“Hmm.” One eyebrow flicks up.
“Tia, please just let me in.” I rub a hand across my jaw, not against begging. My voice sounds a bit like I feel—split wide open, cracked and bleeding out at the thought that I’ve somehow done something to hurt the person who’s quickly becoming the most important thing in my life.
Tia angles her head, eyes narrowed and assessing. One finger taps against her sweater, right above her bicep, like she’s considering.
Her mouth parts, but before she can utter whatever line she’s come up with, I hear Sloan’s voice, and my knees might actually buckle with relief.
“Tia. He can come in.”
Tia glances over her shoulder before holding up a single finger. “One moment please.”
She takes a step back and I think she’s about to let me in before the door starts to shut.
“Oh, come on!” I groan, entirely to Tia’s delight. Her eyebrows lift, this look I could only describe as devious scrawls across her features, and she looks so much like her brother, I debate pushing past her into the room.
But the door pulls open, and I get eyes on Sloan for the first time since she somehow evaded me in the library.
She doesn’t look any worse for the wear. I catalogue every inch of her, and I think I bleed a bit more when I see the dried tears streaking down her face.
But she looks the same otherwise, hair down, falling over the shoulders of her grey sweater, leggings tucked into big, slouchy white socks that used to belong to me before she stole them.
“Are you okay? Are you sick?” I ask, words all strangled and desperate.
She cuts Tia a look. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Do I?” Tia glances back and forth between us, chin resolutely pointed in the air.
“Yes,” Sloan and I both answer at the same time.
Tia rolls her eyes, raising her hands before turning and stalking back into their shared room, making a big show of packing her bag and grabbing the textbooks strewn across her rumpled bedding.
Sloan waits, arms wrapped around her middle, blinking while Hurricane Tia spins around the room.
She doesn’t make any moves to come closer to me, or to do anything at all really, until Tia pulls open the door again with a dramatic flourish, pointing a bony finger at me in a gesture that’s probably supposed to be menacing.
I’m not sure the desired effect is achieved, but I can’t really say because the only thing I care about is the girl who just dropped to the edge of her bed to sit, feet dangling off because both she and Tia added these risers under them to create more storage.
The white bedding pools around her, and she looks beautiful despite the whole thing, with the lights strewn along the wall behind her twinkling, interspersed with different Polaroids and photos.
“Can I sit?” I grip my jaw again before pointing towards the empty space beside her on the bed.
A small shrug, and I take that as a yes.
My quad twinges uncomfortably when I drop beside her, and I dig a fist into it before glancing sideways at her, helpless.
“What did I do?” I ask, words rough.
Sloan stares determinedly ahead, and a new, fresh tear rolls down her cheek, and before I can reach forward, she bats it away with her hand.
“You laughed,” she whispers, voice impossibly small.
I give my head a shake, brow furrowed, and I shift so I can face her. She doesn’t recoil or shy away, so I take that as an invitation to lean closer, reaching out and swiping a thumb across her cheek.
She doesn’t elaborate, but she does angle her head so she can rest against my palm.
I think there’d be a lot of people who might press, say the whole thing was ridiculous and preposterous, tell her she was being dramatic because nothing really happened.
It’s been three months, and maybe it’s a drop in the proverbial bucket of time—but it’s been enough to learn a few things about Sloan.
