Just for tonight, I’d like to forget that.
I would love to be a regular college student, hanging out with friends, having fun and?—
“We’re here.”
“Crap,” I admit. “Sowe are.”
He shoots me yet another concerned look, one that’s doused in guilt that I hate to see, and goes to knock on our friends’ door until someone calls out, “Wait for me!”
Flinching, and then mad at myself for being such a wimp, I realize it’s Lex.
“Hi, Lex,” I greet with a weak smile.
“Didn’t you hear me? I was yelling at you in the foyer.”
“Sorry, Lex. We’re in a world of our own at the moment.”
“Everything okay?” she asks, voice worried.
“Yeah, all good.” Shay’s smile is strained, but he knocks on the door.
“Your earrings are super cute,” Lex murmurs.
Smiling, I stroke my finger over the diamond-studded ladybugs Maxim gave to me.
Every time he touches one, he teasingly whispers, “‘Little cow, little cow, fly to heaven, bring us bread.’” Then dots kisses over my face in between each word.
I swear I’d have crumbled without his support the past couple weeks.
Upon opening the door, Pecan yanks Shay in—thank God, not me—as he greets us before saying, “I’ll see you guys later. Unless you wanna come to the party at Romero’s?”
“Nah. We’re good. Have fun,” I tell him, swerving my arm away from his bull-in-a-china-shop self.
“He’s not watching the Bulldogs?!” Denny gasps as I grab the tail end of the video call she’s having with Zach and Callan. “Holy fuck, how broken is he?”
Pecan’s breakup has hit him hard.
“Very. He’s approaching the point where it’s going to affect him even being able to play on the team! He’s flunking computer science, and I’m good at tutoring, but I cannot rescue a dead rat,” Callan complains.
“Wow, that’s some imagery,” Lex drawls.
Callan immediately freezes as Lex takes a seat beside him. His crush is so obvious, I have to smile. Especially when his eyes beg Denny to “send help.”’
Smirking at him, I sit back on the sofa and tug one of Denny’s Magic 8-ball cushions onto my lap. “How are things, Lex?”
“Awesome now that I don’t have to serve that bastard breakfast anymore.”
I brace myself, knowing that I need to be convincing as I greet with a whoop, “Did you hear the news?”
“Edinburgh, baby! I brought Champagne,” Shay declares on our agreed “lie.”
Gossip has spread over campus about Dyers's absence. Callan and Conor decided to start the rumor that he’d moved to Edinburgh to live with his father at the local consulate, but Callan has been pushing it far and wide via a social media account he created to blacken Dyers’s name.
“No fair! I’m not there to drink any!”
“We can have another party when you’re back,” I tell Denny with a smile. “How’s Madrid?”
“Beautiful. And alive. And just…” She exhales a happy sigh. “…awesome.”
