I’M DEAD INSIDE. My emotions have locked down so tight, I hardly feel a thing, just the dense weight of my body as it moves me along. Like I’m pushing through thick, cold sludge. I don’t even know how I end up at the local coffee shop. I must have walked. Must have ordered; there’s an untouched latte sitting by my laptop. I’m writing…something. My midterm on Queen Elizabeth and the use of virginity as a means of political power.
Perfect. I don’t even want to look at what I’ve written. If it’s any reflection of my thoughts, I’ve said something along the lines of: remain a virgin. Do not engage. Run away while you can.
Not that refraining from sex would have protected me from Drew. He’d burrowed beneath my skin before he’d laid a finger on me.
People come and go, and a few glance at me, as if they know me. I don’t get it, but I also don’t really care.
I’m about to leave when Iris finds me. Her smile is the overly bright one she uses when she wants to cheer me up.
“I guess you had a rough day,” she says, as she sits in the chair opposite me.
“What are you talking about?” We both know, but I don’t know how she knows.
“People are tweeting that Battle Baylor had a ‘lover’s tiff with some foxy redhead’ on campus today.”
Foxy?
“People fucking tweet about that shit?” is all I can blurt out. Holy shit. They’re tweeting? Who the hell are these people? Don’t they have a life?
Iris looks at me as if I’m crazy. “Of course they tweet about it! He’s Drew Baylor, girl.”
“And how the hell did you even see these tweets?”
Iris shrugs. “There’s a hashtag. #BattleBaylor. I follow it.”
Of course he has his own hashtag.
“You follow it? Are you kidding me?”
“Me and a couple-thousand other people. I started to follow it when you hooked up with him.”
I groan and press the cold heels of my hands against my aching eyes.
“Don’t worry, sweetie.” Iris gives me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “At least there are no pictures. Not yet anyway. Though I haven’t checked on Instagram. We’ll do that later.”
“Oh, God.” I hadn’t even considered pictures. I want to die. Just die. I think I might if there is photographic evidence of Drew shouting at me. I officially hate fucking social media. I’m banning myself from it. For life.
“So.” Iris picks up my coffee, finds it cold and sets it back down with a frown. “What happened? You get tired of all that endless sex?”
The question slaps into me. I think I actually flinch. She’s grinning at me as if my heart hasn’t just been ripped out of my chest. Apparently, I’ve been too effective in my protest that Drew and I were nothing serious. Either that, or misery loves company. Whatever it is, I want her gone.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did you ask for exclusivity, and he gave you the brush off?” There’s a hard glint in her eyes. “Because I’ll kick his ass if he hurt my Anna Banana.”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” I say with little heat, “the fact that you think I was part of some harem or that you think I would be begging.” I don’t add the laughable idea of Iris kicking Drew’s ass. That part is kind of sweet. Even if the twerp just called me desperate.
“I know,” says Iris. “You fell in love with him and blurted it out. And now he’s running scared.”
That is it. I’m done. I collect my laptop and shove it into my bag. “No,” I say in a falsely bright voice. “It was because he wanted to kiss me in public, and I treated him like he had the fucking plague. And when he said he wanted me to be his, I threw that back in his face too.” I stand and shoulder my bag as she gapes up at me. “Don’t you know? I’m incapable of falling in love and all that feeling shit.”