“Do what tonight?” Penelope asks.
“Break up with Chase,” Mila says.
Penelope looks at me. I look at the table.
Penelope lets me off the hook. “Lucy is meeting me here. She should be any second.”
Two minutes later, Mila is still going, and Lucy arrives.
“Hi,” she says, soft, the way Lucy says everything.
“Hi,” we say back.
“How are you?” I ask, grateful for any subject that isn’t the subject we’ve been on.
She smiles. “Good. I have one more midterm after this.” She checks her phone. “Benson should be coming out of his Stat 217 in like two minutes.”
As if she had scheduled him, Benson walks through the door behind me. He’s grinning as he crosses the dining hall. He bends down behind Lucy’s chair and kisses her cheek. His whole body is in it, all of it.
“I aced it, baby,” he says, and he’s looking at her mouth and then her eyes and then her mouth again.
Lucy goes pink.
She pulls him into a hug. “I’m so proud of you.”
Gianna walks in behind him and clears her throat. Benson ignores her. He pulls Lucy closer.
“How did yours go?” he says into her hair.
“I probably aced it.”
Stanley comes in behind Gianna and claps once, loud enough that two girls at the next table look over. “Ladies and gentlemen, holy shit.”
Gianna scoffs. She drops into the chair next to me. “No kidding.”
Stanley arrives at the table. He starts massaging Benson’s shoulders from behind. Benson doesn’t react because his attention is on Lucy only. They’re murmuring to each other.
“I’m going to need a tutor like you really soon,” Stanley says into Benson’s ear.
Benson, without breaking eye contact with Lucy, kisses her again. Then he turns his head and says, “Where the hell is Blue? He’s supposed to meet me. I’ve got the tape.”
Run.
That’s all I hear in my head. I need to leave right now.
I stand abruptly.
Mila looks up at me. “Where are you going?”
I don’t know.
“I have a thing.”
“A thing?” she says, quietly, while Stanley and Benson argue about the hockey tape.
I nod and gather my tray. I say goodbye to the group. Lucy looks at me with a small, concerned expression. I push the tray onto the rack at the door, and I push through the doors of the dining hall onto the brick path between the buildings. I’m power-walking with no destination in mind.
Then I look up to decipher where I’m going, and Blue is ten feet away, walking in my direction.
