“Hospitality management, music minor,” Kat rattles off. “Do you know Daniel? Honey, let Ellie have your seat.”
“I’m fine to stand,” Ellie insists. “You look familiar, Daniel. Are you an art major?”
He shakes his head. “Music ed. My roommate is, though. Josh Segal?”
“I love Josh!” Ellie presses her hand to her heart. “Wait. Didn’t he host that Halloween party where they had to call an ambulance?”
Kat howls with laughter. “Twice! We had to call an ambulance twice!” She holds up two fingers on one hand and smacks the table with the other, dislodging my cardboard wedge again. Dammit.
“Oh my God.” Ellie fans herself with her hand as she catches her breath. “That’s practically U of I lore now. Josh and I had a nine a.m. together the Monday after Halloweekend, and even Professor Howell was asking for details.”
“No way. You have Howell?” Kat draws a line through the air between herself and Daniel. “We met in Howell’s psych lecture.”
“I thought you met in Music History,” I interject. My one and only contribution, but Kat barely acknowledges it.
“I mean sure,” she says, “but technically we had psych together first. Hey Ellie, don’t you think Howell’s mole is, like, so distracting? I literally just want to….” Reaching over the table, Kat mimes plucking something off Daniel’s face, and the three of them launch right back into their laughing fit.
“I, uh. I’ll go look for another seat,” I say, but I don’t think anyone hears me over the U of I pep rally. I slink away with a huff, ducking between crowded tables and half-familiar faces in search of an empty barstool. How the hell did Daniel find one so quickly earlier? The place is packed. After a thorough search, I return with fractures of gossip from former classmates and some early predictions on who’s hooking up tonight, but no leads on additional seating. Which sucks for me, it turns out, because Daniel has taken my seat, Ellie has taken Daniel’s seat, and none of them seem the least bit bothered with where I went.
“I-L-L!” Kat shouts.
“I-N-I!” Ellie and Daniel echo back, and I rejoin the group just in time to see Kat hand my vodka soda off to Ellie before clunking her own drink against it.
“Hey, that’s mine.” I’m horrified to realize that the source of that whiny, childish voice isme. I close my mouth, but I can’t take back the words, and Kat’s eyes are already drilling through me, fully mortified.
“My fault,” Ellie says, holding the cup out to me with an apologetic smile. I can’t make myself accept it.
“I’ll just get you another one, Murph,” Daniel volunteers.He jumps to his feet, but he doesn’t take so much as a step before I lose it entirely.
“Murphy,” I snap. “My name is Murphy.” Apparently my filter is entirely off tonight. I want to say I regret it, but I don’t. He can’t call me Murph. He doesn’t know me like that.
Kat’s shooting daggers at me. “Murph. Don’t.” She sounds more like she’s scolding a dog than speaking to her best friend.
“And I want that one,” I continue, pointing to the sweaty drink that should’ve been mine, the one I’m still not taking from Ellie because it’s not really the point. “I want the one I was supposed to have.” I aim a pointed look toward Kat. “Like we planned.” I wish I’d stop talking. We could’ve had a seminormal night if I could’ve kept my dumb mouth shut. But there’s only so much sitting back and listening to your friends gush about the campus you should be living on, the parties you could’ve gone to, the things you might’ve known if you were smart enough to pass accounting on the first try.
Kat forces a soft, airy laugh, her eyes darting between Ellie and Daniel. “Murph, do you wanna maybe go to the bathroom with me?”
“No, Kat. I don’t.” I ball my hands into fists to try to stop them from trembling. “And I really don’t want to fight with you, so—”
“So maybe we should call it,” she finishes, her voice a shaky sigh as she slides off her barstool. “For tonight, you think? So we have time to cool off? I don’t wanna ruin things for tomorrow.”
I want to tell her that she’s already ruined tomorrow, and our belated twenty-first birthday celebration, and probably mychances of ever getting along with Daniel. But I know I’m to blame too. “Yeah,” I choke out, “you’re probably right.”
As Kat shoves an arm into her puffer coat, the tiniest smirk twitches at the corner of her lips. “I’m always right,” she says, tugging her zipper up to her chin. “Can’t remember a time I’ve been wrong.” While Kat makes the rest of her vodka soda disappear, Daniel and Ellie make small talk about some campus bar, and I make prolonged eye contact with the laces of my shoes. Guilt curdles with the vodka in my stomach. Even if I’m not the only one to blame for this bullshit night, I’d still rewind and try again if I could. I’d find a way to have a better attitude about all this. But it’s too late now.
“You want a ride home?” Kat offers, tipping her head toward Daniel.
“Nah,” I say, “I can walk.”
“You sure?” She doesn’t bother leaving a beat for me to answer before moving past it. “Get home safe then.” Kat squeezes my forearm, then wrangles me into a hug, once again smothering me in her red puffer coat. If anything, she squeezes me a little tighter than she did when she first arrived.
“You get home safe too,” I grumble into her shoulder. “Text me when you make it.”
Ellie and Kat make some vague plans to reconnect on campus, and I say goodbye to Daniel with an awkward and definitely forced side hug. He gives me some last-minute niceties that I certainly don’t deserve, and then, as quickly as they rolled in, they’re out the door. Kat Fleming, the center of my social life and my primary reason for staying in Geneva this weekend, isgone, leaving me to brave a bar full of our classmates who wouldn’t have known the difference if I never showed up tonight. Except for Ellie, of course, who is sitting across the table, fluffing her microbangs with a small, sorry smile. “You okay?” She asks.
“Yeah,” I say on instinct, but we both know it’s a lie. I feel rotten and rejected, like roadkill or the weird lumpy pumpkin no one brings home from the patch. “I guess I should probably head out too.”
Ellie dips her chin in a quick double nod. “I get it.” She bites her lip, and her gaze wanders away from mine and toward the bartender. “Or.”
