I watched as she left, clicking the door closed behind her.
I might be a heaped, broken mess, and she might have won this round, but I wasn’t going to lose myself to her.No, she’d never said we were exclusive, but that doesn’t make it right.
I listened until the shuffling stopped next door, and Francesca left her room. I waited until I heard the door along the hallway creak to a close. I cursed through the effort of sitting up, my breathing rapid and shallow because it hurt to breathe too deeply. Blood rushed from my head and the room tipped sideways. I gripped the edge of the bed and pushed myself to my feet. In my current state, I could hardly achieve stealth mode, but I needed to hurry before she returned.
The next time I faced Francesca, it would be on my terms.
I stood under a hot shower,blinking through fresh tears and gulping around the smarting lump in my throat. The water stung the grazes on my hands, but I relished the steam and finally felt warm again. I wished I could rinse Francesca away with the soapsuds, but she wouldn’t wash off that easily.
Before pulling on fresh pyjamas, I carefully assessed the crimson bruise on my ribs, exploring the tender area with my fingertips and hissing at the touch.There isn’t much they can do for bruised ribs anyway.
I rooted around in the bathroom cabinet and found a packet of ibuprofen. I cupped cold water in my palms and swallowed a couple of tablets, pocketing the rest for later. I would replace them, and anything else I’d borrowed, but first I needed to rest.
Now that the nausea had passed, my empty stomach growled for food. I made a mug of tea to accompany some buttery toast — my favourite comfort food. But even that didn’t fill the hollow inside me now that the bubble had been burst.
When I returned to my room, I did something I hadn’t done in months: I locked my door.
I’d taken to leaving it unlocked because I enjoyed finding Francesca in my space, even though she usually left a mess in her wake. But right now, I needed to keep her out.
The rapid rattling of the door handle startled me awake. Hours must have passed as my room was darkaside from the soft glow from the lamps in the quad, four floors down.
“Are you in there?” Indignation wrestled with the concern in Francesca’s voice. Her knuckles rapped on the wood, and the handle rattled again. “Why is your door locked?”
I drew a breath and mustered my strength. “I don’t want to see you.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Catherine. Stop fooling around and let me in.”
“I’m not the one who’s been fooling around, Francesca.” I sounded as bitter as I felt.
“It’s not my fault you made assumptions about how things were…”
I blinked in disbelief. I’d been so stupid. Why did I let myself trust her after what had happened at Christmas?
Francesca lowered her voice. “As I said before, I never denied that Jeremy and I were… look, this is complicated. I don’t really want to stand in the corridor airing our dirty laundry.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you fucked my best friend,” I screamed.So much for staying calm and keeping my power.
Seconds later, Francesca’s door slammed and the bass of her music pulsed through the thin wall between us.Oh, the irony of her listening to The Cure right now— it couldn’t be further from an antidote. She’d ripped my heart out, and now she was trying to perforate my eardrums.
I pounded my fist on the wall. It was a pathetic counter-rhythm, but momentary relief came as the soundmuted. Then Francesca’s muffled voice retorted, “I’ll turn it down when you stop sulking and let me in. I don’t know why you’re being like this.”
The music resumed, and I swear she turned it up another notch as the rhythmic thumping intensified, a deep, guttural thrum that resonated in my bones. I snatched my pillow up around my head, muffling the sound slightly, but the vibrations continued to pulse through me.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to banish her from my thoughts, but the music conjured mental pictures of her throwing her head back and twirling around in abandon, or lying on her bed, her dark eyes stormy. Hot, silent tears tracked a path down my temples.
The halls were blissfullyquiet when I woke in the thin dawn light of a new day.
For a moment I imagined it had all been a bad dream. But Francesca wasn’t curled around me in my bed, my door was locked, and I felt like I’d been run over — both emotionally and physically — which of course I had.
I dressed, wincing as I pulled clothes over my ribs, and made a hasty exit, careful to close my door quietly behind me. Outside, the world was a washed-out watercolour of greys and blues. My breath misted in the freezing air as I speed-walked across the frosty campus towards the library, hoping to catch Mei before her lectures started.
The early-morning hush of campus was broken only bythe crunch of footsteps on the frozen ground and the occasional distant shout. I stopped at the café to grab a cup of coffee. Mei wasn’t in our usual library nook, so I waited on the bench outside, jiggling my legs to keep warm. The wind whipped at my hair, and I pulled my scarf tighter, burrowing into the thin layer of fabric.
With her neon pink bobble hat, Mei wasn’t hard to spot. Her colourful clothes looked particularly striking against the frozen backdrop. As she drew closer, I saw that her face was rumpled in a frown, which didn’t lift when she looked up and spotted me.
“Morning,” I said, my stomach twisting with a fresh wave of anxiety.
“Hey,” said Mei with a flat smile. She avoided eye contact and moved past me up the steps to the library door.
