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Maybe I should tell him to leap off that bridge after all, but I don’t. I’m never as mean out loud as I want to be in my head. Not even to Roman Montague. “Fine.”
Neither of us seem sure what to do after that. It’s like the scene has ended, and the lights have come up, ruining the theatrical magic of whatever the hell was just going on. The prop of my sex book now feels all the more comical and Roman looks around, realizing seemingly for the first time that we’re alone in the back of the library.
This time, it’s him who walks away first, and I wait five minutes before following so we won’t bump into each other.
* * *
Iblink, at myself in the mirror of my ensuite bathroom. I’m standing leaning over the vanity in my underwear, a completely mismatched set of a too-sexy black lace bra and a pair of old cotton boy shorts with a hole on the right hip. I pick up an eyeshadow brush, going over an already too-dark line below my right eye.
“Did you hear anything I just said?”
My eyes flick up to meet Cat’s reflection in the mirror behind me. “What?”
Cat is lying on my bed in the next room, but is still visible in the mirror through the open bathroom door. While I am getting ready to go out, she’s already wearing her pajamas, her long black hair thrown up in a haphazard bun. Her face is partially obscured by a book, but her eyes aren’t moving, like she’s only pretending to read. “Never mind. I was just asking if you’d met with your advisor about next semester yet, but I’m guessing the answer is no.”
I heave a deep sigh and shake my head. “No, not yet.”
She looks at me with her trademark know-it-all stare, always the older sister, even when her actual sister is across the world. “You need to get on that.”
“Yes, I know. Thank you,mother. I actually tried, but the office was closed today.”
“What are you going to say if they tell you you’re not enrolled?”
I sigh. “You meanwhenthey tell me.”
While my parents are avoiding the question, like they do with everything, I know the writing is on the wall. After all, the goal of Elsinore is to churn out good Order citizens. Sure, it’s also an elite university, but only in the sense that the Order benefits from members in positions of power, and power often starts with prestigious degrees. If I’m married and inducted early, will they need me to finish school?
I suppose, the real question I should be asking myself is, will I sit back quietly and let them stop me?
“Fine,” Cat says. “When. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” I say honestly. “I guess I need to find out exactly what I need to graduate and go from there. Maybe Harrison will be nice about it, I don’t know.”
I look in the mirror again—at this point, I’m ready, and just stalling. There’s only so many times one can reapply eyeliner.
Reaching for the white and blue floral dress hanging on the hook on the back of the bathroom door, I tug it off the hanger and slip it over my head. The dress is wildly wrong for the time of year, and like most of my clothes, it now fits slightly tighter than it did when my mother bought it last spring. While the color can’t be helped, the size is more of a positive than a negative. The dress used to look matronly, but now it hugs my curves nicely, the soft fabric swishing against my skin.
Exiting the bathroom, I do a little turn for Cat. “What do you think?”
She cocks her head to the side. “I mean, you look good. You always look good, but is it ‘you?’”
I snort. “No, but it’s mother approved. She likes when I wear white, and this date is more for her than for me.”
Cat raises an eyebrow. “You don’t sound too excited about this.”
It is and isn’t a question, but I ignore the subtext of why I’m not excited and instead say: “I don’t think I have a choice.”
She frowns. In Cat’s world, there’s always a choice, because unlike me she doesn’t care about social fallout or what anyone thinks about her. She doesn’t worry about disappointing her parents, because her father is so insanely overprotective as it is, everything she does is a disappointment. She’s never cared what our peers think, or wanted to be liked and respected by the community. I’m painfully jealous of her indifference.
She sucks on her teeth, seeming to choose her words carefully. “Which part is the problem? Is it Dane, or marriage in general?”
By marriage, I’m not sure if she means the ceremony—which we both know is infamous in and of itself; or if she means spending the rest of my life married to Harrison. Either way, I don’t want to discuss it. “Can we just pretend this isn’t happening please? I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine,” she sighs. “But not talking about it won’t make it go away. We should at least research the ceremony or something. I heard you have to suck his—”
I whirl on her, eyes blazing. “Do you mind?”
Cat laughs. “If you can’t even talk about it, how are you going to do it in front of all those witnesses?”
