“You know a lot about killers, huh?”
I give him a look. “You’d be surprised.”
He laughs and grimaces. “Jesus, Nora.”
I don’t want to, but I smile. By the time the show ends, I’ve eaten three and a half pieces of pizza and I feel like a bloated, satisfied whale.
“I can’t believe it was the kindergarten teacher,” Crosbie says, turning off the TV and looking at me. “What a psychopath.” She’d developed a dangerous infatuation with the oblivious husband and viewed the wife as unnecessary competition.
“Yeah.” We fall silent, staring at the dark television screen. I pick at a loose thread on the hem of my pants and Crosbie drums his fingers on his knees.
“Nora,” he says eventually.
I don’t look at him. “What?”
“I’m really sorry about the library.”
Even though I half-expected him to bring it up, I still feel an uncomfortable tightening in my chest, all the stinging memories of that night surging to the surface. “Forget about it,” I say, though the instructions are more for me than him.
“That was the guy from the coffee shop, right?”
“So?” I make a move to stand, which seems to prompt him to ask, “Is he your boyfriend?”
I try not to look to disdainful. “Nate? No. He’s in love with Marcela, like every guy who sees her.” I think of Kellan asking about her that night at the coffee shop. How every head turns when she walks by. How even though I live here and we had plans, Kellan still managed to forget about me. And how I suddenly care less about his absence than Crosbie’s unexpected company. How this keeps happening.
“Oh. I thought maybe you were together.”
“Not in the way you and your…friend were together.”
“We’re not together.”
“Whatever.” This time I do stand up, snagging my glass and plate from the table and bringing them to the kitchen. After a second, Crosbie follows with his plate, standing next to me as I rinse mine and stick it in the tiny dishwasher. Kellan didn’t lie about this—he really does do dishes and take out the trash. He’s a decent roommate, just a terrible date.
“I feel like a jerk about it,” Crosbie blurts out. “I saw the look on your face and I just—”
The hurt I’m feeling about Kellan’s rejection twines with the burn of the reminder of Crosbie’s makeout session and when he doesn’t finish the sentence I snap, “You just what?” It’s possible I’m jealous and a little sexually frustrated.
He blinks, startled. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” he says awkwardly. “I’d had a bad day and she was a friend of a friend and…I don’t know. I thought I’d forget things for a bit. But I made them worse.”
“It didn’t seem like you felt ‘worse’ when I saw you.”
“Not then,” he says, meeting my eyes. “But after.”
I realize I’m clenching my hand around the dishwasher door and I force my fingers to uncurl. “You don’t owe me any explanations.”
Neither one of us moves, and the kitchen is small enough that it feels crowded with two people. “I think I do,” he says, scuffing his foot on the floor. For a long moment, we both watch our feet, his gray wool socks, my nails painted red in anticipation of tonight’s date. As much as I want to close the short distance between us and feel something—anything—besides this rejection and frustration and sadness, I don’t move a muscle. Because maybe my “forget Crosbie Lucas” plan has failed, but my “don’t fuck up, Nora” plan hasn’t, and messing around with someone who only knows how to mess around isn’t on the agenda.
He’s about to say something else when we hear the front door open, a car horn honk, and Kellan’s slightly drunk laugh from the entryway. Crosbie shoots me one last, meaningful look before retreating to the living room and grabbing his bag from the floor, putting plenty of space between us before Kellan comes up.
“Hey, guys,” he says with a grin. The smile falters a little as he looks between us. “What are you two doing here? Together? Alone?”
“Together alone’s not a thing,” Crosbie says, hefting the satchel over his shoulder and snagging his jacket from the back of a chair. “And I came over to get Target Ops: Fury.”
That is most definitely not the game he mentioned when he first arrived, and if I had any doubts about my memory, Fire of Vengeance is still sitting on the coffee table. I’m contemplating this when Kellan says, “You should have come to the game, Cros. It was epic. Huge brawl on center ice.”
At the mention of “ice” I remember seeing posters around campus touting a pre-season game between Burnham’s top-ranked hockey team and some other college. And that’s when it finally dawns on me: Crosbie didn’t come here looking for Kellan.
As though he knows I’m piecing this together, I see Crosbie’s ears turn red and he jogs down the stairs. I hear the rustle of clothing as he puts on his shoes and shrugs into his jacket, then the creak of the door as it opens.