Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
I should feel triumphant. I should want to win.
Instead, I stand under the scalding water and let myself feel everything at once: the hunger, the fear, the thrill, the dread.
I’m so alive it almost hurts.
When I step out, the whole room is steamed, the mirror a blank, silver canvas. I wipe it clear, look myself in the eyes, and try to decide who I want to be.
For now, I leave it open.
I wrap a fluffy towel around myself, wander back to the bedroom, and find Thomas sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to the door, elbows on his knees.
He looks up when I enter, his eyes taking in every inch of me. I feel exposed, but not in a bad way.
He stands, crosses the room in three strides, and pulls me into his arms.
We stand there, holding each other, the world outside spinning away into silence.
Neither of us says anything. We don’t need to.
For now, this is enough.
12
ROOMMATE CONFIDENTIAL
Andie
When I unlock the dorm room door, it opens onto an obstacle course: cardboard boxes, half-full, half-open, stacked in disorderly towers against every available surface. My favorite mug—cracked at the rim, no handle—sits like a crown atop one of them, already sealed with packing tape. The window blinds are drawn at a lopsided slant, slicing sunlight into alternating bands of gold and dark. The air smells like box glue, dust, and a hint of vanilla body mist.
Simone is on her knees, sorting through the lower reaches of the closet with a kind of reverent focus. She wears a shapeless Century College sweatshirt and leggings that are slick with lint, her hair up in a pencil-stabbed knot. She looks so ordinary that, for a second, I don’t recognize her as the same woman who wore plum lipstick and flawless curls to our dorm’s holiday shindig.
She doesn’t see me at first. I stand just inside the door, backpack dangling, trying to remember how to be normal after a night and morning like that. I see her folding something—no, not just folding: arranging, smoothing the sleeves of a cream-colored sweater with unusual care, as if it’s evidence in a trial.
When she glances up and sees me, her face lights for a second, then shadows over as if she remembered not to. She tugs the sweater over her knees, fusses with it.
“You’re back early,” she says, aiming for nonchalance but missing by a mile.
I slip past the boxes and toss my bag onto my stripped bed. “Not really. Thought I’d get the laundry done before the vultures descend.”
She nods, lips pressed tight, then looks down at the sweater again. She’s picking at a loose thread, hands fidgety. I stand there for a second, waiting for her to say what she really wants to say, but she doesn’t. Instead, she starts packing the sweater into a battered Kmart suitcase, then changes her mind and pulls it back out.
“Are you okay?” I ask, because someone has to.
She freezes, arms wrapped around the sweater, then says—very quietly, “Liam asked me to move in. Not, like, tomorrow. But soon. He keeps saying his place is too quiet and I’d make it a home.” She laughs, a short, embarrassed sound. “I haven’t said yes. I just—I don’t know. It’s weird, right?”
I sit on my own mattress, which is bare except for a fitted sheet and one lumpy pillow. I cross my arms. “Is it what you want?”
Her eyes flick to me. “I think so? It’s just—he makes me feel…” She searches for a word. “He makes me feel seen. Like I’m not the extra in someone else’s story.” She flushes, chin tucking. “It’s dumb.”
I shake my head. “It’s not dumb.”
She gives me a tiny, grateful smile, then goes back to packing, this time with less conviction. Her hands are clumsy, almost shaking.
She says, without looking up, “Did you stay at a friend’s last night?”
For a second, I have to replay the question in my head. I remember Thomas’s kitchen: the coolness of the floor under my feet, the eggs and sausage and black coffee, the way he called me a gift, the way his hand traced my thigh while we watched the city. I remember the soreness between my legs, the way the sheets stuck to my skin, the mark of his teeth on my collarbone. I remember all of it at once, a supercut of everything that happened and every way it changed me.
My face must do something, because Simone stops moving.
“Oh my god,” she says, voice low. “Andie. Did you—?”
I snap to. “What?”
She abandons the sweater, crosses her arms over her chest, and narrows her eyes in a way I’ve only seen when she’s interrogating an underclassman who lied about cleaning the fridge.
“Don’t what me. You’re blushing like a first-year at a kegger. What happened last night? It was a guy, wasn’t it?”