by Nella Tyler
But my mind kept flashing back to the sight of the drunk girl from the club plastering herself all over Ty, saying something about “their” song, grinding against him. It had seemed an awful lot like Ty knew the woman pretty well; certainly she seemed to know him. It was the cap to a night that had gotten incredibly horrible only an hour or two before when Dillon had appeared at the party out of the blue. It had made me feel like I was just as inferior to Ty as Dillon had thought I was to him. It had made me feel insignificant.
I rinsed my hair out and got out of the shower, stopping long enough to brush my teeth and smear a purifying mask on my face while I shivered in my robe before walking back into my bedroom in the dorm. I threw myself onto my bed, staring up at my ceiling and thinking about how things had managed to go so completely and totally pear-shaped the night before. Should I have just insisted that Ty and I go back to campus? It wouldn’t have been all that fair to Ashley, who was still having a good time when we’d left the party. But it hadn’t really been fair to me that the club we’d ended up going to had a girl who thought she had the right to grope my boyfriend.
My phone chirped and I managed to turn over enough to grab my purse and take it out. The screen flashed the time and then a notification: I had a message from Ty. Part of my brain told me not to take it; I needed time to figure out how I felt about what had happened, and what I wanted from the situation. But another part of my mind insisted that I owed him the benefit of the doubt. I should see what he had to say. I took a quick breath and unlocked my phone.
I opened the message app. Hey babe! I’m sorry last night ended so badly. Feel up to doing brunch? I want to make it up to you. I caught my bottom lip between my teeth and worried it for a moment while I thought. It was almost eleven; I could get dressed, put on a little makeup, and do something with my hair in twenty minutes. But did I want to see him?
Of course I did. Who was I trying to fool? I texted back. Give me fifteen-twenty minutes, babe? An instant later he sent back an emoji with a kissing face and then a quick “Sure thing!” and I got to work.
I pulled on a bra and panty set, wriggled into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and unwrapped my hair from the towel. A quick blast of the hair dryer and a little creative brushing and my hair looked as if I had spent an hour styling it. I put on a little bit of mascara, some highlighter on my cheeks and eyelids, and some lip color, and I was done. By the time I heard the soft knock at my door, I was stepping into a pair of ballet flats. I grabbed my purse and made sure that I had everything I needed: keys, ID card, wallet, and phone.
Ty looked just as hot as he always did, effortlessly handsome in a pair of fitted jeans and a sweater. I pulled a cardigan on over my shirt and let the room door close behind me. “I know last night kind of ended up sucking,” Ty said, reaching for my hand as we started down the hallway.
“That’s kind of an understatement,” I said, looking up at his face through my eyelashes.
“I know,” Ty said, smiling wryly. “But at least it started out okay, right?” I pressed my lips together, shaking my head slightly and trying to suppress a smile.
“Yeah, right up until my ex-boyfriend showed up and ruined everything it was pretty great,” I admitted. If Dillon hadn’t shown up, we wouldn’t have ended up going to the club. If we hadn’t gone to the club, I wouldn’t have had to see the stupid drunk girl rubbing herself all over Ty.
“I want to make it up to you as best as I can,” Ty told me.
“We’ll see how this goes,” I said, smiling in spite of myself. We went downstairs and walked out to his car, and I noticed as we got in that Ty looked like he’d probably had a shower too. I wondered what had happened with the girl who’d been grinding on him—had he just shoved her away? He couldn’t have reacted all that quickly. Ashley and I had made our way out of the club in a matter of minutes, but we had had to wait about ten minutes longer for our ride to get there. If he had extricated himself from the girl quickly, he could have caught us—and yet he hadn’t.
Questions bubbled and simmered in my brain as Ty drove us off campus and toward a diner we both liked: Green Street Eats was only about ten minutes away from the dorms and had one of the best—and cheapest—brunch menus in town. It was a little early, which meant that we were able to find a parking spot, and the tables weren’t jam-packed when we got there. I wanted to know who the hell the girl had been, what she had meant to Ty, why she had thought it was okay to grope and grind on him like that. I wanted to know why Ty hadn’t just pushed her off of him and walked away, why he hadn’t come after Ashley and me to keep us from getting home on our own. I wanted to know how to feel about everything that had happened the night before.
I ordered my favorite: the chocolate breakfast bread pudding with eggs and bacon on the side, and a big coffee with toffee syrup. Ty ordered an omelet, and we settled into our seats at one of the booths, looking across the table at each other. “Who was that girl from last night?” I licked my lips, feeling the stinging tingle starting in my eyes. Ty shrugged.
“She’s an ex-girlfriend, that’s all,” Ty told me. “She got sloppy drunk last night and when she saw me she thought it would be a good idea to throw herself at me.” There was some kind of edge in his voice—something I couldn’t quite read. Ty shrugged again. “By the time I got rid of her, you and Ash were long gone.”
“We grabbed a Lyft,” I told him. I took a quick, deep breath, waiting to see if Ty would explain anything more about the girl who had assaulted him on the dance floor. He didn’t. “It was actually kind of fun—the guy had free candy in the back seat of his car, and a cat hanging out in the front seat that we could pet.”
