“I sent him photos.” Her cheeks flush, but her eyes hold mine. “The kind you only send someone you—” She stops, makes herself start again. “Someone you trust completely. And heshared them.” She swallows. “Not all at once. People never get that part.”
“Okay,” I say, leaving her the space to continue.
“It was slow. A sideways look or a comment. But then I’d ask Harrison and he’d get this wounded expression, like I was insulting him by even asking the question, and every time I walked away feeling like I was the problem. Like I was paranoid, or jealous.”
My hand finds hers across the table and squeezes, because I don’t trust what would come out of my mouth.
“Then my parents found out.” She swallows. “And that’s when it became real, because suddenly there were lawyers in our kitchen and everyone was talking about containment. Not justice. Containment.”
Her hands are moving now, quick and choppy, no choreography.
“It took me a week to confront him. I cried, I yelled. But by then his family had already made calls — his father was a state senator — and the school’s position was that the situation needed to be resolved quietly. That meant I had to go.”
Her shoulders rise and fall, and I want nothing more than to round the table and wrap her in a hug, the kind I sometimes have to give Ivy. But I sense that’s not what she needs right now, so I offer what she seems to want: my hand and my ears.
“My parents weren’t angry at Harrison. They were mortified by me. The mess, the scene, having to explain it at the club the following week. My mother said—” She cuts herself off, shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter what she said. What matters is that I heard it.”
“Halden was the reset,” I say quietly.
“Yeah.” She looks away. “I came here promising I’d never be that girl again. I’d be the Halden Girl, just like my mother.Composed and pleasant. Don’t take up any room, don’t make noise, and above all don’t become the scandal again.”
“I see you, Sloane,” I say. “The one who talks with her hands.”
I can’t say what’s on my face, but my jaw aches from clenching. My free hand is flat on the table, knuckles going white, because I want to find Harrison and put my fist through his teeth.
She sees it.
“There it is,” she says, gently.
“There what is?”
Her thumb traces my whitened knuckles. “I can see you wanting to fix this.”
“I do want to fix it.”
“I know,” she says. Then, quieter, she goes on, “I saw you with Ivy, in the dorm room.”
I open my mouth and nothing comes. My father’s voice is right there —Hales don’t let problems fester, son, and they don’t bring their problems to the table— and for the first time I can remember, I’m fighting the urge to act.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I say.
“Do what?”
“Just sit here with what you told me, without trying to fix it,” I say. “I?—”
I stop. Swallow hard. Regroup.
“What do you need from me right now?” I say.
“This,” she says, voice small. “What you’re doing right now.”
Something in her gives. Not a smile — more like a held breath leaving. Her shoulders come down from wherever they’ve been all semester, and when she opens her eyes again, they’re different.
She looks at me, quiet, and then seems to decide. She stands, walks around the table, and folds herself against me. She wrapsher arms around me and pulls me in until my face is against her chest, her chin settling on top of my head.
And I give in to it, because she smells good and she’s warm and I’ve wanted this no matter how much I’ve tried to kid myself otherwise. My hands come up around her waist, slow, giving her time to pull away if she wants.
“Thank you for listening,” she whispers into my hair.
