“Are you sure you’re okay? Did that guy hurt you?” There’s a dark tone in his words, and I open my mouth to reassure him again, then stop.
Stop talking. Stop walking.
That guy.
I look over my shoulder. Then slowly do an entire spin on the sidewalk.
No one is watching me. No one is spying.
But… “How do you know it was a guy?” My words are soft but bitten with cold.
Nolan is uncharacteristically quiet for a beat. Then another. Then he says, “I don’t think a woman would’ve run into you so hard, you’d drop your phone.” His tone is oddly clinical.
I don’t speak, still frozen on the sidewalk.
Then he sighs dramatically and says, “Besides, aren’t we discussing my secret lover?”
I think of the man outside my door.
That wasn’t Nolan. He’s thinner, tall too, but reedier.
And he’s blond. His stubble isn’t the same color as my stalker’s.
Unless I have many of them.
“Yeah,” I say in answer to his question. “Yeah. We were.”
“It was brief. Over the summer. Nothing worth writing home about.”
“Maybe if you’d spent more timetherethanhere,it would have worked out.” There’s an edge to my voice I don’t bother to dull.
It’s part of the reason I love living in Darkmouth. Nolan rarely visits. He said Casper, the owner, always glares at him and doesn’t seem to like him.
It’s a cocoon for Cynthia and me.
I finally start walking again, but it feels as if multiple pairs of eyes are on me.
“No,” Nolan says coolly. “It wouldn’t have.” There’s a pointedness in his words I don’t like.
My mind flickers to Sylvan.
This is his first year here.
My brother seemed to know a lot about the Dragons.
What if he went to one of his games?
“I’m waiting for details,” I press, passing by a little strip of on-campus restaurants. They’re all fairly busy and for a second, I think of ducking inside one, just so I’m not alone. Besides, what am I going to eat at home? I think there’s like two eggs in the fridge. And right now, I’m actually starving.
“It was some girl who couldn’t open up even if she was sawed in two.”
My mind flickers to Jackson.
Maybe I can survive the night without a meal after all.
But as I glance behind me again, the courtyard seems suddenly empty, and I feel apprehension course through me.
I head down the sidewalk to the row of restaurants and decide to spend some time inside of the Greek place, Bosphorus.
