She picks up on the second ring.“Well, hello, Sugarplum. I was starting to think you’d forgotten me. I haven’t heard from you since last semester,”she answers with a playful pout in her voice.
If it were any other time, I would probably feel guilty at her statement because I’ve been too preoccupied with getting into the swing of classes, spending time with Qi, and pretending this crush on Marcus doesn’t exist, that I haven’t reached out to her at all, when that’s always been the first thing I do when I get back on campus after a break.
“Natasha?” I rasp out weakly, a mixture of feeling guilty for not feeling as guilty as I should and relief at hearing her familiar, sweet cadence.
“Where are you?”Her teasing lilt switches to serious so fast I’d have whiplash if I had the energy to move my head right now.
“Are you on campus? I’m in the bathroom on the first floor of the economics hall.”
“Yeah, I just got out of a class. Are you in the guys or girls bathroom?”she asks with her breath jarring a bit, which tells me she’s moving briskly in my direction.
“I honestly don’t remember.” I close my eyes, hating myself for being this fucking weak after so many years.
I knew he still lurked in the recesses of my mind; I just never stopped to ponder what his actual presence might do to me, or that it had the power to knock my knees right out from under me. I’m so wholly ashamed to be this affected after all this time, and believing I’d mostly moved past this.
“I’m on my way,”she says breathlessly.“Just hang tight.”
It doesn’t take very long at all before the door slams and the click-clack of strappy sandals sounds on the linoleum floor.
“Qiang?” Natasha calls out tentatively, and I release the breath I was holding with relief.
Obviously, Kingston wasn’t wearing anything that would sound like strappy sandals, but my brain isn’t functioning properly right now. Maybe if it were, I would have registered the sound of the door echoing, having heard it both in the room and through the phone.
“I’m here,” I call out, reaching up to unlock the stall door that I’m in.
Natasha’s pretty face appears in the doorway as she takes me in. Something inside my chest loosens exponentially as I take in her bouncy, chaotic curls, her facial piercings that make her look much more severe than she really is, and the eclectic layering of scarves and vintage jewelry that is so her.
“Well, for fuck’s sake, Qiang, you look unusually shitty,” she says lightly to mask the worry that is evident in her hazel eyes and the slight downturn of her glossy lips.
“There’s always room for an anomaly,” I snort weakly, going for a bit of humor.
She rolls her eyes as her frown loosens up a bit. “At least I know you’re not dying if you still have your sense of humor,” she teases a bit as she leans down to feel my forehead. “You don’t have a fever. Did you eat something bad?”
I shake my head. “No, not sick. He–” I start to say, but I choke on the words and end up huffing out some jagged mixture of something with a sardonic laugh that came out sounding more like a wounded cat sighing.
“He?” Her eyes widen, and she starts taking me in more. “Did someone hurt you?” she hisses out angrily, her eyes taking a cursory glance, probably looking for wounds now. Not that she’d find any; the wounds are internal, not external.
“No, can you just help me home, please? Do you have time? If not, I can wait for–”
She shakes her head and interrupts me before I can finish. “No need to wait, Sugarplum. What’s your personal therapist for if it isn’t to help you in times of trouble?”
I sigh in relief because I really don’t want to keep sitting in this dingy, unsanitary bathroom until Qi gets out of practice.
“You are an odd one, but I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I breathe out, and she just laughs at me.
“That’s the best compliment I think you’ve ever given me,” she says with a toss of her curls.
Once Natasha and I get to her car, I spend the fifteen-minute ride home filling her in on what happened. Not that there was really that much to say, but more because there were so many stops and starts, tripping over words and trying to convey emotions that fought tooth and nail against me revealing them. The more I spoke, the more I realized how much everything hurt and how completely not ready I was for this confrontation.
She takes it all in, staying quiet while I try so hard to get everything out, despite my brain’s natural reaction to keep it all in. I’d never have been able to express this much if it had been anyone other than her or Qi, and the nasty coiling in my stomach tells me how unhappy my system is that I’ve said so much, regardless of whether I trust the company I’m in or not.
Her response was completely horrified, as it should be. Not so much that he showed up, because as she pointed out, itisthe best school on this side of the country, with the best football team, butmore because he didn’t start here straight out of high school. While the school he went to right out of high school is a huge competitor to ISU, it’s not as good, and his dad is all about Kingston doing, being, and having the best.
I’ll never forget the anxiety in my second year at Iver’s that he’d likely enroll here after he graduated high school, but when he didn’t, I just assumed that his father, knowing I was here, was a deterrent to allowing Kingston to enroll here.
Which begs the question again as to why now? But the only way to know the answer is to go to the source, and I’m sure as fuck not going out of my way to spend any more time in that asshole’s presence than absolutely necessary, especially just to sate idle curiosity.
After expending some of the energy I had gained during the brief car ride here by taking a shower and getting the essence of the nasty public toilet off of me, I crawl into bed and lay my head back against the headboard.
