West leans over Amber’s shoulder and grins when he sees the B-minus. He reaches across the table to give me a high five.
“That was anticlimactic,” she complains. “I had a whole speech prepared and everything. It was about being young and hot and how few Halloweens we have left to celebrate before we get too old to dress like slutty nurses.”
“Aren’t you planning to go to nursing school?” West asks.
“Yeah, babe. If you dream hard enough, you can be a slutty nurse every day,” Kyle says earnestly.
Amber ignores the men. “If my speech didn’t work, West was going to talk you into it.”
“This is news to me,” West says.
“Why do you want me to go so badly?” I ask.
“Because Connor is going to be there tonight.”
“Connor who?”
“Rishi’s friend. English major. He was in your Pop Culture and Politics class.”
“He was?”
“Yes. And we sat with him at the improv show in the Modern Languages building that one time.”
“Riiiight,” I say, though I’ve blocked most of that night from my memory. It was the first weekend that we all hung out with West and Bethany while she was in town, and I was trying exceptionally hard to act like a girl who didn’t know what it was like to grind on her boyfriend in the library stacks. I was nervous that if she didn’t like me, West and I would have to stop hanging out. “What about him?”
“He’s going to be at the party tonight,” Amber says.
“And?”
“He thinks you’re hot,” Kyle says through a mouthful of expired hummus.
“Oh!” My spine straightens. Three pairs of eyes watch me with interest; what I say next will get relayed to Connor before the party tonight. I avoid looking at West, because even though it’s been six months since our one and only make-out session and neither of us feels that way anymore, it’s still awkward that he’s here for this conversation. “Cool.”
“Can we tell him you’ll see him tonight?” Amber asks. When I confirm, she squeals her approval and then disappears into her room with Kyle.
West takes the seat next to me while Amber’s Slow Jams playlist filters through the thin walls. “You don’t remember that Connor guy at all, do you?” he asks.
“I do!” I protest while West laughs.
“What does he look like?”
“He has blond hair.”
West shakes his head.
“Brown?”
“Wrong again.”
“The redhead,” I say, finally putting a name to the face of a guy I’ve seen in Kyle’s Facebook pictures. And in the seat in front of me in Pop Culture and Politics. And apparently at improv night.
“He’ll be flattered to know how well you remember him.”
“No need to tell him.”
West laughs—until something about my expression makes him pause. “Wait. Are you interested in him?”
“Maybe.” I shrug, and an uncomfortable silence settles around us. West and I are the kind of friends who talk about everything—except who we’re dating. I don’t ask about Bethany, and he doesn’t ask about my love life.
