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This Seems Like Information I Shouldn’t Have
Kylie
Paige: Ok, so Koda just told me something.
Paige: And you cannot say anything! Promise me!
Paige: I can’t not tell you.
It’s Sunday morning, and I’m lying face down with one eye open and my phone six inches from my face.
Me: What?
Paige: Jules went to Nash’s last night.
Paige: After the party.
I read it, and it wakes me up a little, and then I read it again, and my heart is doing something completely unreasonable. Because okay. Fine. Why would I care about that? He’s a free man. He told me about her himself, used the words fuck buddies like they were nothing. That’s information I already had.
It’s not the Jules part. It’s the part where last night he watched me the whole night. Every time I turned around, Paige confirmed it; she was sure something was going to happen, which is exactly why she’s telling me this now. She’s being proven wrong. He stared at me for three hours, didn’t make a single move, and then went home and invited his fuck buddy over.
Annoying. That’s the word for it. It isn’t anything else.
Paige: Kylie?
Me: It’s whatever.
Paige: What?
Me: Cool. I don’t care.
Paige: Hm.
Me: Don’t hm me.
Tessa is already up at her desk with tea, dressed, writing in a notebook. She writes in it a lot, and I don’t think it’s homework.
“You got in late,” she says.
I sit up and rub my face. “Yeah. It was just a party. The whole hockey team was there.”
Her pen stops.
“It was fine,” I say. “Nothing happened. No fighting at all. Everybody stood around being weirdly polite to each other, and then we came home. I’m telling you that specifically because of—” I wave my hand. “I don’t want you sitting in here picturing something.”
Tessa looks at her page for a second. “I don’t care if there was one.”
And then something occurs to me. I sit up straighter. “Wait. Is that why you never leave this room?”
“What?”
“Because you know there are hockey players on this floor.”
Tessa’s face does absolutely nothing. “There are hockey players on this floor?”
“Tessa. Nash and Rafe are three doors down, Koda’s always coming down from five, and you’ve heard me talk about all of them for a month.”
