I turn, not trusting myself to look back, and walk into the night. My heart is doing backflips, my skin tingling with adrenaline and the cold.
When I get back,Andie is asleep, one leg flung over the covers, mouth open in a blissful snore. I sit on my bed and take off my make-up, the color smearing on used cotton pads. I should feel victorious—two men fighting for me, proof that I’m desirable, wanted, alive.
Instead, all I feel is the ache. Not just in my chest, but everywhere, like I’m full of invisible bruises.
I open my diary and write:
“Liam says he wants to own me. I don’t know if I want that, or if I just want him. I kissed Dylan and it felt okay. Safe, but no fireworks. Almost like kissing a brother. With Liam, it’s a car crash I can’t stop watching. I don’t know how to be a person unless he’s with me.”
I stare at the words until the page blurs.
Eventually, I sleep. I dream of the ocean: bright water, endless blue, the slap of cold on my skin. I’m swimming as hard as I can, and there’s someone on the shore, waving, calling my name.
I swim and swim, but I never reach the land.
When I wake, the world is silent, and I am alone with the taste of salt in my mouth.
10
A RISKY CONFRONTATION
LIAM
Simone bursts through my office door without knocking, eyes electric and mouth twisted with intent. I’m still clutching the mug from my previous appointment, but the jolt she brings makes me set it down—too fast, coffee splattering in a ring on the edge of the desk.
She turns to me, shoulders squared and hair wild from the wind, the blonde of it glowing against her back. Her skirt is a mini so I can see a length of white thigh, and her t-shirt hugs her big breasts lovingly. Her lips are glossy and pink, her knuckles white from the grip on her canvas backpack. She could be auditioning for ingénue in a film about ruin, but she’s not here to play sweet.
“What the fuck, Professor Thomas,” she spits. “What was that about?”
I get up and poke my head into the hallway before doing a quick scan for eavesdroppers—my hallway is a deathtrap of prying TAs and undergrads—but the only other soul in sight is the maintenance guy mopping at the end of the corridor, earbuds in and oblivious. I shut the door and then approach, careful to closethe distance between us with the slow, measured movement of a man on the edge of a firing squad.
She throws her bag onto the guest chair, never breaking eye contact. The air in the room is already different, charged and stifling, sunlight leaking through the half-open blinds and painting stripes across the wall of books, across my hands.
“You texted me after dinner,” she says. “‘Meet me. Alone.’ What the hell, is this a spy movie? Then you warned me off Dylan when you’re seeing Claire! What the hell!”
Her voice is shaking, but she’s not afraid. Her anger is a weapon, freshly sharpened and hungry for use.
I keep my own voice neutral. “I had to see you, Simone.”
She crosses her arms, which is a mistake because it shoves her tits together and now I’m the one with a tremor in my hands.
“No, you didn’t,” she says, “because you already moved on. That’s what I saw at the Olive Branch, right? You parading your new girlfriend in front of the whole world like you’re the last man standing.”
She stabs a finger at me. “Youmade me feel like shit, Liam. Like I was the side piece and she was the main event. Is that what I am to you? The practice run?”
The words hit harder than I expect. For a second, I just stand there, the walls closing in—hardcover books, the diplomas, the faint stink of ten thousand student papers ground into the carpet. I watch the sunlight crawl up her bare thigh, watch her fidget and flush, and realize I’m the only one in the room who still believes there’s a right way out of this.
“Simone,” I say, and my voice cracks, just a little. “It wasn’t what you think. Claire and I aren’t together. We never were.”
She laughs, high and bright, pure derision. “She was all over you, Liam. I saw. You were holding her like you couldn’t wait to get home and fuck her. And now you want to say it was nothing?”
I reach for the window, twist the wand on the blinds until the light fractures into slashes. “It’s complicated,” I say, but that’s not enough. Simone deserves more.
She moves, prowling between desk and wall, eyes following me. “No,” she says. “Explain. Why did you drag me out of my dorm, why did you care if I was with Dylan, why do you even give a shit who I fuck if you’re out there screwing someone else?”
There’s no way to make this sound good, but I try anyway. “Claire’s a friend. We dated last year—briefly. She’s not interested in books, or actually, in anything I actually care about.” I pause, hating the weak note in my own voice. “I called her last week because I was trying to convince myself I could move on from you.”
Simone rolls her eyes so hard her whole head goes with it. “So you’re just a liar,” she says. “That’s better than being a whore, I guess. At least then you’d be honest.”