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I sighed. I’d assumed after my talk with Micah things would get better. Devan had even greeted me in chem that afternoon with a smile and a joke (What did the science book say to the math book? You’ve got problems!), and though he’d been a little withdrawn, things seemed to be getting better. But apparently Garrett was still not a fan of mine.
“Fine. You pick somewhere. As long as it’s not outside.”
We ended up in a private study room in the library. Garrett shut the door and took a seat at the table, then immediately started bouncing his leg and tapping his fingertips against the tabletop. He forcibly stilled his restless movements when he noticed I was watching, but they started up again only moments later. I wondered why he was so tightly strung all the time.
We got right to it, pulling out the assignment sheet and splitting up the work. We’d all read the book at that point, so it wasn’t a hard task to follow the professor’s guidelines and take notes on the various aspects of the story we wanted to include in our literary analysis.
We’d been working quietly together for some time, heads down and buried in the project, so when Devan yawned loudly and turned his attention to me, I nearly jumped in surprise.
“So, Camilla. You said you’re from Southern California.”
I nodded, slightly wary, but his face was open and friendly, as if he really was just making small talk.
“Whereabouts?” he asked.
“L.A.,” I answered.
Garrett glared across the table at us, but I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed at having his work interrupted or that Devan was talking to me in the first place. We ignored him.
“I’ve only been to California once or twice,” he mused. “Did you like growing up there?”
“Yes,” I said softly, looking at the tabletop. “It was hot and crowded, but my mom didn’t work far from the beach, so my dad would take me down to the water all the time. It was…very different than here, that’s for sure.”
I glanced up to find Devan watching me with interest, and Garrett glaring between us with all his might. My anger flared.
“Look,” I ground out through gritted teeth, “I don’t know what your problem is with me. I’ve never done anything to you. But we’re just having a conversation here, like normal people do. I don’t know what kind of hold you think you have over your friends, but you don’t own them, and if Devan wants to talk to me, you can fuck off.”
His eyebrows shot up at my speech, and for half a second I thought he was going to apologize, but instead his expression turned dark. His brows were thick over his piercing green eyes, and a muscle twitched in his square jaw. It was really unfair that someone so infuriating could also be so attractive.
But this time his scowl was focused on his friend.
“No, I don’t own them, and they can make their own choices. But I didn’t used to have to worry that their choices were stupid ones.”
He leveled a stare on Devan that seemed full of warning, but his friend looked at him with an expression I couldn’t quite interpret. Something seemed to pass between the two, then Garrett rolled his eyes and slouched down in his chair, returning his attention to his work. His pencil tapped a ceaseless rhythm against his notebook.
Huh. I certainly hadn’t expected Devan to win that battle. But he ran a hand through his thick auburn hair, pushing the unruly strands off his face, and shot me one of his wide grins. “Don’t mind him; he’s just grumpy. Anyway, you were telling me about California.”
Just talking about it made me miss home all the more. Though I knew that while I could go back to California, the home I missed didn’t exist there anymore.
“You said you’d been there once or twice,” I observed. “Where are you from?”
He side-stepped the question so smoothly I wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t been watching for it. If no one here knew anything about the guys after four years with them, I was certain they wouldn’t suddenly start spilling to me. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.
“We moved a lot,” he said with a shrug. “It’s fun to see the differences between people in different places. Have you ever moved? Before coming to Maine, I mean.”
He’d said ‘we.’ Did he mean his family? Or did he mean him, Garrett, and Micah? I wasn’t sure why I wondered that, except the three of them seemed like such a complete unit, I couldn’t help but speculate whether they’d known each other growing up. I was so lost in my musings, I almost missed that he’d asked me a question.
“Oh, yeah,” I said vaguely, my eyes dropping to watch my hands as they fiddled with a pencil on the tabletop. “We moved to California when I was little. Like less than a year old, I think. I don’t remember anything before that though.”
“Huh. Where’d you live before that?” Devan’s voice was light and friendly, but there was something lurking beneath the surface, something I couldn’t identify. I glanced up at him and found Garrett had paused in his note taking. His head was still down, but his pencil tapping had ceased, and I knew he was listening as well.
I shrugged, tipping my head to the side. “I’m not really sure. The Midwest somewhere, I think my parents said?”
He gave me a strange look. “You don’t know where you were born?”
“It never mattered,” I snapped. “I don’t even remember living there. Why the third degree?”
Devan leaned back, his expression melting into his familiar smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to press you. I’m only trying to get to know you. You’re a mystery around campus, you know?”
