“I don’t care about the game…how are you?”
I turn away from him, unable to look him in the eye. If I look at him, I’m done. “Good, you?”
“Yeah?” I can tell Liam’s watching me. “Look, I just wanted to say—”
“We don’t have to do this.”
“Mollie and I broke up, you know,” he adds, and I have to force myself not to react. I shouldn’t consider getting back together, but I can’t help that pang behind my ribs.
The crowd cheers again, saving me.
Ben is on a breakaway, running down the sideline past the last defender. He cuts toward the goal, and the goalie comes out for him. They’re about to collide when, at the last moment, he switches the ball to his left foot and flicks it past the goalie’s outstretched hand.
As the crowd erupts, I cheer more than I need to, glad for the excuse to pull farther away from Liam.
“He got lucky,” Liam mutters.
I need to get away from here before Ben sees us and gets the wrong idea.
“Hey,” Liam says. “There’s something I forgot to tell you.”
I turn to reply, but before I know what’s happening, Liam leans down and kisses me.
For a moment, it’s all there is. The shock of it, the pressure and warmth of his lips, sends me spiraling. The kiss lasts a second too long before I jerk back, my whole body flushed. “What are youdoing?”
Liam shrugs, smiles.
I turn away, furious, and when I look up, Ben is standing on the sideline, staring right at us.
—
After the game,I search for Ben at the tailgate to explain what happened with Liam. I spot him talking to his teammate and start to jog over when the girl with the pink coat I saw in the stands earlier throws her arms around his waist.
He turns toward her and I stop in my tracks. She’s saying something to him. He’s smiling. There’s a familiarity to their body language. An intimacy to the way he leans over her. The way she touches his elbow gently. I watch him laugh at whatever she’s said and tug at one side of her earmuffs. What is going on?
“Ben?” My legs feel wobbly beneath me as I take a cautious step toward them. Startled, he and the girl pull back from each other. Their heads whip to me. The sky has broken and it’s started to drizzle, the cold making my hands go numb.
Ben looks at me over the girl’s head. She’s wearing a Yale sweatshirt under her coat, and when she sees me, her smile falters.
“Hey.” His voice is flat, eyes distant. “This is—”
“Jamie,” she says, with a tight smile. “Ben’s girlfriend.” She says it with a mildly annoyed tone as if asking,And who the hell are you?
“Oh, okay. Good to know.” I take a step back, shaking my head as my throat constricts. I look at Ben, whose face is a mix of emotions I don’t understand.
Without another word, I turn sharply and march in the opposite direction, and as soon as I’m far enough away, I run.
—
I fight theurge to cry as I surge through the dark, rainy campus. The wind has picked up and it’s throwing rain against my face, tearing my hair from my forehead.
Back in my dorm, I grab a bottle of tequila from the mini fridge and take a sip. It burns my throat but numbs the pain a little.
A half hour later, wandering down Washington Road, I reach the bridge over Lake Carnegie and push myself onto the stone ledge. It’s freezing out here. Wind surges around me, brutal, shoving meforward. I trip over an uneven stone, and as I recover my balance and glance down at the rushing water below, vertigo sends me reeling.
Out of the darkness, someone shouts my name.
Down the road, a light grows nearer. Too bright. Disorienting. It takes me a moment to realize it’s Liam on his motorcycle. He’d gotten it over the summer after wrecking his Jeep a few months before, and I’d always wondered what riding it would be like.
