4. Ellie
Ellie
The campus coffee cart has a line twelve people deep, which gives me plenty of time to count and recount the bubblegum stuck in the stones of the walkway in sets of five before my brain decides I'm allowed to stop.
I'm on my third set when someone cuts in front of me.
"Hey—"
"Oat milk latte, extra shot, and whatever the pretty girl behind me wants."
Jinx grins at the barista like he belongs here.
And he looks like it, too.
Just another twenty-one-year-old in a hoodie with the college logo and ripped jeans instead of a psycho criminal who helps bury bodies and God knows what else.
"Actually, make hers pink," he adds. "She likes pink."
The barista, a sophomore I vaguely recognize from my psych lecture but can never remember the name of because she hates me anyway, blinks at him. Then her face goes deep red and she giggles nervously. She makes both our drinks without charging him.
Jinx has a level of charisma I can't even begin to fathom.
"What are you doing here?" I hiss as soon as we're alone, but I accept the strawberry latte he passes me. It's the exact right temperature and the exact right amount of milk. They never get my drink right, either.
"Going to college, duh." He adjusts the strap of his backpack, which I'm about ninety percent sure he stole off Cyrus. "Higher education, bettering myself, getting high and waxing philosophical in the park. Isn't that what you're supposed to do in your twenties?"
"Sure, except for one little problem. You don't go here."
"I could." He falls into step beside me, blending into the flow of students crossing the quad with disturbing ease.
He really does look like he belongs here.
The hoodie is an admittedly gorgeous heather gray, the oversized sleeves pushed up his muscular forearms. The color goes perfectly with his mane of blond hair, which is loose today, falling just past his shoulders in thick, glorious waves.
No butterfly clips. He's wearing a pair of glasses I know he doesn't need, and it makes him look like he's about to lead a study group.
"I have the GPA for it," he adds. "Cyrus forged me transcripts once for a job. 3.8. Guess he didn't think I could sell a 4.0."
"You're insane."
"It's called a persona, Princess." He smirks sideways at me, taking a sip of his latte, scanning the campus with those honey-brown eyes and looking like Dionysus in disguise.
"Kade wants someone on you during classes.
Tank's way too conspicuous with the mask and the scars and being, you know, huge, and Cy would rather gnaw his own arm off than set foot on a college campus. So."
"So you drew the short straw."
"Princess." He presses his free hand to his chest like I've gravely wounded him. "I volunteered."
We walk in silence for a few steps, and I study him from the corner of my eye. He looks different out here. Like being away from Kade and Cyrus lets him breathe in a way he can't when they're watching. His shoulders are lower, and his smile reminds me of the old one.
From our old life.
I wouldn't exactly say we were carefree back then. I had Mom's bills to sort through, and Jinx had his brother. But we were happy, at least with each other.
It hits me that this is the closest to happiness I've been since I can remember. Since those carefree summers in our park.
Jinx shifts. It's subtle, but I see him mirroring the body language of everyone we pass. Trying on personalities like outfits, discarding each one the second it stops being useful.
I wonder which version is real.
If any of them are.
His hands wrap around the latte cup, and that's when I notice the J-I-N-X tattooed across his knuckles is missing. He's so committed to his disguise, he covered them with full-coverage concealer.
And then I notice the rest of what's different.
"Your nails."
He tucks his fingers tighter around the cup in a motion so fast, it's almost involuntary. "What about them?"
I reach over and grab his other hand, turning it palm-up in mine. His nails are scraped thoroughly, enough to be rough, but I see little pink paint chips caught in his cuticles and the corners. They were painted recently, painted pink, and then removed in a hurry.
"You paint your nails?"
"Workshop accident," he says in a chipper tone, pulling his hand back and flexing his fingers. "Spray paint."
"What workshop?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.
He never helps Tank in the garage. Hell, I know more about cars than Jinx does, and I'm pretty damn sure the only thing Tank ever painted pink in his life was my bike. "And spray paint doesn't have a topcoat."
His jaw tightens a little. Then his usual grin is back. The one that's bright and blinding and absolutely full of shit. "Fine. I was experimenting with a look. Decided it wasn't me. Can we move on? Or does this warrant a full investigation?"
I decide to let it go. But I stash it away in the same drawer as good boy from the other night.
We cut through the courtyard between the arts building and the library, and Jinx tips his head back to catch the sun on his face with his eyes closed, fake glasses sliding down his perfect nose.
"You still do it, you know," he says, eyes still closed.
"Do what?"
"When you're stressed. You count everything in fives, but when you're really stressed, you also organize by color. Your closet at the house is all sorted pink to white to gray to black. And I'd bet a hundred bucks the notebooks in your bag are arranged in order from lightest to darkest."
