The message is short, and I don’t even have to click on the window to see it all. It’s an apology, and another text pops up right behind it. Instead of reading more than the first line, I power off my phone and pretend the movie I’ve already seen is interesting.
* * *
Sunday morning,I’m up early, even though I didn’t sleep for crap. I know I’m going to get my feelings hurt today, but I don’t know if it will be self-induced or not. I cram a few things into one of my larger bags and lock up the house with a simple plan.
I can’t stay here today. I’ll be a wreck waiting for them to show up and hating myself every minute for expecting them to when they don’t. Being lonely isn’t all that bad, I can definitely learn to live with it, but what I can’t live with are two guys acting like I’m important to them when clearly, I’m not. I wonder if they do this crap to all the girls they hang out with. I chastise myself for even thinking about them again.
Getting a hotel is easy. They ignore the over twenty-one policy when I hand over my black card without a limit. I decline the offer of help up to my room and head to the elevator by myself. The room is on the smaller side for a suite, but it’s just me, so I don’t mind. Once I take a good look around, I kick my shoes off and turn my phone back on.
The two messages from Memphis are still showing as new on my screen, and there aren’t any others. I want to ignore them so badly, but I’m too curious, so I give in and read them. It doesn’t make me feel better. In fact, it makes me feel worse because now he will know I read them. A range of ideas go through my mind—getting a new number, dropping the class, even heading back home to California gets a tiny bit of attention, but my pride won’t allow me to run home. I’m not letting them push me that far.
To punish myself a little more, I open up my social media, not even pretending I’m not here to check out their pages. I try Memphis first, but he never accepted my request to follow him from a few days ago, so there’s nothing to see, not even any new tags from photos. I should have known there was an issue days ago when he didn’t accept me, but I never really thought about it. Neither of them seemed to be on the phone all that much, and we never talked about it.
I prepare myself before opening Oswald’s page, but he hasn’t posted anything. His tag is a different story though. There are more pictures from last night, and I scroll through slowly until I see the same girl who was on his lap making a kissy face to the screen in nothing but one of Oswald’s shirts. I know it’s his because I’ve seen him wear it. The same bed is in the background, and the date stamp is from this morning. The caption reads “xoxoxo”with a flame emoji.
I wonder if he took the picture. Her hair is a little messy, but I can’t deny she still looks cute, even with her makeup all gone.
I let out a heavy breath and give a small thank you to whomever it is that allowed me to see their true colors now instead of later when I was in even deeper with them. I was nuts to ever entertain the idea that there could have been something between us. I mean, they admitted they wanted to share me, so I guess I was too excited at the idea to examine it much further and consider how it would extend to me sharing them.
When I open my laptop, I click on my email drafts, then make a few changes to the message I already prepared for Professor Hilbrand, ensuring her email is the only one listed, and then send it off before I can talk myself out of dropping the class.
Now I just need to avoid the south quad, and I should be fine. We don’t have any other classes together, and it’s a big school.Yeah right.
Oswald
I checkthe time on my phone as soon as I open my eyes. The screen is blurry as hell, but there’s a shit ton of notifications. I click on the screen and see a bunch of pictures of me from last night, but the one that makes me sit straight up is the one of me with a girl in my lap. Without any context, it looks like I’m holding her, maybe even kissing the back of her neck.
“What a fucking bitch,” I snarl. “That was a total setup.” I drop my phone on the bed and get up to piss.
“What’s going on?” Memphis lifts his head up off the pillow and sends a narrow-eyed glare my way.
I leave the door open and answer him while I’m pissing. “I told you about the girls KJ had in the room. One of them pretended to fall on me then posted a picture that made it look like she was sitting on my lap.” I flush and wash my hands before brushing my teeth. “After I told her I had a girlfriend,” I finish once I’m back in the room.
“There’s more than one picture.” Memphis looks up at me from behind my phone.
“Everyone was taking pictures,” I tell him and pull my phone out of his hand, but this isn’t just any picture. It’s of the same girl, only in this one, she’s wearing my shirt and nothing else but duck lips as she does that kissy face bullshit into the camera. The inference is clear, and it doesn’t help that this picture was posted this morning in my room. It looks like she spent the night with me.
“What a bunch of bullshit.”
“Oswald,” Memphis says slowly in a warning tone.
“What?” I snap.
“I have a request from Waylynn from a few days ago. Do you?”
“Oh shit.” I hit the notifications button, but it’s filled with too many for me to sort through quickly. “I’m not set to private. She could have followed me at any time. I don’t even check my shit.”
“If she asked me, she followed you,” he tells me somberly. “Maybe she didn’t see it, you’re not tagged.”
“It would be better if she fucking tagged me, because then I could delete that. She used a fucking hashtag.”
“It says Waylynn was active ten minutes ago,” Memphis divulges.
“Did she respond to your text from last night?”
“No, but she did read it.”
“What should I do? Should I say something or play dumb? I mean, none of it is true, so it’s not like I’m lying.” I do feel a slight twinge of guilt for sizing the girl up last night though.
