Chapter 16 #2
There’s a sharp ache building in my stomach. I think it might be actual heartbreak, or maybe just hunger, but either way I double over in the shadow of a tree and try to breathe. The air smells like mud and worms and the sick sweetness of rotting leaves.
I wish I smoked. I wish I had a flask, or a Xanax, or some type of narcotic. But mostly I wish I had a reason not to stand here and let the rain turn me inside out.
My hands shake as I dig out my phone. No messages, no missed calls. I want to text Andie, but the idea of typing words is suddenly impossible. I shove the phone back in my pocket and keep going.
By the time I reach the dorm, my shoes squish with every step and my hair’s plastered to my skull. The world’s gone blurry at the edges, all the lights smeared by water and the mess in my head.
I take the stairs two at a time, dripping all the way up.
At the landing, I stop and lean against the wall, forehead pressed to the cool cinderblock, letting the shivers rack my body.
I count to twenty, then try again, but my lungs won’t work right.
The thought of the contract makes me struggle to breathe.
It’s a second skin, wrapped tight around my chest.
For a minute, I think about running away. Getting on a bus and disappearing. Starting over somewhere where nobody cares about my grades or my body or what I might be worth to a man who collects women like degrees.
But I’m not that brave, or that dumb. I’m just cold, and wet, and so, so tired.
The hall outside our room is quiet. There’s a paper cutout on the door—Andie’s idea, a pun about finals week and cats—and for a second, it’s so dumb and sweet that I want to scream.
I fish out my key, but I don’t open the door. Not yet. I rest my head against the wood and let the tears come, silent and bitter, mixing with the last of the rain on my cheeks.
Inside, I can hear the faint clatter of Andie’s typing, the muffled thump of her music through cheap earbuds.
I stay out in the hallway until my body goes numb and the crying’s stopped, or at least slowed to a manageable leak. Then I swipe at my eyes, take one breath, and open the door.
The first thing I see is the glow of Andie’s desk lamp, a little golden pool on her mountain of textbooks.
She’s in full finals mode—sweatpants, blonde hair in a frizzed-out bun, under-eye masks pasted to her cheeks.
The room smells like vanilla, highlighters, and the weird honey-and-patchouli lotion she always slathers on before bed.
She looks up when I come in, blinking at me like I’m a ghost, and then she’s out of her chair so fast the lamp almost topples.
“Jesus, Simone.” Her voice goes sharp. “Did you get mugged?”
I’m about to say “no,” but then I realize I don’t have a better answer.
She takes in my wet hair, the makeup smeared to my jaw, the bloodless way I’m gripping my own arms. Her face goes soft, then fierce.
“Sit,” she says, and pushes me gently onto the edge of my bed.
The comforter is instantly sodden under my weight. Water drips from my jeans, puddling at my ankles, and the damp chill radiates up my spine, turning my bones to glass. I can’t move. I can’t speak.
Andie hovers, not sure where to start. “Are you hurt? Where does it hurt?” She crouches in front of me, hands on my knees, searching for blood or bruises.
I shake my head. “I’m fine,” I manage. The words are brittle, barely audible.
Andie glances at the door, then back at me. “Should I call someone? Security? The RA?”
“No,” I say. “Please don’t.”
She hesitates, then sinks down on the bed beside me. Her hand finds mine, and the pressure of her fingers is the only thing keeping me here. I want to lean into her, let her hold me, but I’m too rigid, my whole body a locked-up firewall.
We sit for a while, just the sound of rain against the window and the far-off whine of someone’s playlist in the next room.
Andie breaks the silence, soft and slow. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
I shake my head again, but this time the motion cracks something loose. My lips start to tremble. I suck in a breath, but it catches halfway, a hiccup or a sob or both.
Andie gets up, grabs the blanket off her own bed, and drapes it over my shoulders. It smells like her, like Tide laundry pods and maybe a little bit of weed. The weight of it is a relief. She sits next to me, thigh to thigh, and waits.
After a minute, the words tumble out.
“It’s Liam,” I say. “I saw him tonight.”
She lets that hang. “What did he do? Oh no.”
Andie’s my friend, so she knows that I’ve been seeing Liam.
She’s also sensed that we’ve been in a bad place relationship-wise because I’ve been in a funk recently.
But this is a new low. I can’t find the words.
I keep seeing the contract, the neat lines and the blank for my signature, the way his blue eyes never wavered.
“He…” My throat goes tight. “He wants me to have his baby. Not like, right now, but after I fix my fibroids. He gave me a contract. Like a job offer. Like a bribe.”
Andie’s face goes still, the way it does when she’s parsing something inhuman. “He offered to pay you?”
“No.” I want to laugh, but it dies in my chest. “He said he’d give me an A in his class. He said he’d take care of me, all expenses, whatever I needed. If I agreed to be his surrogate. That’s the word he used. Surrogate.”
Andie says nothing for a while. Her hand is warm on mine. She’s not letting go.
I keep going, the story unspooling like a confession.
“We were together, for months. Not just the class stuff. Sex, too. All the time. I thought—” My voice falters. “I thought he loved me. He said it, once. But now I think he just wanted a womb. And I’m not even a good womb! I’m a defective one because of my fibroids, but he says it can be fixed.”
The room is silent except for the tiny, helpless sounds leaking out of me. Andie pulls me closer, arm tight around my shoulders. Her head rests against mine, her hair a soft cloud.
“He’s a monster,” she says, and there’s no pity in it. Just a flat, matter-of-fact rage.
“I thought I was special,” I whisper. “I thought it was real.”
“It is real,” Andie says. “Just not in the way you wanted.”
For a while I let her hold me. The wetness of my clothes seeps through the blanket, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She rocks me gently, the way you’d calm a kid after a nightmare.
Eventually, my brain reboots. The sobs fade to sniffles. I find my voice again.
“What do I do?” I say. “Do I turn him in? Do I sign the contract? Do I disappear?”
Andie leans back, wipes the mascara from my cheek with the edge of her sleeve. “First,” she says, “you get dry. Then you get angry. Then you decide.”
It sounds like a plan, and for the first time tonight, I almost smile.
Andie pushes up from the bed and rummages in her dresser. She tosses me a pair of pajama bottoms and one of her big, worn t-shirts. “Go shower,” she orders. “I’ll make tea.”
I obey. The shower is brutal at first, the water too hot on my chilled skin.
But I stand there a long time, watching the black streaks of makeup spiral down the drain, feeling the heat melt the ice in my chest. When I come back, Andie’s waiting with a mug of chamomile and a box of tissues.
The blanket is back on my bed, warm and clean.
We sit cross-legged, knees knocking, and I tell her the whole thing. About the sex, about the dinners, about the things Liam whispered in the dark. About the way he made me feel, and the way he broke me.
Andie listens, no judgment, just quiet fury. When I finish, she says, “If you want to go to the school, I’ll help. If you want to keep it quiet, I’ll help with that, too.”
I look at her, really look, and realize that this—right here, the two of us in this tiny room—is what real love feels like. Not the contracts or the promises or the sick thrill of being wanted by someone forbidden.
“I’m so stupid,” I say.
“No,” Andie says, and she means it. “You just wanted something real. That’s not stupid.”
We clink mugs, as if to toast that.
Later, as I drift off under the extra blanket, I think about the future.
About the contract, about the surgery, about whether I could ever be that girl again—the one who believed.
But for now, I just feel numb. For now, I just listen to Andie’s soft, even breathing, and the rain hammering out its own relentless rhythm.
For the umpteenth time, I think: I am broken.
And I’ll never be fixed.