On His Campus (Boys of Hawthorne House #2)

Chapter 1

Melly

I keep looking around the apartment like Penelope is going to walk out of her bedroom, set a hand on my shoulder, and tell me there’s been a mistake.

A few days ago, she told me the room wasn’t available.

She’d been kind about it on the phone, sympathetic in that way people are when they have everything you want and they know it, and I’d hung up and stared at the ceiling of my sublet, bummed that I was stuck in the shithole I was at.

Then she called back because the other girl had pulled out, and the room was mine if I still wanted it.

If I still wanted it.

I moved in so fast my head spun. Four boxes.

That was everything I owned in the world, sitting in the back of my car, and it took me one afternoon to unpack the lot of it.

Mila helped me. She sat cross-legged on my new floor with my old picture frames in her lap, and she kept saying the same thing over and over again like a prayer she couldn’t quite get out of her mouth.

This place, Mel. Oh my God, this place.

She was jealous, and it made my stomach turn over because I felt like I’d taken something I hadn’t earned.

I felt like an imposter. I am an imposter.

I keep looking at the high ceilings and the tall paned windows that let in a sheet of late-afternoon light across the rug, and I keep waiting for someone to come and take it back.

The walls are white, and there are paintings on the walls — landscapes, mostly, soft greens and grey skies and a tiny gold ship cresting a wave in one of them — and on the bookshelf between the windows, there’s a clutter of small ceramic things and brass things and a little dish full of matchbooks from restaurants I’ve never heard of.

Trinkets. That’s what they are. And I would never in a million years have thought that trinkets could make a room look expensive, but they do.

They look like money. They look like a girl who has been raised to know what to put on a shelf, and I am suddenly, painfully aware that I don’t know what to put on a shelf.

I don’t know what looks classy. I don’t know what looks cheap.

I don’t know the difference between the right kind of fake flower and the wrong kind, but there is a single white rose in a tiny bud vase on my windowsill that I refuse to touch.

My bedroom looks like it belongs to a princess.

I’m not being dramatic. It actually does.

The bed is a four-poster — white, of course, everything in this apartment is white or cream or a soft buttery gold — and there’s a canopy over it that isn’t really a canopy so much as a gesture toward one, a swath of fabric draped between the posts like it can’t be bothered to commit.

The desk is white and curved at the edges.

The mirror above the dresser is gilt-framed.

Everything in this room belongs to a different girl than me.

My Target duvet is the wrong shade of cream against the sheets that came with the bed.

My laundry basket is plastic. My laptop charger is fraying at the connector, and when I plug it in, it sticks out from the wall at a sad little angle.

I’m on student loans. I keep reminding myself of this in the bathroom mirror like a mantra.

You are on student loans. The credit card is not a toy.

Do not buy a new duvet to match the bed.

But the truth is that I want to. I want to so badly it makes my teeth ache.

There’s a saying about a girl with good taste has to be rich — and either way, I’m not.

Either way, I just moved into the prettiest apartment near Camden University like I belong here.

I sit down on the edge of the bed and look at my hands.

The thing is, this was the plan. This was always the plan.

Two years at my local community college, head down, grades up, the cheapest possible route to my associates, and then transfer to Camden U for the back half of my degree because Camden U was always where I was supposed to end up.

I watched all my friends go there straight out of high school, and I watched their Instagram stories on Friday nights from my mother’s couch with a textbook in my lap, and I told myself it would be worth it.

I told myself I’d get there. I’d get there cheaper, and then I’d be there, and I’d have the same experience as everyone else, just delayed.

I didn’t think about how hard it would be to walk into a junior-year cohort of strangers who already had their groups, how lonely the first six weeks would be, or about how social work would feel like carrying a wet coat everywhere I went — heavy and damp and necessary — or about how my professors would assume I was on track when I was actually drowning. I didn’t think about the cost of rent.

But my boyfriend, Chase, thought about all of it.

He had a whole list. He didn’t want me to transfer.

He spent the last two years of our relationship — and it’s been almost exactly two years now, two years next month — gently and not-so-gently working on me, the way water works on a stone.

