She laughs. “Night,hermanita, love ya too.” There’s a click, and my screen goes black.
No thank you or real explanation as to what the hell happened earlier, and never anI love you. That’s nothing new. Ana has always been a little selfish and closed off, so I try not to take it personally.
Before going back to sleep, I check my messages and see some from earlier tonight. Most are from my friends or Mom asking if I got settled in okay. I spot two other texts, each sent after midnight.
Luis: I’ll be back tomorrow. Let me know if you want to have dinner :)
Mike: Wanna fuck?
Leave it to Mike not to beat around the bush. Mike is beautiful—full head of black hair and green eyes. We have sex, talk for a bit, and go our separate ways—friends with benefits at its finest. Luis, however, is starting to concern me. We haven’t slept with each other yet, and something is telling me that we shouldn’t.
After what happened with David, I had stopped dating altogether. When my friends realized how bad it had gotten, they recommended I go to therapy. I took their advice, and it helped me feel like myself again. I went to about seven hour-and-a-half long sessions and fled the secondhewas mentioned. Not wanting to dive into the shitfest that is my past, I called the same day and canceled all future sessions.
Em and I decided to take some self-defense classes before she left for vacation. I continued taking them for the rest of the summer alone. It helped in relieving my stress, and there’s the bonus of knowing I can knock somebody out if I wanted to.
My family’s short vacation to Colombia was also a great distraction. However, the news that my best friend Jake got a hold of about David officially graduating and leaving town was what really gave me the closure I needed. He lives hours away from Driscoll, and I will never have to see him again.
Deciding to leave the texts unanswered, I drop my phone onto the side table. My meeting with the gym manager is at eight a.m., and I have another one after that. I’ve made sure to keep my semester busy. I promised myself that I would focus more on me and my goals this school year. It has to be better than the last.
My first threedays back on campus before classes started were a success. My meetings ran smoothly, my boss seems to like me, and thankfully, there aren’t too many freshmen in my dorm.
Now I’m reading a mystery book I’ve been trying to finish for months while waiting for Emma to get here. My best friend and I were randomly paired as roommates in Astor Hall our first semester here. She called it fate, and I have to agree. We’re polar opposites in more ways than one, but we clicked after one late-night conversation during our first week in the suite. And since then, we managed to find two other best friends who value loyalty as much as we do.
The sound of the front door opening echoes in the suite.Speak of the Devil.
“Kamila, where are you?” Em yells in a sing-song voice right outside my door before she bursts in.
She runs and jumps into my arms, both of us laughing.
“Em, I missed you so much.”
I haven’t seen her in months. We usually see each other often during breaks, but she stayed at her aunt’s beach house in Montauk most of the summer, and I only got to visit once.
“I missed you too.”
She lets me go and flops down on my bed, touching a piece of my hair. “Oh my God. Your hair didn’t look this dark on camera.”
I look down at my black hair, which was formerly light brown the last time Em saw me.
“Do you like it?”
“I adore it. It really brightens the yellow specks in your eyes.” She studies me some more. “You look more like your mom now. The darker tan and the new dark hair.”
“Really?” I’m surprised that I hadn’t noticed. Moving to my full-body mirror, Em’s petite frame comes up behind me.
She points to my hair and then the tan lines. “See?”
She’s right. My naturallymedium golden skin tone, as my momdescribes it, is now a tad darker, bringing me only a shade away from my mom’s natural tawnier brown skin.
“I really do look like Mom,” I whisper. Well, except for my eyes.
“You do.” Em saunters back to the bed. “You look even less like Ana now, thankfully,” she mumbles, but I heard it loud and clear.
It’s no secret that Em and my sister don’t get along. Although, she doesn’t ever get into the specifics as to why.
“Enough talk about me,” I say in an attempt to switch topics. “How was your summer? Tell me everything.” Moving her hand, I take a seat next to her.
Her voice is bubbly and sarcastic. “Not much to tell since we spoke on the phone almost every weekend.”
