“Is this where he lives?” He looks around at the row of whitewashed brick townhomes with black trims and doors.
“I’m assuming so—he just went into the town house on the far left.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Now we know which one he lives in for when we break in tonight.”
“I’m sorry, what now?”
“We didn’t come all the way out here for nothing,” he says. “Come on, let’s go get the car and we’ll wait until tonight to come back.”
We walk down the street away from the town houses, back toward campus. The streets are flooded with students in Ivy Gategear for their home football game today. It makes me want to join in on the fun.
“Wait, I know where we are,” I say. “There’s a bar a few blocks down that me and Ty used to go to. They do trivia and drunk bingo; we should stop in there.”
Asher thinks about it. “I did want to watch this game... A few hours wouldn’t hurt.”
We walk into the busy Winchester Tavern and take seats at the bar with the other students getting ready to watch the game. The two of us look extremely out of place in our non–Ivy Gate clothing. I remember that we are supposed to go to dinner tonight with Annica for her birthday, so I text her and Dani that I came up to Ivy Gate to see Ty this morning and am having car troubles. Lie, lie, lie, it’s all I do these days.
“So why did you chicken out?” Asher leans in to ask.
I scoff. “Because I’m under a lot of stress and you practically threw me into that situation. When I saw him I just froze, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t talk to him.”
“What did this guy do that has you unable to face him? Well, other than possibly kill two people...”
I level a glare at him. “The whole situation with him, I think I’m just ashamed of it. I feel sick when I think of him.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Why’d you date him?”
“I need a drink before we get into that.”
The game starts and the bartender finally makes her way over to us. She barely looks twenty-one, with long blond hair and atight, low-cut T-shirt. I watch Asher’s eyes flicker down to her chest and back up. Disgusting.
“So?” Asher says, shifting toward me, prompting my explanation when we both have drinks in hand.
“Honestly, you probably wouldn’t understand,” I say.
“Try me,” he says back.
I try to think of Miles and what drew me to him. Why did I do it? Why did I?
“It was the way he looked at me,” I start. I can see Asher roll his eyes from the corner of mine. “See, you don’t get it.”
“No, no, go on. It just sounds cliché, that’s all.”
The TVs in the bar drown out all sound with the game but I let out a breath and decide to continue. “Well, I had a lot of guys just screwing me over left and right, hence the journal, and Holland just looked at me differently. Like I wasn’t a means to an end, or just some girl to sleep with; he looked at me like I was someone... worth knowing.”
“And did this professor who looks at his students like they’re worth knowing mention he had a wife? I thinkthat’dbe worth knowing.”
“He did, on the first day of class actually.”
“And you went ahead with it because?”
