Does Yoko think he’s his new dad because he’s been at Julia’s apartment and not me?
Fuck me.
So many questions that I don’t have the answers to. But it’s hard to get answers when the one person who can give them to you isn’t talking to you. Though, I guess I’m not talking to her either.
I’m too busy living an emotional loop of her calling me manipulative and violating. I’m too busy coming out of my fucking skin.
I take the farthest seat in the room, behind some guy with a neck tattoo and a laptop covered in band stickers. Though, I don’t bother pulling mine out. I don’t think I could focus enough to type my own name, let alone take notes.
I almost forget that this is the one and only class I have with Scottie and Finn until they slide into the lecture hall a few minutes later, mid-conversation, and half-eaten bagels from the dining hall poised in Scottie’s lap. Finn pushes Scottie’s wheelchair to the rowI’m in and sits beside me, totally oblivious to the fact that I’m currently trying not to drown in my own chest.
“Did you read the article he assigned?” Scottie whispers around a mouthful of bagel and cream cheese.
“Hell no,” Finn says and Scottie laughs.
“Finn!” she whisper-yells and slaps him on the shoulder. “What are you going to do?”
“Well, babe, I guess I’m going to wing the whole discussion with confidence and a smile.”
Scottie rolls her eyes and looks over at me. “What about you, Ace?”
I blink. “What?”
“Did you read it?”
I stare down at my empty desk. “No. I didn’t.”
Finn narrows his eyes, studying me for a second too long. “You good, man?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “Just didn’t sleep much.”
That part’s true. I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, checking my phone every ten minutes like maybe Julia would cave. Like maybe the fifteen-minute rule wasn’t completely dead.
Spoiler: It is.Over twenty-four hours have passed.
Professor Dudley walks into class, drops his briefcase down onto his desk, and immediately starts talking about narrative dissonance and voice tension—ironically appropriate, considering how tense my chest feels.
I try to focus. I try to care. But every time Julia shifts in her seat or pushes her hair behind her ear or Drew smiles in her direction, it’s like a knife under my skin.
Scottie and Finn crack quiet jokes throughout the whole damn lecture. And normally, I’d be all into that game, but I hardly even hear what they’re saying.
After class, I pack up slowly. Julia and Drew are standing up near their seats, and he’s talking with his hands and leaning in like he’s performing, and she’s smiling up at him like she wants to hear it.
Then he does it. He reaches out and brushes a piece of hair behind her ear. The move. The soft one. The kind of thing I’ve done a thousand times without even thinking.
Something in my chest fractures.
I walk toward the door without saying a word.
Scottie and Finn catch up to me as we head out of the building.
“Wanna grab lunch with us, Ace?” Scottie asks. “Taco bar at Brower. Finn’s convinced they secretly use expired meat, and I want to test that theory with my life. Trav and Jack and Reece are supposed to meet us there too.”
“I can’t,” I mutter. “I gotta go meet with my counselor.”
“What? Why?” Scottie frowns.
Finn looks at me in the way he does. The one where he’s trying to see inside my fucking skull because he knows something’s up.
