I hate when he tells me to relax, and he knows it. I let out an exaggerated huff to mimic his sigh. “Well you’re not exactly Chatty Cathy, Sammy, and we just spoke yesterday…”
When he tells me he wants to come visit next weekend while Rory is visiting her mom, panic edges its way in. He’s still doing his casual act, and I want so much to buy it, but it’s my nature to worry, and I can’t help but wonder why now? Why so suddenly? If Sammy found out about me and David, he would be upset with me for being dishonest, surely, but my fear isn’t for my relationship with my brother. It’s for David’s. But, selfishly, what I’m most afraid of is knowing it would cut short my time with David—time that could already end at any moment.
Sammy says he’ll take the Long Island Railroad into town Friday night—that David will pick him up from the station. I can’t begin to think about where the hell my brother is even going to sleep—or where I am, for that matter, since it certainly can’t be in David’s bed with him—and I’m about to text Lani to hurry up before she makes me late to Psych 101, when over on the far corner of the promenade, my eye catches the back of an unmistakable mahogany head of hair.
Even more than fifty yards away, I recognize the tension in David’s shoulders, and when he turns a little to his left, he reveals not just the stress in his features, but the person they’re directed at.
He leans into Liz, apparently murmuring something into her ear. Liz shakes her head at him, and throws a glance over her shoulder like she expects someone to jump out at her at any moment. My heart breaks a little more for her, but shamefully stronger is my desperate curiosity—my jealousy—over whatever the hell could have David so obviously and uncharacteristically aggravated, and what it could possibly have to do with Liz.
I know he’s hooked up with her in the past, but I can’t imagine he would do that now. Still, I can’t fathom what else could be between them that might explain the intimate exchange.
And, of course, I don’t know he wouldn’t do that now. We haven’t actually talked about it.
Liz stomps away from David, who rakes his hand through his hair in a familiar gesture of frustration, and I watch, frozen, as he shakes his head, checks his phone, and walks off in the direction of the communications building.
“Who are we staring at?” Lani interrupts my daze, but thankfully she doesn’t share my finely tuned David-radar, because she just stares blindly into the crowd before I admonish her for being late, yet again, and hustle her toward class.
* * *
I’m still on edge hours later when Professor Bowman ends her lecture and dismisses us. I pack up my tablet and stare at my phone, opening my long-running text conversation with David, and my thumbs hover uselessly over the touch-screen keyboard, just as they have all day. I want so much to tell him about Sammy’s sudden upcoming visit—to ask him what we’re going to do. But I can’t escape the image of him leaning so intimately down to Liz, whispering in her ear, and it paralyzes my fingers.
The worst part is the realization that all these years later, nothing has changed. I still harbor unfathomable jealousy over David March, and despite the fact that I’m sleeping with him, I still have no right to it. And while I managed to get it through my head long ago, I still can’t seem to get it through my thick, pathetic heart that David isn’t mine. That he isn’t going to be mine.
My classmates file around me and toward the exit as I give up yet again, tossing my phone into my bag, and even Professor Bowman has left by the time I get myself together.
Just as I’m slipping on my jacket, I hear my name. And it chills my blood.
“Beth,” a familiar voice calls from behind me.
I whip around to find Brody pushing his way around the two girls whose leisurely pace is blocking his path down the narrow aisle—the only two other students left in the lecture hall. His brow is furrowed with what appears to be a threatening mix of agitation and indignation, and my pulse runs frantic as it urges my body to do the same.
I knew Brody was back in class, of course, but he has been for over a week, and considering he hasn’t so much as glanced my way, I figured his attention was elsewhere. Like on his well-deserved, impending arrest, for example.
But my fight-or-flight instincts are well-honed, and in one more heartbeat I’m through the door.
But so is Brody.
“Hey!” he shouts, and I pick up my pace even more.
The hall is far more deserted than it would have been just a few minutes ago, most everyone having already made it to their next destination before the next block of classes starts. There are just a few disinterested stragglers with buds in their ears and their eyes on their phones, but I suspect they are the reason Brody refrains from giving chase in earnest, and I’m infinitely grateful for them as I speed up into a jog.
But his long legs must cover twice the distance of mine, because he gains on me easily with every last stride. “Damn it, Beth! Will you fucking stop?” he growls, gritting his words through his teeth in a way that reminds me so much of my father at his worst that it makes my stomach roll with an eerie blend of déjà vu and dread.
I break into a sprint toward the exit like a madwoman. I can’t imagine what the hell Brody could possibly want with me, but I have zero interest in finding out.
Rationally I know he probably isn’t planning to attack me in the corridor of the Bio-Psych Building, where potential witnesses are likely to pass by. But I doubt Liz expected to be attacked wherever she’d been that night, either, and not knowing where that even was, or exactly what went down, just makes the whole thing that much more terrifying.
But unlike most gossip on campus, the details of Liz’s assault never made it past the police—and whoever else Liz herself might have told—and as Rill Rock U’s policy is not to comment or report on any ongoing criminal investigation involving a student, most people don’t even know who Brody is, let alone what he did.
My heart races in terror as Brody’s heavy, foreboding steps echo from not far enough behind me, and I grab for the door and fling myself through it just as he reaches—or grabs—for me, his fingertips grazing my wrist with the near-miss. My heart jumps into my throat as if it means to escape my body, and in this moment I can’t even blame it.
Brody follows me outside, but pauses on the small stoop as I flee in the direction of the student union, gasping hungrily for the breath that panic and exertion stole away. I hug my arms around myself, slowing only to a brisk power-walk as I risk a quick glance over my shoulder. The ice-cold glower in Brody’s narrowed eyes sends a shiver down my spine.
What the hell does he want from me? To defend himself? What he did was indefensible!
What he was accused of, a small voice corrects internally. But how can I doubt Liz? If she said it happened, I have to believe it did…don’t I?
The only people around are those who don’t have class right now and don’t happen to be eating lunch, and while that’s fewer people than any other time during the day, it’s still busier than the empty halls of an academic building while class is in session. But barely moments later, hard, running footfalls pound in the distance behind me, and I don’t even look to check if it’s him, I just take off.
