Like why I feel closer to him than I've felt to anyone since I got here, and he somehow seems the same distance away as the day we met.
I said I didn't want another relationship. I meant it when I said it.
I'm not sure what to call what we’re doing here.
I turn my head and look at his face in the dark. Unguarded in sleep in a way he never quite is when he's awake. There's something almost unfair about it — the tension he carries everywhere just gone, just a person, just warm and breathing and here.
I look back at the ceiling.
My mind drifts, and I expect it to land on Cody — the hospital, the videos, Judge Ravenshaw, all the threads I keep pulling. But it doesn't go there.
It goes to Theo.
The library. The book dropping onto my desk.You're looking in the wrong place.The boy who looked like danger and sin.
I don't know why I keep thinking about him.
I don't know why it feels like it means something.
Beckett shifts beside me in his sleep, turns toward me, his arm finding my waist automatically, like even unconscious, he knows where I am.
I let him pull me in.
But I don't sleep for a long time.
Sunday afternoon, I head to the library to study.
I pull out my green Reformation sweater. It’s my favorite cashmere, and I spray my favorite candy-like perfume all over it. Then I run a brush through my hair, making sure every knot is free. I glide my favorite lip gloss across my lips and pop them a few times.
I grab my books and go.
The walk across campus is cold enough that I pull my sleeves over my hands. I focus on the bite of the air instead of the third floor of the library and whether or not a particular study carrel will be occupied when I get there.
It probably won't be.
I turn the corner onto the third floor, and my eyes go immediately to the study carrels by the window.
He's not there.
The disappointment that moves through me is instant, disproportionate, and deeply annoying. I stand there for a second longer than I should, looking at the empty space, and then I sit down at my usual spot, open my laptop, and tell myself to get it together.
I pull out my books and open my Comparative Government notes. I reach forThe Prince— his book, the one he left without explanation — and find the page I was on.
I read the same paragraph four times.
I'm aware of the stairwell door every time it opens. Aware of footsteps at the end of the aisle. Aware of every shadow that moves in my peripheral vision in a way that has nothing to do with studying and everything to do with the fact that I dragged myself here today for a person who may not even show up.
I force myself to actually read. I make notes. I highlight something. I am a person who came to the library to study, and that is exactly what I'm doing.
Then footsteps. Slow. Unhurried.
I stop reading mid-sentence.
I don't turn around. I look at my page and keep my eyes reading, even though my brain isn’t.
"Back for more corruption theory?"
I look up.
