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She cringes like I asked her to eat a shit sandwich.
“Classes just started today.”
“Hence the reason for the beginning of the semester gathering.”
“You keep saying gathering like it’s not a party.”
I shrug and turn my attention back to the mirror hanging on the closet door.
“Will there be alcohol?” she asks in a way that I know she won’t be impressed with the answer.
“Of course.”
“Drugs?”
“More than likely.” I lift my eyes, meeting hers in the reflection. “Wanna go?”
She scoffs. “Absolutely not. I’m not getting caught at a party and getting kicked out of school.”
“Suit yourself,” I say as I gather up my phone, ID, a bottle of water, and my keys. “Don’t wait up.”
I take a deep breath as I leave the room. I want to do better this semester, but I’ve been back on campus for four days, and staying in the room with Jennifer is driving me insane.
I stop beside a few girls in the lobby of the dorm building.
“Are you going to the party?”
One of them nods, but the other looks at me like she knows me and hates me.
“We are,” the nicer of the two says.
“Think I can walk with you? Safety in numbers and all that?”
The angry girl’s face softens. “Sure.”
I don’t say a word as we leave the building. There’s a very real chance that I danced with the angry girl’s boyfriend last semester or let him feel me up on the dance floor. I was pretty liberal for a while about who I allowed to touch me at parties. My spiral out of control wasn’t very pretty.
I want to turn over a new leaf. Last semester was all about trying to draw Donavan out of the shadows, to force his hand so he’d step in and take control.
I know better this semester. There’s also something about getting a needle jabbed into your neck by a man planning to do terrible things to you that makes you take a step back and really look at your life.
I wanted the fear when I knew Donavan was my safety net. When he was the one stalking me, I knew deep down that I was safe. Now that I know he’s gone, that he couldn’t even be bothered to say goodbye, risking my safety in that way would be careless, possibly a suicide mission.
“Buck and I broke up so…”
I turn my head in the angry girl’s direction, but it’s the friendlier one who speaks. “Bethany.”
Bethany, the angry one, shakes her head, and I can tell by the look in her eyes she has something to get off her chest. “You look confused.”
“I was a fucking mess last semester. If I—”
“He, not you,” she corrects. “He was the one in a relationship. He approached you. It took me a long time to accept that.”
“Any role I played, I’m sorry.”
She nods, giving her friend a light smile when she grips her arm in solace.
“Maybe you shouldn’t drink as much tonight,” Bethany adds.
“I’m not drinking at all,” I assure them both. “I just had to get out of my room. Got stuck with a wide-eyed freshman. I think she was ten minutes away from asking me if I wanted to help her study.”
Bethany scrunches her nose. “Classes just started today.”
“Exactly,” I answer. “It’s going to be a long semester.”
Music from the frat party meets us on the sidewalk, but there aren’t many people milling about outside. The weather is extremely cool, but Texas is notorious for having their coldest weather later in January and into February.
“Ten dollars a cup,” a guy wearing a t-shirt with Greek frat letters on the front says.
I hold up my bottle of water, waiting for the other girls to buy their cups.
“Kegs are in the kitchen,” the guy manning the door says before stepping to the side so we can enter the house.
“See you around,” I tell them. “Thanks for letting me walk with you.”
They both give me light little waves, and I walk toward the dance floor, wondering if they might actually become friends. I could use a handful of those, honestly.
I actually take a moment to look around, nodding and doing my best to smile at others when they smile at me. All the faces around me make me realize just how singular my focus had been last year. I was so hyper focused on trying to pull Donavan from the shadows that I rarely paid attention to anything going on around me.
I’m in jeans and a bulky sweater rather than a short skirt and revealing tank top. Not only is it freezing outside, but I also don’t exactly want to draw too much attention to myself. The thing about frat guys though is they honestly don’t care what you’re wearing.
I step further into the living room, moving in the direction of the group of people already brave enough to start dancing despite it still being early in the night.
