“Didn’t you call him stupid?”
I snort. “Fuck. Yes, I did.” I hide my face in my hands.
“M’kay, bitch.”
I throw a decorative pillow at her and she dodges, slipping out the door after blowing me a kiss. I sink onto the couch, pulling my knees up to my chest and resting my chin on them.
Am I brave enough for this? Everything I know I need to do sounds so vulnerable and scary, but Jade is right. I’ve been hurt by my parents and I still love them. Jade has hurt my feelings a time or two and we’re okay. How is this thing with Mac any different?
It’s not. And the sooner I let go of my need to be right, of my need to cling to my grudges, the sooner I could have Mac.
If he still wants me.
I need to get to him, and I need to do this now. The impulse is so strong it propels me off the couch and into the shower, and twenty minutes later I’m leaving my dorm on a mission to fix everything I’ve fucked up.
But where would I even find Mac on a Friday night?
* * *
I greet Daisy,the librarian at the desk tonight. She looks bored, and rightfully so: the library is nearly empty. Who the hell would be at the library a week after the holiday break ended?
Hopefully Mac.
I weave through the tables on the first floor but don’t see him at any of them. Nor is he in any of the private study booths. I don’t see anyone, for that matter, and my pulse quickens despite my slow pace. I head upstairs to the stacks, starting at the front and weaving my way through.
I should have called first. Or texted.
What if he doesn’t want to see me?
The stacks are woefully empty on this floor too, so I head to the third floor, but it’s also empty. By the time I’ve climbed to the fourth and topmost floor, I’m a little out of breath and almost out of faith he’s here at all. But I’ll check this floor, and if he’s not here I’ll try the gym. If he’s not there I’ll do the cafe before I do his apartment.
Now that I’m thinking about it, the library seems like the dumbest place for me to have started. I should have started in a bigger space where he was more likely to be.
Why would Mac be at the library on a Friday night this early in the year?
For the same reason I would. Because school matters. It matters to me, and it matters to Mac, and that’s reason one of one thousand that I would be an idiot to let him get away.
I just hope I’m not too late.
I’m nearly at the end of the rows and the end of my hope when I spot someone at the farthest end of the aisle. I freeze, ducking behind one of the shelves, and observe the person as well as I can from this far away. The lighting isn’t great up here. Somehow it’s dimmer, as if the maintenance person couldn’t be bothered to get to the lights on the top floor.
The person in the aisle is a man, as far as I can tell based off body build and hair, although I don’t want to be too presumptuous. They’re hunched over a book, concentrating. Their phone dings, and when they pull it out of their pocket to check the notification, the screen lights up their face and I can see very clearly that yes, it’s a man.
And yes, it’s Mac.
My stomach dips and shoots up into my throat, and I get a little lightheaded. I press my back against the wood of the endcap. My heart pounds in my chest. I don’t know if I can do this.
There’s nothing to do, Jessie, except turn and walk toward him.
But my feet weigh a hundred pounds each, and I think my legs might have forgotten how to move.
Unlock the cage, Jessie. Set everyone free.
Somehow I find the courage to move, to walk down the library aisle toward Mac. He doesn’t move a muscle until I’m almost six feet away, when he glances up briefly then returns to his book. Faster than I can blink he looks up again.
“Jessie?”
I try to smile, but it ends up being this pained half-smile thing. “Hi.”
