Page 2

Theo looked at her, his brown eyes difficult to read behind his glasses, and for once in his life, he let it go. He nodded toward her laundry hamper, the several dresses piled on her bed, her duffel bag of shoes, and her backpack. “Fine, but you’re carrying all that shit to the car.”

And then, in true Theo fashion, he picked up her backpack and duffel bag anyway.

Chapter Two

Theo

Traffic through Minneapolis was, as he anticipated, absolutely terrible. Theo might have spent the first fourteen years of his life in the Twin Cities, but his perception of bad traffic was probably skewed by having learned to drive in a town of barely ten thousand people, featuring four whole stoplights. Still, the combination of rush hour and the incipient snow meant all he could see in front of him was an endless parade of red brake lights. The snow wasn’t even bad yet, but the road was just slippery enough to make it all a huge pain in the ass.

But at least he was going home, as odd as it felt to say that. Itasca hadn’t ever quite felt like home in the four years he lived there, but spending the better part of a semester living with his weird-ass roommate had changed him, it would seem. He missed his mom and his little brother, Jacob, and hell, he even missed his stepdad. Karl was a nice enough guy, and he doted on Jake, but Theo had always felt like a bit of an intruder in his mom’s new family. Jake wasn’t Karl’s son either, but he’d been so much younger when Karl came into their lives that he had adapted a lot faster than Theo had.

It had been Karl who dragged them up to Itasca in the first place, away from Theo’s beloved St. Paul, which was probably part of his predisposition to hate it. Karl was from Itasca, and everyone else in the family had settled in easily, while Theo had always felt like he’d never really fit in there.

He had been so excited to start college and looking forward to the intellectual challenge that Itasca High just wasn’t able to provide. Now, it wasn’t that he didn’t like college, but rather that it had been less of a relief than he had thought.

He hadn’t been quite prepared for the avalanche of privilege he would find at the University of Minnesota, which had way more sheltered, upper-middle-class kids than he had been expecting. Even worse, his old armor didn’t seem to work the same way it had at Itasca. A black leather jacket didn’t make him “scary” to the students at the U, it made him “interesting,” which wasn’t his comfort zone. He preferred to be mysterious, because mysterious people didn’t have to make small talk, which he found irritating and vaguely painful.

“Has your roommate gone to class yet?” Avery asked, interrupting his thoughts.

“I assume so, since sometimes I come back and he’s not there. And once I saw him on his computer with something that might have been homework.”

Theo’s roommate was another complication when it came to keeping his high school reputation, because it was hard to beat “never seen in the daytime” and “refuses to speak to most people” when it came to being seen as intimidating. On that front, at least, Sawyer had that shit locked up tight.

“Think you’d be able to transfer to a new dorm? Maybe a single?”

That was Avery all right—always assuming that something could be fixed. But while Theo didn’t particularly like his roommate, he also didn’t want to risk ending up with someone else. He would rather deal with his weird-ass roommate than someone like Cameron.

“It’s fine. He’s weird, but he keeps his shit on his side of the room.”

“Savannah asked me to go to a frat party,” Avery said, peering out the windshield like she might be able to figure out a way to get them moving faster. “She thought it might help me get over Cameron.”

“Did you need help?” he asked, doing his best to keep his cool. He had to ignore the way his gut clenched at the idea of Avery out at a frat party, surrounded by guys no better than Cameron.

“I mean, it probably wouldn’t have hurt. But I didn’t really feel like it that day.”

The tension in his stomach eased, and the car ahead of them started inching forward. Avery glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “How’s Izzy?”

He sighed and ran a hand over the bottom half of his face. On balance, he’d rather talk about his ex rather than Avery’s, but that didn’t mean it was a fun subject for him. “I haven’t talked to her. But—Tommy has.”

“What did he say?”

Theo stayed quiet for a minute. He felt like crap about how things with Izzy had ended, since—well, since he was the one who ended it, and not entirely honestly. He knew she could sense him drawing away over the summer, but he hadn’t admitted it, not until late July when he told her they should break up before they both left for college. She was out in California, after all, and with his schedule and the time difference, they probably wouldn’t be able to make it work. In fact, they had talked about how hard it would be when they accepted their respective offers, but both had landed on some sort of vague “we’ll make it work” platitude at the time.

It was Theo who backed out when he realized he was dreading the inevitable breakup and decided it was better to end it in person than let it drag on. At the time, he told himself he was doing the kind thing, but he had maybe been a little too nice, and a little too insistent that it was just the distance that was causing the breakup. “She’s sort of thinking about coming back.”

“For . . . break?”

“For good.”

Avery whipped her head around. “She wants to transfer?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? Doesn’t she like being in California?”

“I—I don’t know about that,” he said honestly. “But she told Tommy that Minneapolis College of Art and Design said they would take a look at her portfolio.”

“Do you want her to come back?”