume slammed to that precise, dangerous notch where the outside world becomes a silent movie and the inside of your skull becomes a crowded stadium.
The track was Drake’s “Over My Dead Body.” That opening piano—those clean, sparse, minor-key chords floating over that heavy, filtered kick drum—hit me right in the center of my throat.
It’s funny how a song can act like a time machine with a broken dial.
One second you’re twenty-four, sitting in the back of a silver Camry on the FDR Drive with your corporate ID badge clipped to your hip, and the next you’re nineteen again, smelling of cheap laundry detergent, instant ramen, and the specific, terrifying brand of hope that only exists before someone breaks your chest open.
“I think I killed everybody in the game last year, man, fuck it, I was on though...”
The sub-bass rumbled through the floorboards of the car, vibrating into the soles of my boots. That song was my armor during the winter of my sophomore year at Buffalo State. It was the only thing that could steady the erratic, frantic rhythm of my heart after the sky fell.
Every time the vocal sample drifted through the music—that haunting, soulful wail that sounds like it’s trapped behind a brick wall—I didn’t hear the singer. I heard Alicia.
Alicia Gray: the girl with the gap-toothed smile that looked like a tiny doorway to somewhere safe.
The girl who used to sit on the radiator in our tiny dorm room, her legs tucked under her oversized grey hoodie, reciting poetry she pretended she hadn't written herself.
She was smart—the kind of smart that didn't need to prove itself in a seminar room—and she had this slow, smoky laugh that could make a room full of rowdy basketball players drop their volume just to hear the punchline.
We had been roommates first. Then friends who stayed up until three in the morning arguing about whether true altruism existed.
And then, during a blackout caused by an ice storm in November, we became everything.
I remembered the texture of her skin under the fleece blankets—how warm she was, how effortless it felt to slide into her rhythm.
She knew my body before I even understood its boundaries.
Alicia could love a woman with a fierce, devastating precision; she licked pussy like there was no tomorrow, like she was trying to leave her signature in the marrow of my bones.
She was my entire world, the first person I ever let behind the high, jagged wall I’d built around my life in Harlem.
Until the day I walked into Room 314 and found the door unlocked.
The memory didn't come back in pieces; it hit me whole, like a physical blow to the sternum.
I had forgotten my mid-term study guide for my three o'clock business administration seminar.
I was supposed to be across the quad, sitting in a lecture hall with two hundred other kids, but I ran back.
I remember the air that day—sharp, smelling of wet asphalt and rotting leaves.
I pushed the heavy wooden door open, the phrase "Hey babe, you won't believe what Prof—" dying in my throat before it could even clear my teeth.
The room was dark, the blinds drawn shut against the afternoon sun.
On the narrow twin bed that belonged to Alicia, two bodies were tangled in the white cotton sheets.
The sound that filled the room wasn't the radio; it was a heavy, wet, familiar gasp.
And then the smell hit me—the sharp, unmistakable scent of sex and that regular strawberry lotion.
Alicia’s back was to me, her shoulders curved forward, her face buried between the open, dark thighs of another girl. A girl whose face I knew from every warning whispered across the campus quad.
Maxine.
Maxine was a piece of pure, unadulterated shit.
She was the campus bully, a six-foot-tall track athlete with a mouth like a rusty razor blade and a reputation for picking apart girls who didn't have the stomach to fight back.
She was a scumbag bitch, a predator who thrived on the smallness of others, and I hated her guts with a passion that burned in the pit of my stomach.
The minute the door clicked against the wall, the world stopped spinning.
Alicia spun around with a violent, panicked jerk, her eyes wide and glassy, her lips slick and wet as she sat up off the mattress, instantly dragging the grey sheet up to her neck like a shroud.
Maxine didn't even look ashamed; she just cursed under her breath, scrambling off the far side of the bed, her bare feet hitting the linoleum as she reached for her lace panties and her discarded sweatpants.
“Miley,” Alicia exclaimed, her voice thin, cracking like dry ice. “Miley, wait. You shouldn't be here right now.”
