“I’m fine,” I say, even as I feel anything but fine. “I have a bunch of work I need to catch up on. Hopefully keeping my brain busy will stop me from obsessing over everything.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, his voice heavy with doubt.
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
“Are you going to class tomorrow?”
I bite back a groan. The thought of leaving my room and having to deal with people and their questions is enough to make me want to crawl into my bed and hide for a month, but I can’t just skip class indefinitely.
I’m doing okay in most of my classes, but I don’t have a ton of wiggle room, and my family will never leave me alone if my grades slip. Not even the total destruction of my life and my relationship blowing up in my face would be reason enough for my family to give me a break.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I should, but I guess I’ll see how I feel in the morning.”
“Do you want to meet up for breakfast?” he asks. “Our first classes are in the same building. We could walk over together.”
“Your class starts an hour after mine does,” I point out.
“That’s fine. I have some reading I need to catch up on,” he says dismissively. “And maybe walking around with someonewho’s even more gossip-worthy will shield you from the worst of their shit.”
“That would be great, thanks,” I say, my voice as tight as my throat suddenly is.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come over tonight?” he asks again.
I know I should say yes and accept his offer, but my stubborn side doesn’t like being someone’s second choice. Knowing that he’d rather be with Xave right now would just taint my mood, and we’d both end up having a shitty night.
“I’m sure. I’ll be okay,” I lie.
“I’ll come by your room at eight tomorrow. Will that be enough time for you to get to class?”
“Yeah, that’ll be fine.”
“Okay, I’ll see you then.” He pauses, but I can tell he has more to say, so I keep quiet. “And call or text if you need anything.”
“I will. Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Bye.”
He ends the call, and I put my phone back on my desk.
“Fuck,” I mutter. I’m hit with so many emotions at once it feels like I got sucker-punched, and I’m left dazed as I try to sort through them all.
The most prominent is an overwhelming feeling of despair, but under it are undercurrents of loneliness, hurt, and anger. And mixed in there is the familiar restlessness that tends to take over when I’m dealing with shit. The same restlessness that makes me do impulsive things and is why I’m a champ at self-sabotage.
Blowing out a breath, I wiggle my mouse to wake up my laptop and try to focus on the article I was attempting to read before Damon’s call.
The words on the page all sort of blur together the longer I stare at them, and even though I’ve read the same paragraph a dozen times already, I haven’t absorbed a single word and have no idea what it says.
My attention is pulled away from the article when my phone vibrates with another notification, and I automatically tip the screen toward me to check to see who texted.
I’m expecting it to be one of my frat brothers or another one of my ‘friends’ looking for gossip, but my heart skips a beat when I see it’s from my mystery texter.
Adrenaline and excitement surge through me as I open our text thread.
Unknown: Do you remember our deal?
More adrenaline and excitement gather deep inside me, and I type out my reply.
I don’t know why texting with him is so exhilarating, or why I keep doing it. Every instinct I have is telling me this is a mistake and I should stop giving him even more ammunition he could use against me, but I can’t. And more than that, I don’t want to.
