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She lets the girl with the ponytail pull her back toward the dresser, but she’s still looking at me over her shoulder. “Fuck you.”
I lift my water bottle at her, and she turns around.
The sophomore is staring at me. “You know her?”
“No fucking clue who she is.”
Twenty minutes later, the girls leave, and they have to come past me to get to the door. Kylie doesn’t go around me. Her shoulder hits my arm hard enough to move her a step sideways, and she stops and looks up at me like that’s my fault.
“You’re always in the way.” She adjusts her sleeve like I got something on it. “I’m tired of seeing you.”
“Same.”
“Fuck you,” she says.
“You keep saying that.”
She flips me off with two hands, and the girl with the ponytail laughs and drags her out the door by the wrist.
The sophomore is still looking at me.
Somebody hands me a slice of pizza. Across the room, the swim kid is on push-up twenty-something while Koda eats and counts. Rafe has won the card game and is refusing to give anybody their money back.
Two minutes later, the door opens again, and it’s the girl with the ponytail. She comes back in alone, scanning the room, and when she finds me, she comes straight over, smiling in a way I don’t like at all.
“Hey. So.” She tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Kylie wants to know if you’re busy this weekend.”
I know immediately that isn’t true. Two minutes ago, Kylie passionately gave me two middle fingers. She also told me she was tired of seeing me, and she meant it. Last week, she told me I looked like a guy who cheats on his girlfriend, and she tried to fight me over a washing machine. Kylie does not want to know if I’m busy this weekend.
I take a bite of pizza.
The girl doesn’t blink. She stands there smiling and waits me out like she’s got all night, because she knows exactly what she’s doing and isn’t even a little embarrassed about it.
“Yeah, we’ll be around,” Koda says, walking over and leaving the swim kid on the carpet. “There’s a thing Saturday. Off campus. Everybody’s going. You should come. Bring all your friends.”
“All of them?”
Koda nods. “As many as you’ve got.”
“Okay,” she says, and her smile changes, and now it’s aimed at him. “What’s your number?”
Koda gives it to her so fast he nearly drops his plate. She types it in, taps something, and his phone buzzes in his pocket. She holds hers up. “Now you have mine.”
He grins. “Now I have yours.”
“Paige,” she says.
“Koda.”
She flicks her eyes at me on her way out, checking whether I’m going to say anything. I eat my pizza, and the door swings shut behind her.
Koda watches it for about three seconds. “I’m going to hit that this weekend.”
“She used the blonde,” I say.
“What?”
“The blonde hates me. Paige lied to get your number.”