Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
EMMA
“Do you guys want to go to the movies on Tuesday? Tickets are half off for students. But let’s make it a girls’ night out,” my friend Luna, whom I don’t see often, asks Kamila and me as we finish our final dance and drink at King’s Wolf.
I get excited thinking about a girls’ night out. It’s been too long since we’ve had one.
Tonight, we stayed at the best bar in town until two thirty in the morning, and we’re all ready to call it a night.
The boys are all here and drunk, the girls and I are tipsy—excluding Stevie, who doesn’t drink due to her medical condition, but is taking care of her husband, who is kissing her with a dopey smile on his face.
We usually go out the first weekend of every semester, but this year the night was cut short when the cops raided the bar for fake IDs. We had to rush Kamila out of here along with her fake ID since she isn’t turning twenty-one for another week.
Talk about a mood killer.
Either way, tonight more than made up for it.
“Sounds fun. We’re overdue for a girls’ night out. I’ll ask Stevie later if she wants to tag along.” As soon as Kamila finishes answering for both of us, Brad, Luna’s boyfriend and one of Stevie’s best friends that we inherited, comes up behind her.
“Okay, ladies.” He wraps his arms around her and kisses the top of her head. “I’m taking my girl away for the night.”
“Can’t you wait for the song to be over?” I whine. It’s the first night we’ve all been able to dance together.
“Hey Ma” by Pitbull and J Balvin blasts through the speakers, and Kami twirls me around.
All our voices are hoarse from the screaming we’ve had to do to carry on a simple conversation over the music.
My feet are starting to hurt in these heels from all the dancing and running I did earlier, but I don’t care.
This is the first time I’ve been able to truly let loose in a while.
Brad rolls his eyes. “Fine.”
He gives Luna one last kiss and moves to where the boys are, watching us. Well, except Jake, who disappeared a while ago with some random girl.
“You’ve still got him wrapped around your finger.” Kami waggles both eyebrows at Luna, and we all laugh. Brad chased Luna for months after Stevie set them up before she said yes to being his girlfriend this summer.
We have a large group of friends going, but out of my three really close ones, two are coupled up, and the third—Jake—is always on the hunt for a new fling. It’s tough to admit, but sometimes I feel left out and lonely.
A flash of his face crosses my mind, and I shake my head, begging my brain not to torment me with the memories of earlier today. It was hard and confusing enough to see Ace—I mean Grayson—act so differently, I won’t allow myself to feel sad about it.
These are just the side effects of the four vodka sodas I had.
“Are you okay?” Kami asks from beside me.
I nod and smile. Kamila doesn’t know about Grayson, and I never plan to tell anyone in the group; the fact that he’s a professor here is also a sign as to why I shouldn’t.
They constantly complain about me not talking about my sex or dating life, but truthfully, there’s barely anything to share.
And the things that have happened in the past can stay there.
Unless it’s someone I know who’s going to stick around, I won’t tell a soul.
I’m afraid to get my hopes up, let alone my best friends’.
The song ends, and we take a breather, fanning ourselves.
“Movies Tuesday night!” Luna yells one more time before leaving my best friend and me behind.
“I’ll look at the movie times!” And with that, I am left alone as Kamila walks to Cameron.
Taking a seat at a nearby booth that two people just left, I give my friends a few minutes before telling them I want to go the hell home. I’m exhausted.
Jeez, with the way they’re moving, they might as well fuck in the middle of the dance floor.
One day I’ll have that…without the major PDA.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here! I want pizza,” I yell at them one more time, only now I drag Kami and Stevie by their forearms.
“Hey!” Levi says loudly when I snatch away Stevie.
The girls giggle.
“I always forget how strong you are,” Stevie says.
Shrugging, I let them go once we’re out the door. “People mistake my size for weakness, but I could bring any large man down to his knees in seconds with three moves.”
Cameron hears what I said and cringes, remembering what I did to him last year.
If only it took three moves to make a guy fall in love, or even in like with me.
It’s four thirty in the morning, and I’ve been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for twenty minutes, trying to fall asleep after coming back from the bar. My buzz is mostly gone, but my anxiety is at an all-time high.
It’s been a while since I’ve had insomnia.
My parents sent me to a psychologist, who I still stay in touch with when I really need to talk, and a sleep therapist who helped me when I was a kid after a close relative passed away in the family, which I hardly ever talk or try to think about, no matter how many times she crosses my mind.
Turning on my bedside lamp, I glance over at my desk and see my copy of The Princess Bride that I carry with me on tough days. It reminds me of her and my childhood, but now, it also reminds me of him. It doesn’t upset me. If anything, it was nice to share that part of my life with someone.
As grumpy as Grayson was today, I have a feeling that the night we met, I saw him for who he really was. Or at least, that’s what I choose to believe.
Moving my gaze to my closed laptop, I decide what to do. If I plan to stay awake, I might as well do something productive. Nothing’s worse than having insomnia and just waiting to fall asleep.
Standing, I walk over to my laptop and try to hear if Kamila is still awake in the room next to mine.
Cameron is sleeping over, even though he has a room with no roommate, and I unfortunately know that they have sex almost every night.
But that doesn’t seem to be the case today, given the complete silence that fills our suite.
All I can hear are the loud songs of katydids, surrounding us on the upstate campus.
I open my laptop and pick up my largest pair of headphones, then shuffle through my playlists to find a song I’ve had stuck in my head for days. “Help!” by The Beatles sounds sharp through the headphones I always use to write.
Opening a blank document on my laptop, I look through my earlier notes and find them messier than usual.
Hm, that’s not like me. Then again, I was kind of shitting my pants while talking to the man.
Tapping my fingers on my desk, I decide to disconnect my headphones from my laptop and connect them to my phone. I listen to the long interview with my eyes closed, trying to catch any changes in his tone or words that might indicate a lie.
The most noticeable changes so far are when he talks about his parents and the soup kitchen.
When I reach the mundane questions in the middle, I catch myself zoning out a bit.
It’s so unlike me, but it had to have been some coping mechanism to calm the shaking in my hands and the emotional discomfort from his presence and demeanor.
Once I check out, I pay closer attention to Grayson’s answers and tone. My eyes open and widen as I realize that before I asked about his divorce, his voice had softened. It was still colder than it was in July, but there’s a hint of warmth.
He’s still in there.
I rewind the interview two more times and decide to do some proper research on Grayson Adam Hayes. I’m making this the most in-depth short profile anyone’s ever done with what I’ve got.