I stood at the threshold, my hand frozen on the brass doorknob, my chest dropping into a bottomless, freezing void.
Technically, she was right. I shouldn't have been there.
I should have been in the business hall, taking notes on supply-side economics.
But the irony was a sick, twisting blade in my gut. This was my room. We shared the space.
"Really?" I asked, my voice shockingly quiet, devoid of the anger that would come later. It was just hollow. "That's how you're gonna spin it, Alicia? You're up in here with this fucking hoe? This is how you're gonna do me?"
Maxine was pulling her heavy graphic tee over her head, her braids catching on the collar for a brief second before she popped through.
She didn't look at me, her usual arrogant swagger completely gone, replaced by the awkward, silent rush of a girl caught in someone else’s house.
She yanked her sneakers onto her bare feet without tying the laces, her fingers trembling slightly as she snatched her black knapsack from the floor by the desk.
She was ready to bounce, completely uninterested in the nuclear fallout about to take place between me and my girlfriend.
"Where the fuck do you think you're going, bitch?
" I snapped, my eyes locking onto Maxine like a pair of thermal sights.
The venom in my tone made her freeze for a fraction of a second near the closet.
"Don't stop on my account. You two can finish up exactly what you started. I'm just getting my papers."
"Miley, please, just let her leave," Alicia begged, her hands shaking as she held the sheet against her collarbone, her dark skin looking ash-gray in the dim light of the room. "Please. It's not what it looks like. Max, just go. Get out."
Maxine didn't need to be told twice. She ducked her head, her massive frame slipping past me at the door frame like a shadow, her shoulder barely brushing mine as she vanished down the echoing hallway of the dormitory, her untied laces slapping against the tile.
The door slammed shut behind her. The sound was like a gunshot in the tiny twelve-by-twelve room.
"Miley, look at me, please," Alicia cried, sliding to the edge of the mattress, the sheets dragging behind her like a discarded skin.
Her eyes were rimmed with a sudden, frantic red.
"I am so sorry. I swear to God, I don't even like her.
I don't know why she was here. I was lonely, Miley.
You're always at work, you're always studying, you're never here anymore—"
"Don't you dare put this on my schedule," I said, my voice dropping an octave as I walked over to my desk.
My hands were shaking so violently I could barely grip the edges of the manila folder containing my economics papers.
I pulled the drawer open, the wood screeching against the tracks, and shoved the documents into my bag.
"Don't you dare make your lack of discipline my fault, Alicia. "
"It's a mistake, Miley! It was just a stupid, meaningless mistake!
" She reached out, her fingers catching the leather strap of my wristwatch, trying to pull my arm back, trying to force me into the circle of her heat where she had always been able to fix things with a touch and a soft word.
"Please. Just sit down. Let me explain it to you. Let me tell you how it happened."
I yanked my wrist out of her grip with such force that her hand slapped against the wooden bedpost. I looked down at her, the tears finally starting to blur my vision, hot and stinging.
"Please," I whispered, the word tasting like bile. "It's only a mistake because you got caught, Alicia. If I had stayed in that lecture hall, you'd be under her right now. Continue doing whatever the hell it is you do with your new bitch. I'm out."
"Miley, don't leave!" she screamed as I turned my back on her. "If you walk out that door right now, I swear to God, Miley—"
I didn't let her finish the sentence. I slammed the heavy oak door behind me, the sound vibrating through the concrete floorboards of the residence hall.
I walked down the long, fluorescent-lit hallway, the tears finally spilling over my eyelashes, burning my cheeks as I stumbled out into the cold Buffalo rain, my papers clutched against my chest like a shield that had arrived far too late.
***
The relocation took three days. Three days of living out of a black duffle bag on the floor of the student union lounge, brushing my teeth in the public stalls while girls from the freshman floor gossiped about midterms.
When the housing office finally assigned me a new room on the opposite side of the campus—Governor's Complex, the quiet building where the nerds and the international students lived—I went back to Room 314 to gather the remainder of my life.
I chose an hour when I knew Alicia had her creative writing workshop, hoping the room would be an empty tomb.
It wasn't.