We go back to my bedroom and shut the door.
I keep a careful distance between us, but he doesn’t seem to mind. I hate that I’m on edge. I think he can feel it, so he doesn’t push. And that’s the thing about him. To his credit, he doesn’t push. He flops onto his back on my bed and pulls out his phone to occupy himself while I sit at the desk and dive back into studying. The air settles, and everything feels normal between us. He tells me about work. There’s a new guy who started at the warehouse who can’t lift a pallet without throwing out his back. He reminds me how much he hates that I’m at Camden U and how he’s considering buying a new truck with better mileage.
I make small noises in response.Mhm. Yeah. That sucks. Oh.I don’t absorb any of it. I’m reading the same paragraph of my research methods textbook for the fourth time.
The afternoon goes.
The light shifts.
At some point, Chase falls asleep with his phone on his chest, his mouth open, and his ankle crossed over his knee. I look up from my textbook and watch him for a long minute. His chest rising and falling. His hair flat against his forehead. He looks young when he sleeps. He looks like the boy I met two years ago at a party, the boy who told me I had pretty eyes and asked for my number, hands in his pockets, like he was bracing for me to say no. He was sweet, then. He’s sweet, now.
I love him.
I do.
I love him in the way a girl can love a boy who has been there. I love him the way you love your favorite blanket. It’s always the one you reach for. It lives on your bed. It’s a blanket that does the job. And I’ve had to stop Mila a hundred times whenever she’d ask me if he’sthe one, or if he sets my soul on fire. I didn’t want my soul to be set on fire after everything I went through in high school. I wanted the comfort of a blanket. I think I deserved that much. However, I’m twenty years old, and I love a boy I will not marry. I know that much, and I still don’t know what to do with it.
I go back to studying.
Mara texts me the address. I message Mila to come over to get ready. The sun goes down. Penelope leaves the apartment with her keys jingling — I hear them through the door — and twenty minutes later, Mila is at the front door with a bottle of vodka in her hand and her hair already done.
“What’s that for?” I ask, looking at the bottle.
“Don’t you know the rule?” She walks past me into the kitchen and sets it on the counter like she lives here. “Never show up empty-handed.”
I nod.Right. Of course.I am the worst house guest in America.
Chase is up. In the last hour, he’s eaten half a frozen pizza I baked for him, taken a forty-minute nap, washed his face in my bathroom, put on a different shirt — a different version of the same shirt, navy instead of grey — and asked me three times if I’m almost ready. He’s back on his back on the bed, scrolling, one ankle crossed over the other knee, boots still on, and I have decided that I’m not going to mention it.
I walk back to the mirror and redo my eyeliner. I take a tissue and wipe a smudge off my cheekbone. I lean in and stand back, and I lean in again. Mila is leaning against my doorframe with her arms crossed, watching me.
“Do you need help?” she asks.
“I almost got it.”
She looks past me. “Hi, Chase.”
“Mila. How’re you?”
“Excited to party. Are you drinking tonight?”
“Maybe a beer.”
She raises an eyebrow at me in the mirror. “Should we take a shot before we go?”
“Yes, please. Let me finish this really quick.”
I finish my mascara. I lean back and look at my eyes. They are popping. Mila steps up next to me at the mirror, and she looks at me, and she mouths, very slowly, very deliberately, the wordswow, you look hot.
I look at myself in the mirror, and my whole body tingles low and slow because I do look good. But I’m terrified of going to the Hawthorne House. What kind of name is that for a house anyway? It’s so intimidating.
Chase hops off the bed and stands behind me. He’s too short to look over my head in the mirror, so he stands to the side, and he whistles low. “Wow.”
Mila smiles at me in the glass.
“You look hot too,” I tell her, and I mean it, because she does. Her hair is in soft waves. Her mascara is perfect. She’s wearing a green top that does things for her boobs.
She squeezes my arm. “I’m so excited you transferred here, Melly, and look, you’re being invited to parties!” Her eyes widen. “We have to take advantage of your new roommate.”
