“Are you calm now?” he asked.
“Yes,” I lied.
Reaching an arm through the holes we made, Tristan efficiently looped a metal bike lock around the door handles. A few people standing nearby cheered us on, chanting “We will win!” Tristan threw up aSurf’s Up!sign. It was a gesture that felt totally out of place, that reminded me we were all just kids who didn’t really know what we were doing.
After boarding the windows that flanked the door, we walked silently down the hallway. Above us, other barricaders dragged chairs, desks up the steps. It was a grating sound. Someone dropped a heavy piece of furniture and cursed.
Tristan swaggered slightly ahead of me. His gait was anxious and angry, how I felt. The hammer dangling from his hand didn’t help his image. I didn’t know what we were doing next.
When we reached the stairwell on our way upstairs, I stopped on the landing. “Is this about what I texted you the other day?”
He paused but didn’t turn around. “Is what about that?”
“Your weirdness.”
He angled slightly, showing only his profile. “You know what’s weird? Dumping someone over text.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you. You said you’d made peace with things ending.”
“Yeah, well, I fucking lied, also”—hearing footsteps, lowering his voice—“also, what was I supposed to say? Be all like”—in a dumb, mocking tone—“?‘cAn wE tAlk’ while we’re taking over a building?”
“You’re the one who wanted me to tell Jay I’d be monogamous, remember?”
He paused. “I didn’t want that. I just wanted him to be happy.”
He started walking up the stairs. Instinctively, I grabbed his wrist. For a moment, he just stared ahead, like he was deciding what to do.
“You were right to end things though.” He laughed bitterly. “We lied to everyone and for what? For sex?”
He untangled himself from my grasp.
Was that the story he’d told himself? Where was the part where we fell in love? Where was the part where Nia offered me to him like a ribboned box, setting me aside once I’d been unwrapped? Where was the part where she and I might’ve fallen in love? The part where everyone thought I was something to be disciplined? To be had? Where I resisted and, yes, wronged people, yes, unnecessarily, selfishly wronged people, in my piss-poor reach for something other? Where was the rest of the story?
I was looking at him, but he was staring at his shoes. My phone went off, a loud, clipped sound. I took it out of my pocket. Somewhere I had applied for a job wanted to know if I was available for an interview at 9:30 a.m. I said yes because, still out of work, what choice did I have?
When I looked up, Tristan’s tight expression had come undone. He looked sad and tired.
Moonlight skimmed the steps through the window behind me, slicing his face in half between light and dark. He and I weren’t on thesame page, would never be. But all that made me want to do was rip the page up. All I wanted was to touch him.
A tiny black hair stuck to his cheekbone. “You have a lash on your face.”
He looked confused. I took my thumb and pressed it to his cold cheek. He closed his eyes almost mechanically like he was falling asleep. My mind cycled through ways to tuck the lash in my pocket without him noticing.
Someone cleared their throat. I jerked around. Tristan’s lash was lost to the ground.
Ryen stood at the base of the stairwell, the actress’s singsongy voice not far behind.
“Did I interrupt something?” He was flicking a blue flyer on the back of the door with his index finger, almost bored.
Tristan stumbled up the stairs, head bowed. I listened to the door shut behind him.
“Does Milan know you’re here with another girl?” I hadn’t even meant to say it, but I was angry.
Climbing the steps, Ryen stood on the landing with me. His eyes were glassy. He was drunk on something dark. I could smell it. “What, are you gonna tell her?”
“You don’t deserve her.” I felt like a middle schooler defending their friend, grasping at authority in my squeaky voice.
I tried to walk up the steps, but he moved into my path. My pulse picked up. In my syrupy service voice, I said, “Excuse me.”