“So hey—it looks like the very end of your night wasn’t terrible, at least,” Ty said weakly. “You look amazing this morning, by the way. A thousand times better than me.” I rolled my eyes.
“Right, sure,” I said, feeling my cheeks warm up. “You somehow always manage to look hot, even if you’re hung over or whatever. This is just the result of a long shower and some quick preparation.”
“Whatever it is, you look great,” Ty told me. I tried to push my thoughts and worries about his ex-girlfriend out of my mind, especially when our food started to arrive, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was a lot more that I wanted to know, and that Ty should have volunteered more information about the woman since it was obvious I was upset. The girl who’d plastered herself onto my boyfriend seemed like something more complicated than just some ex-girlfriend. I didn’t bring it up again, but I was worried.
Chapter Ten
I had expected Nicole to grill me a lot harder about the run-in with Kelsey the night before; I had expected her to ask me for more details about the relationship with my ex, and why it had ended, and why Kelsey might think it would be a good idea to come onto me in the middle of a club while I was on a date. Instead, she had simply accepted my explanation that Kelsey was an ex—I was in the clear.
I ate my brunch as hungrily as ever, and we talked about other things. I wanted more than anything to invite Nicole to come back to my dorm with me and spend the rest of the day making love and lounging around; but I had to meet with a group from one of my classes to get started on a final project for the course.
“Are you doing anything tonight? Maybe after I meet with this group I can put something together to make up for last night’s debacle,” I suggested to Nicole, as we were both finishing up our meals.
“I think I’m probably just going to study, maybe try and get ahead on some of my classwork,” Nicole told me, shrugging slightly. We were getting close to finals, and I knew that Nicole was stressed about her classes, even with the small victories she’d been having in recent weeks.
“Well, if you want to study together, we can do that,” I suggested.
“I’ll stay in touch, keep you updated,” Nicole told me. I leaned across the table and kissed her lightly on the lips.
“If nothing else, you can come to me for a quick twen
ty-minute study break,” I suggested, grinning at her as I sat back down. The check came and I grabbed it before Nicole could get a chance to; I put my debit card down and the waitress took it to process.
I had been dreading the conversation with Nicole ever since I’d gone to bed the night before; finding that it had gone so much better than I expected made the rest of the day open up before me like the sun coming out from behind the clouds on an overcast day. I had seriously underestimated the woman I was coming to feel more and more strongly about; I should get her flowers the first chance I got.
The waitress brought the receipt and I gave her a decent tip, and then Nicole and I left the diner, hand in hand once more. She was more quiet than usual, but I thought that considering she was probably a little vaguely hung over, and that she probably had plenty to think about and process with the appearance of her own ex-boyfriend, it was only natural for her to be a little quieter than usual. We drove back to the dorms together, talking a little bit more about our plans for the weekend, and I tried to think of ways that I could spend a little bit more time with Nicole. I would have to really dive into studying for the CPA exam starting at the beginning of the spring semester—so I should do as much as I could with the girl I loved while I had the chance.
“Let’s make plans to grab dinner tonight,” I told Nicole as I walked her to the entrance of her dorm.
“I think I might just grab something from the dining hall; or maybe if one of the girls needs me to do her hair, I’ll get her to buy me dinner in exchange,” Nicole said, smiling.
“Well if you do go down to the dining hall, shoot me a text, okay? I want to spend as much time as possible with you before finals get here.”
“Okay,” Nicole said. I kissed her on the lips and hugged her tight, and then I left her at the entrance to her dorm. I had maybe fifteen minutes to get my things together and meet up with my group at the library; one of the other kids in my class had reserved a private study room for us to work in, and I didn’t want to hold anyone up.
Alex had had better luck the night before than I had, to judge by the necktie hanging on his doorknob when I went into the dorm room. I heard muffled sounds of music playing, confirming my belief that Alex had found someone to hook up with, if nothing else.
Good for him! I unlocked my bedroom door and started getting together the stuff I would need for the project: my textbook, my laptop, a notebook, some pens, and a few other things. I thought again how lucky I was that Nicole had just accepted that Kelsey was my ex, and hadn’t probed for more details. She’s way too good for you, dude. You are out of your league with a girl like her—you’d better appreciate the hell out of her or you’re going to lose her. I made a mental note to look into getting her flowers and chocolates—maybe some coffee from Starbucks to help her get through her study session. I was more than willing to give Nicole all the affection she could stand.
I hurried down to the ground floor of the building and then made my way across campus to the library, buzzing with the success of my first attempt to make things right between Nicole and me. I was maybe three minutes early for the group meeting, and I looked around the library while I waited; a few people were using the computers to access different database articles for free, a few others were searching the stacks for a particular book, but on a weekend the library was almost totally deserted.
A little closer to finals week, it would be packed at all hours of the day and night, and there were already sign-up sheets up on the walls at the entrance for people who wanted “late night study” passes, which would give them access to the library until three in the morning, long after the staff had gone for the night.
