And now I wish I hadn’t wasted so much of my time worrying about what the right thing to wear or say or do was. Look where it got me.
Being forced to study by your mortal enemy?
No. Seeing you call yourself my mortal enemy.
She hesitated there, pen hovering over the space she was supposed to fill. That one underlined word—call—going around and around in her head until the urge to write no in ten-foot-tall capital letters was enormous. It took almost everything she had to dial it back, and even when she managed to, her writing came out like his. Jagged and too firmly pressed into the paper.
Full of emotion she didn’t intend.
I don’t really feel like I am anymore.
What do you feel like you are?
Someone who needs to study, Tate, come on.
Answer truthfully and we can. I will. Just this one. Please?
Now she did look up, too desperate to see his expression to do anything else. Was he happy? Sad? Full of resentment? Just joking around? She couldn’t tell from his handwriting, or from the words themselves. She needed to see his face, no matter what was written all over it.
And then she did, and wished she hadn’t. He looked agonized, she thought, as if waiting for her answer was a terrible strain on him. Though once she had written it everything shifted again. I think we are friends, she wrote, and he simply nodded. He didn’t seem relieved or particularly pleased. He just carried on with his work then, as though all that other stuff had never happened. And she felt like it hadn’t, too.
Until they both got up to go. They shook hands and went off with separate things to work on, her just a little way in front of him. Or at least she thought she was just a little way in front of him. When she glanced behind herself and saw he wasn’t there, she went back. She stood in the shade of the shelf she’d just passed, and watched him do something he obviously thought she would never see.
He tore off the paper that held her last words to him, carefully, so carefully.
Then just as carefully folded it up, and slipped that we are friends into his wallet.
Chapter 8
The party was so loud the walls of Kappa Phi seemed to shake. At least three different sets of speakers were playing three different sets of songs, and on top of that everyone present was either laughing, yelling, or knocking something over. It was total bedlam.
Yet somehow she still heard Lydia loud and clear above it all.
The question was like a chain saw, buzzing through everything else.
“So how did it go?”
Of course Letty knew why she had asked. Tate was just over by the makeshift bar someone had set up in what was once a living room. They could see him from where they were huddled, in a corner marked COMING HERE WAS THE WORST DECISION OF ALL TIME.
He looked nothing like the guy who had encouraged her to get him in a headlock or told her about his sawdust leg. He seemed twice as big, for a start. And that guilelessness was gone, replaced by the deadly cool he had possessed in high school. His smile was easy and effortless as he talked with some bro she thought might have been on the team with him. There was no hint of uncertainty there at all—this was Tate the top-notch athlete, the popular guy, the one who knocked back beers and thumped some guy’s shoulder.
It was disconcerting enough that she didn’t know how to answer.
The piece of paper he’d slipped into his wallet now seemed like a lie.
Worse: it seemed like a hallucination.
“Oh, you know he was civil. He didn’t do anything awful, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well that’s a start. At the very least I don’t have to murder him now.”
“You would murder him for me?”
She tried to keep the hopefulness from her face.
She knew she failed, however.
“Totally. I know you’d help keep me out of prison.”
“I was just thinking how hard I would cover up your crimes.”
“Bros for life, man,” Lydia said, then held up her plastic cup for Letty to knock hers against.
It was a pleasure to do it—and especially when she considered that word choice. Lydia was making fun of Tate. She actually had someone to make fun of him with.
“I think this might be the best party I’ve ever been to.”
“You know, broseph, I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Even though we are just standing in this corner drinking lemonade?”
“Especially because we are just standing in the corner drinking lemonade. I never met anyone who hates beer and just wants to loiter at parties as much as I do. Typically, by this point I’ve been shamed into dancing and throwing up the five Jell-O shots I didn’t want.”
“I didn’t even get as far as the shaming. Usually I’ve escaped by now—and that goes double for anything Tate turned up at. Even seeing him now is giving me the urge to just go.”