Page 164 of Power Play

Technically, I kept that promise. I answered when he texted, reacted to the picture of Briggs asleep against a bus window with his mouth hanging open, and told Ryan Professor Brown had assigned Tennyson when he asked about class. When he sent me a photograph of some disgusting team dinner and asked whether the vegetables qualified as vegetables, I told him they looked boiled to death.

Every answer was polite enough to keep him from accusing me of ignoring him and empty enough to make sure he couldn’t reach me through them.

Ryan knew what I was doing.

He always fucking knew.

That first night, his name appeared across my screen while I was sitting cross-legged on the couch with the Spanish notebook open beside me. I watched the phone ring until it stopped, refusing to answer because hearing his voice would break through every defense I had spent the day building.

Thirty seconds later, my phone lit again.

Ryan: Too soon?

I pressed my lips together.

Charm: Studying. Sorry.

His answer took longer than usual.

Ryan: Okay. Goodnight, mi hada.

I cried after reading it, then got angry at myself for crying. That eventually became anger at Ryan because blaming the man who had done nothing wrong was easier than sitting with the reason his restraint still hurt so much.

On the second day, he tried less, and that hurt worse.

There was a morning text, a sarcastic complaint about Mateo leaving wet towels on hotel furniture, and sometime after lunch, another message appeared.

Ryan: I miss talking to you.

I read it in Professor Brown’s hallway with students moving around me and had to lock my phone before my face gave me away.

I missed him too.

I missed him in every stupid place he had inserted himself over the summer. I missed sending him whatever thought crossed my mind because he never acted like I was bothering him. I missed knowing somebody wanted the complete version of my day instead of the polished highlights. I missed him opening my refrigerator and insulting everything inside it, his books spread across my table, and the way his hand always seemed to find mine without either of us discussing it first.

The worst part was how much I missed myself around him.

Ryan made me forget to monitor Charmagne Harlen sometimes. Around him, I laughed too loudly before remembering I was supposed to lower my voice. I argued before checking whether my opinion sounded intelligent enough. I ate tacos out of foil while sitting on a kitchen counter and wore his clothes without worrying about what they did to the shape of my body. I told him when something pissed me off and occasionally managed to decide what I wanted before asking what everybody else thought.

Then Ryan had pointed all of that out during our fight, and I had spent three days trying to decide whether I hated him for seeing it or loved him because he had.

By Wednesday morning, I still hadn’t answered his message about missing me.

The apartment reflected exactly how well I was handling that decision. Two coffee cups sat on the table because I had made one the previous morning, forgotten where I put it, and made another. A throw blanket had fallen partly onto the floor. Professor Brown’s reading sat open beside three fashion magazines, and Ryan’s Spanish notebook rested in the middle of everything with his handwriting visible across the page.

Te extraño.

I had learned that one well enough.

The knock at my door came a little after eleven. I assumed it was a delivery until I looked through the peephole and saw my mother.

Every thought in my head detonated at once.

“Shit.”

I looked down at myself and felt panic spread before I had even opened the door. I was still wearing a silk robe over shorts and a tank because I hadn’t showered yet. My hair was twisted into a messy bun, my face was bare, and the apartment suddenly looked less like the completely ordinary space I had been sitting inside all morning and more like evidence that I was incapable of managing adulthood.

Crystal knocked again.