I put my name down and one by one, the other three members of my group showed up. Kim, Jamie, and Manu were people I’d worked with before in other classes; when the group project had come up in Advanced Financial Concepts, I’d grabbed them as my partners as quickly as I could—I didn’t want to be stuck with a group that would just argue about the assignment half the time and spend the other half of the time doing the wrong shit, leaving me to put something together out of nothing at the last minute.
“Manu, you got the study room, right? Let’s go ahead and check in.”
We settled into the little office that Manu had reserved, and started to look over the assignment sheet, taking a minute to remind ourselves of the instructions.
“Okay, so the way I see it,” Kim said, once we all had taken our time to get clear, “there are four basic parts to this, which is good—four parts, for teammates. So who wants to do which part?”
We started talking over the different sections of the project—which of us was better suited to which part, which of us had the most time to devote to the more labor-intensive parts, and how we were going to bring it all together at the end into the finished project.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I ignored it for a moment, focusing on the project. If it was Nicole, I was sure she’d understand; if it was anyone else, I didn’t really need to respond right away. Whoever didn’t know I was in a meeting with a group from class would just have to deal with whatever they wanted from me for a while longer.
As we wrapped up the first phase of planning the project, my phone buzzed two more times in my pocket and I started to feel a little concerned. Kim called a break and she and Jamie went outside to smoke a cigarette while Manu started looking through the textbook for his portion of the project work.
I took my phone out of my pocket and unlocked my screen. I had been expecting a text from Nicole, or maybe Alex, on the outside maybe my parents. Instead I saw that Kelsey had texted me three times. I took a quick, deep breath, already dreading whatever it was she had to say to me after the debacle of the night before. I opened the messages and started to read.
Thank you so, so much for making sure I got home safe last night, Ty! That much at least was normal and was actually almost a little nice to get from her. I was a little surprised you didn’t want to come up after we connected at Ibiza—but if you want to take things slow, that’s fine with me. I rolled my eyes, shaking my head at Kelsey’s assumption.
She actually thought that me taking her to her apartment was some kind of sign that I wanted to get back together with her; either she was still drunk from the night before or she was delusional. Shoot me a text when you want to meet up! Maybe we could get dinner tonight?
I stared at my phone for a long moment, trying to wrap my head around the fact that my ex-girlfriend really, truly thought that she and I were going to be getting back together based solely on me making sure she got home from the club okay when she was disgustingly drunk.
I shook my head and put my phone back in my pocket; I wasn’t ready to deal with her yet. I wasn’t ready for all of the grief that would come from explaining to her yet again that we were not going to get back together, that it was over and was going to continue to be over for the rest of our lives.
I made a mental note that I should probably tackle that particular task before I saw Nicole again, so that I could get the messages off of my phone. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Nicole trusted me, but after seeing Kelsey plaster herself on me the night before, I didn’t think Nicole would be all that charitable about an ex-girlfriend who was convinced we were getting back together.
I also didn’t think that she was going to take kindly to the idea of me driving Kelsey home, even if it was just in the interests of making sure that she didn’t drive her car into a canal or get picked up by some dude interested in raping a drunk girl. I didn’t want to have anything to do with Kelsey anymore, but I couldn’t bring myself to let her put herself in danger right in front of me.
I felt a little guilty, knowing I hadn’t been completely straightforward or honest about Kelsey—I hadn’t admitted to driving her home. But I told myself that Nicole had already accepted that Kelsey was just an ex, and making things more complicated at this point was just stupid. I’d let sleeping dogs lie, and I’d get on with my life and the semeste
r.
I would just have to find a way to get rid of Kelsey for good without her making a big, enormous scene and involving all of our old mutual friends. Good luck with that, I told my optimistic brain. Kim and Jamie came back in from outside and I pushed any thoughts at all of my ex-girlfriend out of my brain to focus on our end-of-semester project. Everything else in my life was going great—I shouldn’t worry about my ex.
PART THREE
Chapter One
I was walking back to the dorms from class when my phone buzzed in my pocket. At first I thought—I hoped—it was Ty, calling to ask if I wanted to hang out for a little while. He had been busier than ever, and so had I; Finals Week was only days away, and both of us had been spending as much time as possible studying. Instead of Ty or even Ashley though, it was my mom.
I hesitated, seeing her name flashing on the screen; normally I loved talking to Mom or Dad, but I had just gone through an end-of-semester review that had included a sheet listing my cumulative grade and what score I would need on my final to pass the class. The results weren’t pretty. But then I told myself I was being stupid. Mom just wanted to check in on me; I should answer. I tapped accept and brought the phone up to my ear.
“Hey sweetie!” I forced myself to smile in spite of how stressed I felt.
“Hi, Mom. How are you and Dad doing?”
“We’re looking forward to seeing you during winter break—we’ve missed you so much!” I sat down on the first empty bench I came to and set my backpack down.
“I’ll be so happy to come home,” I told Mom. “I think Finals Week might actually kill me.”
“It’s always tough, but I know you can pull through. How are you doing in your classes?” I cringed, torn between telling the truth—and likely worrying my mom half to death—and lying to my own mother.
“I’m keeping my head above water,” I said. “It’s not easy.”