I shoot her a look.Seriously?
“Camden was always the goal,” I say to Penelope, like I’m reading a prepared statement. “He knew that. So it wasn’t, you know — it wasn’t a surprise when I left.”
“That’s awesome, though,” Penelope says. “You saved so much money by going to community college first. I don’t even want to look at my loans.”
I take a bite of the toast. I let the saltiness and the lemon, and the warm, runny yolk do the work of pulling me back into the room.
“I don’t like to look at mine either,” I admit.
“What a scam, right?” Mila says, with feeling. “I heard a young billionaire girl say once that college is great for networking and making friends. And honestly? I can’t disagree. Look at us.” She gestures around the kitchen with her toast. “Look at us.This.This is what I’m paying for.”
I laugh.
Penelope laughs too. “Thank God you didn’t find another place. Honestly, I was panicking when Lucy didn’t jump on it. I called you the second she said no.”
“Who,” Mila says, very seriously, “would say no to this place? I would kill to live here. I would literally commit a crime.”
“The dorms are fun, though,” I say. “You’re meeting so many people there.”
“That is true.”
Penelope picks up her phone again. “Alright. The group chat is live. When should I tell them our first study session is?”
“This afternoon?” I offer.
Penelope nods, thumbs flying over her screen, and Mila goes quiet. Her eyes have gone soft and distant, fixed on some point on my face she isn’t really looking at, because she’s somewhere else entirely. She’s deep in thought about something.
I take another bite of my toast. The yolk has soaked into the bread on one side, and the sauce Penelope made has done some sort of holy alchemy together. I close my eyes for a second to enjoy it because it is, genuinely, the best thing I have eaten.
“Melly, this is the dream. This is so good,” Mila says, no longer zoning out on my face. But it takes me a moment to realize she’s not talking about the food. She’s talking about me living here. “You need to —” She stops mid-sentence, like a door slamming shut. Her water glass is halfway to her lips. She freezes with the rim of it pressed against her bottom lip, and her eyes flick, just once, in Penelope’s direction.
I swallow my bite. “Need to what?”
“Nothing,” she says, too fast, and takes a sip of water as though the sip itself will erase the sentence she started.
But I know her.
“Say it,” I tell her.
She glances at Penelope again. She is shriveling like a flower in the cold. And the careful way she’s trying to keep her mouth shut tells me more about what she’s about to say than the words ever will.
“I shouldn’t,” she says, trying to brush it off.
“Mila.”
“Melly, I —”
I blink. “Mila, it’s fine. Just say it.”
Her eyes stay fixed on mine. “Okay,” she says. “Fine, I just — I just think you need to break up with Chase already.”
The room pauses. My heart sinks into my stomach. Why is she bringing it up right now? Penelope looks up from her phone.Mila and I have been doing this ever since I transferred. She’s upset that I haven’t done it yet, but I just can’t seem to do it.
Penelope reads the tension between us and places her phone down. “Do you want to be with him?”
I’m so thrown off by the question that I double-take. And then I stare at the counter because I don’t, but I do, and I don’t know how to explain that. I feel my cheeks go hot, and I cannot, for the life of me, make my mouth work.
Penelope and Mila exchange a look. It’s so small. It’s just a flick of Penelope’s eyes to Mila and a tiny, sad press of Mila’s lips back, and the shame is already up my throat before either of them has spoken a word.
