Damn Zeno and his determination to force a guard on me. We’re not even through day one, and Lev’s presence is already changing things.
Luckily, she ends the subject by steering me to the ever-opening door, practically revolving at this point. “Better get in there before we’re stuck here all evening.”
The bookstore is packed wall-to-wall. A line wraps the store, employees trying their best to create some sense of order for everyone checking out. We push through the throng to the other side, where the books are shelved.
“Can’t wait to get back in that line,” she jokes, patting flyaway hairs that got disrupted in our fight to this side of the store. “Whose idea was this again?”
“Yours. We need our books. Tomorrow might be worse. Besides, call it part of the experience.”
“You and yourexperiences. You’re like a walking ad for post-secondary education.” She steers me towards the mathematics section first.
Amara roots through her purse for the list of required textbooks for her finance degree. She claims she’s doing it to take over her family’s business. Which…thinking about it, I’d never asked her what her family does. Having spent so much of my time steering conversation away from my own, I lumped anything family-related for us both into a ‘do not touch’ category.
While she shops, I sweep my gaze over the store, passing over the many people, searching for—ah, there he is.By the far wall, close to the entrance but out of the way of the checkout line, Lev leans against the window, his hands shoved into his front pockets as he stares.
Stares at me. With an intensity I feel throughout my entire body.
Good to know I’ll always be able to pick him out of a crowd. It’d be impossible not to.
With a hard swallow, I break eye contact, checking to see if anyone else notices him. He isn’t fitting in, looking like he’s about to murder everyone and laugh while doing it.
Amara gathers her books—six of them—and manhandles them a few aisles over, where I pick out my required biology and chemistry textbooks, dreading their sheer size.
Once finished, we stand at the end of the massive line. Given how slow it’s moving, we’ll be here easily twenty minutes.
I subtly glance over at my shadow, wondering if he’s still watching. His attention’s on his phone, but as I’ve learned from Zeno and Nero, it doesn’t mean he’s unaware of what’s going on.
As though he senses me watching, his eyes flick up, immediately finding me. It’s a brief, expressionless glance before returning to his cell. His index finger taps the bottom of the device in the same pattern he once did around his coffee mug the morning after my kidnapping. I wonder what it means.
And why I recall that pattern.
Amara drops her books between our feet with a dramatic huff. “These things are heavy as fuck; seems we’ll be standing for a while, so no point in holding them. Where’s Alessio?” She scans the store, as though expecting him to pop up. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting him.”
When I met Alessio during my tour, she was beside me but wandered away while he and I talked, so they never met. After months of me yapping about him, it’s only natural she’d want to meet my boyfriend.
“Not here,” I grumble, readjusting my books as they begin pressing into muscles that aren’t often used. Maybe she had a good idea, resting them on the ground. “He decided to skip this semester.”
“Wouldn’t he want to attend now that you’re here?”
“You’d think,” I sigh with an attempt to shrug. Attempt, because the heavy ass books weigh my shoulders down. After our next shuffle up the line, I too set them on the ground and stretch my arms. “He didn’t fully explain; only that something else is going on. He said he’ll still come by to see me, but who knows. Guys, right?”
She’s watching me with a knowing look, but the line shuffles a few more feet, so her attention is directed to nudging the stack of books forward. She doesn’t say what’s on her mind, that she’s aware of what I’m feeling.
Disappointment.
I can’t linger on Alessio’s choices, because he isn’t the reason I’m here. I refuse to be the girl whose life ends because her boyfriend isn’t around.
“There’s a party this weekend,” she announces abruptly. “Some guy who lives down the road usually throws a back-to-school thing everyone’s invited to, I guess. I vote we go. Seems fun. Good way to kick off the year.”
My face twitches into a grimace. A party is the exact thing I said I’d stop attending to keep up the same image I had in the past.
“You can invite Alessio,” she adds, starting to shift my perspective.
Alessio’s never talked about partying, but he’s nevernottalked about it either. He does mention hanging out with his friends, so I assume he’s fairly social. It’s something to do together, to bring him back to campus, even for a short while.
“Great idea. I’ll ask him.”
I wonder how much Lev will enjoy following me to a house party.
