The table rattles gently, and I glance at my phone, a text notification from Will on the screen asking about our study session this afternoon. I swipe the notification away but still open my messages and start typing one out to Derek.
Me:Have you checked the apartment for my things?
I keep the phone awake and open as I continue to eat my breakfast, and it doesn’t take long for the message to turn toread.
Derek:I will be going to the apartment this weekend. If it is there, I will have it delivered to you.
Irritation rages through me. He said he was going to go when I asked him the first time. Clearly, that was a lie.
Not wanting to rock the boat, because I actually want my things back, I shoot him a thumbs-up emoji.
But then my mouth falls open when he replies with his own emoji.
The kissing face with the love heart on the lips.
Derek:Have a good day, baby girl.
Heat flushes through my system, amping up my irritation and igniting another emotion I absolutely refuse to acknowledge. I’m also going to ignore the way heat settles low in my stomach.
No. Nope.
I don’t feel those things about Derek anymore.
I’m not going to let him back in just so he can abandon me.
Never again.
Chapter 51
Emery
I made a mistake. This exact same thing worked so well last time.
But, noooo, not this time.
What the hell have I done?
Volunteering my place for study group was supposed to make it convenient for me. But it is the total opposite.
There are only a few minutes left of our allotted hour together, but not a single one of them has started packing up. No. They are all super fucking settled in.
The humming under my skin that started this morning hasn’t gone away. I feel like I could peel it off with a rusty blade at this point. And now I have people in my space, and I just want them to be gone.
I can’t even get Oakley to get rid of them for me, because she went to a musical or some shit with a sugar daddy and won’t be back until close to midnight.
Which means I need to pull up my big-girl panties and ask these people to leave.
Including Will, who I think has plans to hang around after everyone else leaves. The messages he has been sending me today have been so incredibly sweet, and if I was the kind of girl who believed in college sweethearts and happily ever afters, I would have been creaming my panties.
Instead, I’m this fucked-up version of femininity and will absolutely get sick if he says one more kind and supportive thing to me. Or drapes his arm across the back of the couch so he can touch my shoulder again. Or offers to get me a drink from my own damn kitchen.Again.
Urgh.
Fuck.
Why am I like this?
There is so much pent-up energy inside of me right now, I feel like I’m going to explode.
