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“Okay,” I say into the mattress. “Okay. Wow.”

I don’t know what I was worried about. He’s tired. He played a hockey game. He gets up to deal with the condom and comes back with a water and puts it on the nightstand on my side. I roll over to look at him, and he’s already pulling his sweats on.

I drink the water. He sits on the end of the bed with his elbows on his knees. I lie there. This is the part where he gets back in. This is the part where he lies down on his back and puts his arm out and drags me across the mattress by the neck. He checks his phone and puts it down on the desk. I pull the blanket over my legs and lie on my side and look at his back.

“That guy’s in my lecture,” I say. “Aiden. The one who talks a lot. He thinks the curve’s going to save him. It isn’t.”

“Probably not.”

He rubs his hand over his face. Then he turns around and looks at me lying in his bed. “You staying?”

I don’t know why my heart sinks all the way through me. It’s a normal question, not a big one.

“Do you want me to?” I ask, because I don’t know what else to say.

“Up to you,” he says.

And I’m suddenly so annoyed I could throw the water bottle at his head.

“I think I’m going to sleep in my room,” I say, and wait.

“Okay,” he says.

So I get up. I find my jeans. I find one sock and spend a while looking for the other one, which is on the bed next to where I was lying, where I could have reached it without standing up. I put my top on. I check my phone, which has nothing on it. I fix my hair in the reflection in his window, which is pitch black. He doesn’t say anything else. He walks me to the door, and at the door, he takes my chin in his hand and kisses me, and it’s a good kiss. It’s a really good kiss. Then he lets go. “Night.”

“Night.”

The hallway is freezing. One door, two, and then mine. Tessa’s lamp is still on. She’s in bed with her book on her chest and her eyes half open, and she looks up when I come in.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

She doesn’t ask. She goes back to her book while I brush my teeth and take my makeup off with a wipe and then wash my face anyway. When I come out, she’s turned her lamp off, but there’s a bottle of water on the corner of my desk that wasn’t there when I left.

I get into my own bed so mad I can feel my heartbeat in my ears. At his dad, probably, for making him be on for twenty minutes. At Paige, who won’t tell me what’s going on with Koda. At Aiden and his hand. At the game, the cold, the fact that I have a whole paper to write tomorrow. I fall asleep before I get to the end of the list.

Sunday, I sleep until ten-forty. Tessa’s gone. My mouth tastes terrible, and there’s a bruise coming up on my hip in the shape of somebody’s thumb. I lie there and look at it for a second and then pull the blanket back over me. My phone has three messages in the group chat, all from Bianca. It’s a picture from Paige of her own ceiling with no caption, sent at 4:02 a.m. And a text from my mom asking if I’ve talked to Evan. Why would you think I would, Mom!

I answer my mom, scroll until my arm goes numb, get up, clip my hair up, put on leggings and the hoodie of his I took on Friday, then I eat a snack. I open my laptop, look at the paper I have to write, and close it again. By noon, I’m starving, and on Sundays, the dining hall does the eggs with the potatoes.

Me: Breakfast?

The dots come up right away.

Nash: Already ate.

I look at it and wait for the next one, because there’s always a next one: But I’ll come sit with you, or Go, I’ll meet you after. There isn’t one. My thumbs are already going.

Me: Without me?

I look at it sitting in the box, waiting for me to send it. Without me. That’s pathetic. He’s probably starving. Of course he’d eat without me. Jesus. I delete it one letter at a time, which takes longer, and watch it go.

Me: Rude.

Nash: ?

I sit on the end of my bed with my phone in both hands and look at that question mark for a really long time, and I don’t have a single thing to type back.