He’d ask if I’d really thought about the cost. He’d ask if I’d thought about how far Camden was from his house where we lived with his parents.

He’d ask if my friendships were really worth this kind of move, because, Melly, you have me, what more do you need?

He underestimated how stubborn I am. He’s still underestimating it.

I’ve wanted to come to Camden U since I was fourteen years old, and a boy was never going to be the thing that stopped me, no matter how much I told him I loved him in the dark of his bedroom while he played video games.

I take a breath. I let it out slow.

This is going to be a good year. I just have to believe it.

I walk out of my bedroom in joggers and a tank top, my hair piled on top of my head in a bun that is mostly held together by hope, and there’s a girl on the couch I haven’t seen before sitting with Penelope.

She’s brunette. Long brown hair down past her shoulders and brown eyes.

She has a mug cradled in both hands, as if she’s cold, even though the apartment is warm.

She’s cross-legged on the cushion next to Penelope, and they’re mid-conversation in that low murmuring tone girls use when they’re discussing somebody.

“— yeah, they’re like fully together now,” the brunette is saying. “I can’t believe G is okay with it.”

“I thought she wasn’t,” Penelope replies.

“I don’t know. Apparently, they’re really into each other, so she kind of doesn’t have a choice. They made it official last weekend and are only now telling everyone.”

Penelope notices me first. She does this small bright lift of her chin that I have already, in two days, started to recognize as her version of a hello.

“Oh,” she says, and her face brightens. “Hi.”

“Good morning.” I aim for the kitchen. Coffee. I need coffee.

The brunette twists on the couch and looks at me over the back of it. “You must be Pen’s new roommate.”

I nod politely as her gaze looks me from head to toe.

“What’s your name again?”

“Her name is Melly,” Penelope says, before I can answer. There’s a small grin tugging at her mouth. “My new roommate, since Lucy isn’t moving in.”

The brunette rolls her eyes — fondly, I think, though I’m not sure yet — and says, “I really thought G was going to stick to her guns.”

Penelope shrugs one shoulder. “It worked out. I have Melly.”

I have Melly. Something in my chest goes soft and then immediately suspicious of itself.

“Melly.” The brunette is still watching me. “I’m Mara.”

“Nice to meet you.” I get a mug down from the cupboard — one of Penelope’s mugs, hand-thrown ceramic, the kind that costs forty dollars at a craft fair — and pour myself coffee from the French press they’ve already made.

I should have asked if I could have some.

I will ask next time. I look out the window above their heads because looking at them feels intrusive.

“It looks like a beautiful day.”

I can feel Mara still looking at me. I’ve gotten used to being looked at. It happens. My mother used to tell me it was a gift, and my grandmother used to tell me it was a curse, and depending on the day, I’m inclined to agree with one or the other. Today, it just makes my shoulders tight.

“God,” Mara says softly. “You’re really pretty.”

I almost drop the spoon in my hand. “Oh—” I make a small sound that’s supposed to be a laugh. “Thanks.”

She looks at Penelope. Then back at me. She tilts her head and considers me. “Your eyes are so blue. They’re like—” She makes a gesture with her fingers that doesn’t mean anything. “It’s a thing. It works. Pen, doesn’t it work?”

Penelope nods, calm, like this is a normal way for two people to discuss a third person who is new around here.

“She’s gorgeous. I told you.”

I open the refrigerator to have something to do with my body.

They were talking about my looks. They were talking about me, specifically my face, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to be flattered or embarrassed, but the way Mara is watching me makes me think I’m supposed to be flattered, so I rearrange my face into something I hope looks like flattered, and I close the fridge.

“Did Pen tell you what we’re doing tonight?” Mara asks.

“Oh.” I shake my head. “My boyfriend’s coming over.”

The pause that follows is the smallest possible pause. A heartbeat, maybe.

Mara nods slowly, processing this piece of information. “Bring him,” she says, and her voice picks up again, bright and easy. “The more the merrier.”

“I—”

“You have to come. You’re Penelope’s new roommate, so now you’re part of the group. Right, Pen?”

“You should come.” Penelope’s voice is gentler than Mara’s. “It’s going to be fun.”

I swallow.