“What about you?” Rose asks. “Where did you transfer from?”
“Delaware,” I lie. “Applied for a transfer and got a scholarship based on my GPA. I couldn’t say no.”
My eyes probably dim a little when I say it. They always do. Delaware is the clean answer between Roman and here, long enough to build a record, short enough to ask no follow-up questions.
“Nothing special,” I add. “Flat. Quiet. Good for studying.”
Rose nods. She doesn’t push. She Seems the type of person who understands that stories arrive in their own time.
We stay for another hour.
The bar fills with students from the swim meet, happy and loud, a different world from our booth at the back. We talk about going shopping, even if we probably don’t have money.
By the time we leave, we have established, without naming it, that we are going to look out for each other.
I think Rose might be too. In a way to protect someone who doesn’t deserve to be taken advantage of.
On the walk back to the dorm, she says, “The party is Thursday.”
“I know,” I say.
“I don’t have anything to wear,” she says. Flat. Just a fact.
“I have a dress,” I say. “And a jacket. Come to my room before we go. I think it would look good on you. I mean it.”
She looks at me with the wariness of someone not used to being offered things without a cost. I have a couple of dresses Roman bought me when I lived with him that I brought just in case. It’s not much, but I’m glad I could offer it to her.
“Are you sure?” she says.
“Yes. And don’t thank me. It’s nothing.”
She nods once. We walk the rest of the way in silence.
At the fork where our hallway meets the stairwell, she stops. “Same time Thursday?” she says.
“Come by my room at seven.”
“Alright,” she says and walks toward her room.
I stand in the hallway for a moment. The building is cold and dark, and I feel, unexpectedly, like something has shifted.
She knocks at seven on the dot.
I have the dress already laid out on the bed—the fitted black one, with the leather jacket folded beside it and my over-the-knee boots on the floor. I knew she would come exactly when she said she would.
She is wearing her usual dark jeans and hoodie, her hair pulled back. She looks at the dress on the bed through the open door, and something in her expression shifts with surprise.
“I have never worn anything like that,” she says.
“Good. Come in, and I can do your makeup.”
I have her sit on the edge of the bed, and I draw her eyeliner, then add a sweep of foundation and something along her cheekbones. She sits very still while I work.
When I turn her toward the mirror, she studies herself for a long moment.
I watch her look.
“You look gorgeous,” I say.
