1 #2
I don’t need to look back to know he’s following. The porch is crowded, so I shove through, somebody’s drink sloshing over my wrist, and take the steps too fast. The night air hits the sweat at the back of my neck, and I drag it in like I’ve been underwater.
“Kylie, stop.”
I don’t. Corvin Hall is only a few blocks away, which was the whole reason we came to this party. Somebody on the fourth floor knew somebody who knew somebody who lived here, which in college apparently counts as a complete chain of custody.
Evan falls into step beside me. “Will you slow down?”
“No.”
“I said I fucked up.”
“And?”
“And I’m trying to explain.”
“So explain.”
When I turn my head, his brows are pulled low and his mouth is a flat line, and I can’t believe it. He’s angry. He found a way to get there first.
“Go ahead,” I say. “You wanted me to stop. I stopped.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
That lands right under my ribs, because I do know.
I want him to say something that puts it all back, that rewinds fifteen minutes and drops me in that living room with Maybe-Morgan, sweaty and laughing, thinking about calling him tomorrow.
I want him to tell me I got it wrong. But his mouth was on hers, and his hand was on her, and she thought he was single because he told her so.
I keep turning those three things over, looking for the angle where they become something else, and there isn’t one.
“You told her you were single.” My voice gives on the last word, and I hate that.
“I didn’t—”
“She said you did.”
“It’s complicated.”
“No. That sentence is actually really, really simple.”
“Kylie, I didn’t go there planning for this to happen.”
“Wow. That helps so much.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
We cross the street. Corvin Hall rises up ahead with every third window lit yellow, and two guys are standing by the entrance. One of them heads inside as we get close. The other stays where he is, leaning against the brick.
Evan drags both hands down his face. “Can you give me five minutes without jumping on every word I say?”
I stop walking. “Jumping on every word?”
“That’s not—”
“No. Explain that one.”
He blows out a breath. “You do this thing where you decide what something means before I’ve even finished saying it.”
For weeks, maybe longer, I’ve done the exact opposite.
I took every word he gave me at face value.
I swallowed every small, sharp feeling that told me something was off, because he said nothing was, and I trusted him more than I trusted myself.
And now he’s standing outside my dorm twenty minutes after I watched him kiss somebody else, telling me the problem is the way I listen.
My eyes burn. “You are unbelievable.”
“That’s not what I’m—”
“Then maybe start saying what you mean!”
It comes out loud enough to carry across the parking lot, and for half a second, all I can hear is my own voice coming back at me.
I made it three blocks without crying. I kept walking because if I stopped, I was pretty sure I’d either scream or sob on the sidewalk, and apparently we’re going with screaming.
Heat crawls up my neck. There’s nobody out here except us and the guy against the brick, and of course he heard. His eyes come over once and then move away, and somehow that pisses me off more than if he’d stared.
“What?” I snap at him.
His eyes come back. “What?”
He doesn’t sound confused. He doesn’t sound like much of anything.
“Do you need something?”
“No.”
He looks at Evan for maybe a second, then back at me, and that’s it.
No awkward smile, no pretending he wasn’t listening, no embarrassment on my behalf.
He stands there like two people screaming outside the building is a mild inconvenience to his night, and I want to crawl out of my own skin, so I get mad at him instead.
“Kylie,” Evan says.
I don’t look at him. “Do you cheat on your girlfriends too?”
The stranger’s eyebrows lift, barely. “Do I what?”
“You heard me.”
“Unfortunately.”
Oh, fuck him.
“You look like the type,” I say. “Cheat on your girlfriend, lie about it, then stand there acting shocked when she loses her fucking mind.”
Evan says my name again, but I barely hear it. The stranger looks at Evan, then back at me, slowly.
“Do you know me?” the guy says.
“No,” I say.
“Then how would you know what type I am?”
It’s how calm he is. I’m standing here with my face on fire and my eyes stinging and three years rearranging themselves faster than I can keep up, and this asshole looks like he’s waiting for an elevator.
“I don’t,” I say. “And I never plan to.”
“Great.”
