Ralph forces a smile, but I know he plans to tell David no such thing, just as I suspect he doesn’t plan to go very far at all. He won’t disobey David. Stupid frat bullshit, indeed. But I don’t really care, to be honest, as long as he stays out of sight and out of my way.
I wait until he’s out of earshot to turn back to Brian, who looks about ready to explode. But I don’t care about that, either, and I don’t give him the opportunity.
“Don’t,” I say sternly, my palm splayed for effect.
I take a step back, glaring at Brian. My head shakes all on its own. Why am I discussing this with him at all? “You wanted to be friends,” I remind him. “I gave it a shot.” And I did.
Brian’s eyes widen and his brows pinch together anxiously. “Bethy—”
“Beth!” I shout. It shuts him up. “It’s Beth. And you know what, Brian? I’m done.”
He opens his mouth to say something, but thinks better of it.
“You should be glad I had the nerve to tell you in person. A lesser person might just leave a note.”
I walk away.
* * *
As if this morning with David and my confrontation with Brian weren’t enough, Brody is back in abnormal psych, and I spend the entirety of the hour painstakingly staring ahead. Fortunately, like he did on the first day of class, he pushes his way out the moment we’re dismissed, and I take the fact that he didn’t try to approach me as a good sign.
By the time I walk home, I’m so mentally exhausted I wouldn’t even be able to argue with Dicknose—who follows about fifteen feet behind me at all times—even if I wasn’t secretly grateful for his presence now that Brody is apparently back on campus.
So much for moving back to Standman any time soon.
I’ve resisted texting David all day, but I at least thought he’d be waiting at the student union to walk me home. Our schedules finish around the same time on Fridays, and I can’t recall one where he wasn’t waiting to the left of those double doors, leaning against the building, smoking a cigarette like he had zero fucks to give. Until I showed up, and then his face would break out into that rogue, lopsided grin.
My heart flips and spins like an Olympic diver, before crashing into the cold water below. It’s a sensation I’ve been experiencing all day—every time I remember that stolen pre-dawn hour with David, and then the reality of waking alone. Again.
I consider he might have gone home early, maybe hoping I’d do the same, so that we might have some time to talk. David will be gone most of the weekend for some big pledge event they’re planning, coming home only to sleep—and who knows how much of that he’ll even be doing.
I glance at my phone one last time before I head upstairs, but David hasn’t texted me, either, and while that isn’t weird for us, for some reason it still unsettles me.
Part of me expects to find him in the apartment, but it’s unnervingly quiet. So I remind myself that everything is just fine, and decide to take a shower.
It isn’t until I’m making myself a sandwich in David’s kitchen—which is now stocked with actual food—that I see it. My breath rushes out and my heart stops beating. Because sitting out on the kitchen counter is a note.
David left me a fucking note.
It all hits me at once.
Everything is not fine. Things are not normal. Everything has changed between David and me, and now, not only won’t David talk to me, but it seems he can’t even be in my presence.
Suddenly I recall the last time David disappeared from my life without explanation. After the night I first met Brian—the night I thought, for one blissful moment, that David might see me as something more than just his friend’s little sister. He and Sammy had gotten into a fight after that, one of the only fistfights of their twenty-year friendship. Sammy came home with a bruised jaw, and David stayed away from our house for the longest time I could ever remember. When he showed up a few weeks later with a fading black eye, I was already dating Brian, and while that brief moment—when David had stared at my lips outside that party—still held a part of me hostage, to him it was obviously long forgotten. Or so I’d believed.
But…what if this is his M.O.? What if I didn’t imagine that almost-kiss, and David’s subsequent disappearance from our house had nothing to do with his fight with Sammy at all? Maybe that’s just what David does after a hookup—or almost hookup—he makes himself scarce. It certainly fits with his reputation when it comes to girls.
I don’t bother to read David’s note, instead crumpling it into a ball and tossing it where it belongs. Then I take out the trash and toss it down the chute so I can’t be tempted to retrieve it later. Because it doesn’t matter which words he chose to send the message. I received it loud and clear.
David and I—we don’t share some inexplicable connection. He doesn’t care about me. What he cares about is his friendship with my brother—the same way Brian, at the end of the day, cared about his “freedom.”
I swipe violently at my cheeks, angry at my tears, at Brian, and at David…but mostly I’m angry at myself. Because of all people, I should know better.
I email Dr. Schall to set up a time to talk, and then call my brother and his girlfriend, Rory. She’s the person I wish I could talk about David with the most. After two years, she has become like a sister, and with everything we have in common, I just know she’d get what I’m feeling. But if I told her what happened last night, she’d either tell Sammy, or she wouldn’t; and if not, she’d have to lie to him. And I don’t want to put Rory in the middle of everything.
I end up inviting Lani, Elise, and Toni over, and we binge-watch bad reality TV and order pizza. They offer to stay over, but I feel guilty inviting overnight guests to an apartment that isn’t mine, and anyway, David will need to come home to sleep at some point.
But he doesn’t.