I stop walking.
He opens one eye, glancing over my expression. And for a moment, the curtain is pulled back just far enough for me to see the boy who's been watching me as closely as I've been watching him.
"Is that the humanities building?" he asks before I get a chance to say something. "Gorgeous architecture. Very... um. Bricky."
He's already walking again with latte raised to his lips, and the moment dissolves like it never happened.
Something is off with him.
Around me specifically, and I want to know why.
"Ellie!"
The voice cuts me off before I can say anything, and I turn to find Heather speed-walking across the lawn with Maren and Sofia in tow.
Oh shit.
My actual friends from college, from the life I'm supposed to be living completely separate from the one Jinx inhabits.
My hand flies to my throat instinctively, checking the collar is still hidden beneath my shirt. High-collared shirts are not a fashion choice I'd make on my own, but then again, neither are scarves.
"Oh my God, where have you been? Are you okay?" Heather grabs my arm, then notices Jinx looking back at us, and her entire operating system visibly reboots. "Hi. Hello. Who the fuck are you?"
At least I was just rescued from explaining myself, although she's aware of my mom's issues and probably knows better than to truly pry.
Jinx transforms again, instantaneously. His posture shifts slightly, one hip cocked, and the shadows in his eyes dissipate. He looks like a perfectly normal, approachable, and utterly harmless preppy pretty boy.
"Taylor!" He extends his hand to shake Heather's, who's stunned, and the smile he gives my friends could power the entire campus through a winter blackout. "Ellie and I go way back."
"Way back liiiiike...?" Maren's eyebrows climb toward her hairline, her gaze flicking between us. I see her assembling her conspiracy board in real time, red strings and all.
"We're childhood friends," I say quickly, physically stepping in before he says something insane.
"Childhood best friends," Jinx corrects, nudging my shoulder playfully. He turns back to the trio. "I was just telling her she should let me braid her hair again, like in the old days. I was terrible at it. Okay. So I'm still terrible at it. But she keeps letting me try."
Sofia laughs, but she leans forward slightly, clearly interested despite the hair-braiding, or maybe because of it, and not even bothering to hide it. Her dark eyes closely track Jinx's mouth every time he speaks. "So you two aren't..."
"A thing?" Jinx interrupts with a musical laugh, looping his arm through mine. "Oh, honey, no. We're not each other's type." He leans in to stage-whisper to Sofia. "But we definitely share the same taste in men."
My ears heat up.
Heather and Maren exchange a look I recognize as the one that means they've already added him to the group chat and are mentally workshopping nicknames for him as we speak.
And Sofia's still staring at him with her head tilted, which means she wants to sketch him. That's practically her version of a crush.
I groan.
"You should come out with us Friday," Heather says, ignoring me. Heather has never met a stranger she didn't want to adopt, and Jinx is like a human golden retriever. "We're going to Topaz."
Jinx beams. "I would love that."
The terrifying thing is, he sounds like he means it. Like there's some part of him that genuinely wants to sit in a college bar and drink cheap beer with my friends like he's a normal twenty-something whose biggest problem is a midterm exam.
Hell, maybe there is.
I still remember the time I found a bunch of college applications stuffed under his bed in his room and when I asked him about them, he just laughed and shoved them in a dresser drawer, over-insisting he'd only taken them home as a gag.
But they were filled in.
That's a little more than a gag.
"I should let this one get to class." He untangles his arm from mine, tucking a strand of pink hair behind my ear. The light brush of his fingers as his hand leaves my face feels as intimate as everything I did with him and Cyrus. "She's got… what is it today? Statistics?"
"Sociology."
"Even worse." He grimaces and takes a step back, that borrowed or stolen backpack still dangling off his shoulder.
"See you at home, Princess," he says quietly. Just for me.
The word home sounds different coming from his mouth than it does from Kade's. Less threatening, and more of a wish.
"See you," I say with a nod.
He turns, lifting his latte in a wave to my friends without looking back, and disappears into the stream of students heading toward the parking lot. Within seconds, I can't pick him out anymore. He's absorbed into the crowd like he was never here, but I know he's still there, watching me.
"Okay, who was that?" Heather demands the instant he's gone.
"Like he said. An old friend."
"An old friend who looks like that and is gay?" Maren clutches her heart. "The universe is so unfair. He's gorgeous. Holy shit, El."
I take a sip of my strawberry latte and say nothing, because the truth is so much more complicated than anything I could explain between here and the sociology building.
Jinx's sexuality is probably the least complicated aspect of our whole dynamic.