The shower is glass and marble, big enough to hold a football team. I step under the rain-head and let the water run as hot as I can stand, sluicing away the dried sweat and the faint, sticky evidence of what we did last night.
I close my eyes and lean against the tile, feeling the ache in my thighs, the tenderness between my legs, the slow burn of satisfaction that pulses from my core all the way to my scalp.
It should be enough. But it isn’t. Because under it all, there’s this heavy, tangled feeling in my stomach—a knot of guilt and desire and something almost like love.
I think about the bet, the video on my phone, the thousand dollars waiting for me if I just press send. I think about what I could buy with that money, the books and notebooks and volume of poetry that I’ve been craving. But I also think about the way Thomas looked at me across the kitchen, the way his hand lingered on my skin even when he didn’t have to.
I should feel triumphant. I shouldwantto win.
Instead, I stand under the scalding water and let myself feel everything at once: the hunger, the fear, the thrill, the dread.
I’m so alive it almost hurts.
When I step out, the whole room is steamed, the mirror a blank, silver canvas. I wipe it clear, look myself in the eyes, and try to decide who I want to be.
For now, I leave it open.
I wrap a fluffy towel around myself, wander back to the bedroom, and find Thomas sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to the door, elbows on his knees.
He looks up when I enter, his eyes taking in every inch of me. I feel exposed, but not in a bad way.
He stands, crosses the room in three strides, and pulls me into his arms.
We stand there, holding each other, the world outside spinning away into silence.
Neither of us says anything. We don’t need to.
For now, this is enough.
12
ROOMMATE CONFIDENTIAL
Andie
When I unlock the dorm room door, it opens onto an obstacle course: cardboard boxes, half-full, half-open, stacked in disorderly towers against every available surface. My favorite mug—cracked at the rim, no handle—sits like a crown atop one of them, already sealed with packing tape. The window blinds are drawn at a lopsided slant, slicing sunlight into alternating bands of gold and dark. The air smells like box glue, dust, and a hint of vanilla body mist.
Simone is on her knees, sorting through the lower reaches of the closet with a kind of reverent focus. She wears a shapeless Century College sweatshirt and leggings that are slick with lint, her hair up in a pencil-stabbed knot. She looks so ordinary that, for a second, I don’t recognize her as the same woman who wore plum lipstick and flawless curls to our dorm’s holiday shindig.
She doesn’t see me at first. I stand just inside the door, backpack dangling, trying to remember how to be normal after a night and morning like that. I see her folding something—no, not justfolding: arranging, smoothing the sleeves of a cream-colored sweater with unusual care, as if it’s evidence in a trial.
When she glances up and sees me, her face lights for a second, then shadows over as if she remembered not to. She tugs the sweater over her knees, fusses with it.
“You’re back early,” she says, aiming for nonchalance but missing by a mile.
I slip past the boxes and toss my bag onto my stripped bed. “Not really. Thought I’d get the laundry done before the vultures descend.”
She nods, lips pressed tight, then looks down at the sweater again. She’s picking at a loose thread, hands fidgety. I stand there for a second, waiting for her to say what she really wants to say, but she doesn’t. Instead, she starts packing the sweater into a battered Kmart suitcase, then changes her mind and pulls it back out.
“Are you okay?” I ask, because someone has to.
She freezes, arms wrapped around the sweater, then says—very quietly, “Liam asked me to move in. Not, like, tomorrow. But soon. He keeps saying his place is too quiet and I’d make it a home.” She laughs, a short, embarrassed sound. “I haven’t said yes. I just—I don’t know. It’s weird, right?”
I sit on my own mattress, which is bare except for a fitted sheet and one lumpy pillow. I cross my arms. “Is it what you want?”
Her eyes flick to me. “I think so? It’s just—he makes me feel…” She searches for a word. “He makes me feel seen. Like I’m not the extra in someone else’s story.” She flushes, chin tucking. “It’s dumb.”
I shake my head. “It’s not dumb.”