“Great.” I shove past him for the door.
He says, “Keep it that way.”
My hand closes on the handle. I look back, ready for whatever he says next, but he isn’t looking at me anymore. He’s watching the far end of the parking lot like I’ve already gone inside.
Asshole.
“Kylie,” Evan says behind me.
I yank the door open. “Go home, Evan.”
“Can we talk tomorrow?”
Under the entryway light, his face is one I know better than my own. His eyes look wet, or maybe it’s the light. I honestly can’t tell, so I go inside and let the door close on the question.
The anger carries me up the stairs and down the hallway, past a whiteboard where someone has drawn a lopsided heart, all the way to my door.
I miss the lock with my key once, then twice, and that’s when I notice my hand is shaking, badly, the key rattling against the metal plate.
Before I can try a third time, the chain scrapes on the other side, and the door opens.
Tessa stands there in pajama pants with her toothbrush in her hand. Her eyes go past me to the empty hallway first, left and then right, before they drop to my key.
“Oh,” she says. “It wasn’t stuck.”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Neither of us moves. Then she steps aside, and I walk in.
The room looks exactly like it did when I left. Her desk lamp throwing its circle of warm light, the shirt I tried on and rejected hanging off the back of my chair, her bed made with sharp corners and mine a tangle. It all feels wrong for being here, unchanged, like the room didn’t get the message.
Tessa shuts the door and slides the chain back on. “I was about to brush my teeth.”
I nod.
“Do you need the bathroom first?”
“No.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t move right away. She stands there holding her toothbrush, and I can feel her looking at my face, deciding whether asking would be rude. I pull off one sandal, then the other.
“Your phone is vibrating,” she says.
It is, against my back pocket, over and over. I pull it out and drop it on the bed without looking at the screen, and it keeps going.
Tessa picks up her toiletry bag and opens the door, and I hear myself say her name. She looks back.
My throat is closing, and I have to push the words out around it. “I might––cry.”
She nods once.
“And I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.”
She goes to brush her teeth. No questions, no head tilt, no oh my God, what happened.
When she comes back, she sets a bottle of water on the corner of my desk without a word and slips her headphones on.
I crawl onto my bed still dressed and turn my phone facedown.
It buzzes against the blanket. Stops. Buzzes again.
There are a few things on the wall from whoever lived here last year, and I stare at it until it blurs.
I tell myself I’m not going to cry, and my chin wobbles anyway.
My breath catches, hitches, catches again, and I roll onto my side and press my face into the pillow, and it comes.
I keep it quiet, swallowing every sound before it gets out, and I don’t even know who I’m being quiet for.
Tessa has headphones on. Half the floor is still out.
Evan is blocks away. I just can’t stand the thought of crying.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes until white sparks go off behind them.
I love him, present tense, and that feels like its own kind of betrayal.
I’m friends with his friends. His mom texts me.
I know what he orders everywhere we eat.
Three years of my life have Evan threaded through almost every part of them, and twenty minutes ago his hand was on another girl’s waist, a girl he told he was single.
Staying in tonight. Except he didn’t. He knew I was going out with girls from my floor, and he still ended up at a party a few blocks from my dorm, with her.
My hands come down off my face. Did he think I wouldn’t be there?
The question stops my crying. I stare into the dark and let the next one come. What if tonight wasn’t a mistake? What if he wants to be with her? I see them again; his mouth on hers, his hand at her waist, his eyes closing when she said single, and I roll onto my back.
By one in the morning, Tessa’s breathing has gone slow and even across the room, and I’m still awake. The only light is the thin line under the door and the glow of my phone when I finally turn it over. Seven missed texts. Three of them are just my name.
Evan: Kylie.
Evan: Ky.
Evan: Ky, please.
Evan: I’m sorry.
Evan: It wasn’t supposed to happen.
Evan: Let me explain.
The last one came in nine minutes ago.
Evan: Please talk to me.
I read it twice. I don’t type anything back, and I don’t block him either. I set the phone on the mattress beside me, screen up, and lie there in the dark watching it glow until it goes black on its own.