My shirt is off and I’m pulling my pants down when I see a set of male feet step out of the shower and onto the cushy red bathmat. Shrieking, I spin around, but not before realizing that it’s blond-haired, Hollister-esque Daniel. He gets a flash of my bare ass for just a second before I jerk my pants back up. My tank top is a few feet away from me on the floor, so I grab my towel off the rack in front of me.
I face him, my skin on fire as I take in how his mouth his hanging wide open. “What the hell are you doing in my bathroom?” I grind out, keeping the towel wrapped tightly around my chest. When he doesn’t immediately answer, I start to reach for my phone but then his eyes slip over my shoulder.
“Hannah said I could use the shower. Damn, Evie, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
As soon as he says Hannah’s name my nostrils flare. “Really?” Giving him a cold stare, I jerk my thumb to the bathroom exit, walking in a slow circle as he moves toward it. “Get out of here.”
“Ahh, hell, I—”
“Get the fuck out!”
Since none of the suite bathrooms in Campbell dorm have doors that lock, I shower quickly, peeking around the corner of the stall every time I hear the slightest noise. As I creep back to my room fifteen minutes later, I hear the sound of a comedy movie playing loudly from inside Hannah and Lara’s room, and I hope Daniel’s not in there. In spite of the Elliot fiasco, I know my roommate still carries a torch for him. I also know that if Hannah let Daniel spend the night, it has a lot to do with Corinne. I’m around my room way too much not to notice that neither of my suitemates have ever had a guy spend the night until now.
Fucking retaliation.
I tiptoe into my room and close the door as quietly as possible, but when I turn around, I jump when I see that Corinne’s sitting up in her bed sleepily looking at her laptop screen.
She giggles at my reaction and pushes her curls away from her face. “Morning.”
“Good morning.” Going through my drawers, I grab a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. “Did you have a good time last night?”
“Ehh, it was okay. I went to some frat party—and I can’t for the life of me remember their name—with Ella.” She gives me a curious look as I step into my jeans. “Why were you yelling a few minutes ago?”
I stare down at my pants, focusing way too much attention on buttoning them. “There was a douchebag in our bathroom.”
As I get finish dressing, I can feel Corinne’s bright green gaze regarding me inquisitively. When I get a bottle of water out the mini fridge, she leans over the side of her bed and grabs my wrist. Swallowing hard, I pull away.
“Evie? There’s something you’re not telling me.” I don’t meet her gaze, so a moment later, she tentatively asks, “It was Daniel, wasn’t it? The douchebag in the bathroom. He spent the night with Hannah.”
My lips curve downward into a frown. “I’m sorry, Corinne.”
She simply lifts her shoulders, but the fact she feels wounded is clear as day on her soft features. “It’s not like we were ever dating. Just friends, and if I look at it that way, I guess I kind of deserve it after what I did with Elliot.” I open my mouth to tell her exactly what I think about her believing she deserves to be hurt, but she cuts me off, adding, “Plus they’ve been spending a lot of time together lately, so it was bound to happen.”
“You deserve better.”
“Right.” Rolling out of her bed, she stretches her short arms over her head and yawns. “Alright, I better get dressed. I’m supposed to be meeting a few people from Communication Theory in the library to work on a group project”—she glances over at the alarm clock sitting on the edge of her desk closest to her bed—“fifteen minutes ago.”
Five minutes later, I watch in concern as she rushes out our door with her energy drink in hand. Shaking my head in anger, I finish getting dressed to go to brunch with Mac and Nathan. On the way out, a sound in the storage closet right outside the bathroom door stops me. I turn to see Hannah on her hands and knees looking through the bottles of cleaner and rolls of paper towels.
“We’re out of TP,” she tells me. When I keep walking past her, she clears her throat. “You don’t have anything to say?”
I look over my shoulder just in time to watch a satisfied grin stretch slowly across her face. I give her a cool smile, thinking how the Evie from last year would’ve probably knocked her ass in the closet and propped a door against it. “No, nothing to say today.”
***
Because Nathan backs out of eating with us to meet a deadline for an online linear algebra test, Mac suggests we go off campus and to one of the local malls. I’m thrilled when she offers to drive, and after we pick her Jetta up from the junior parking lot, she takes me to a little coffee shop downtown. It’s overcast out but warm—probably one of the last really warm days of the season—so we sit outside talking about music.
“Cameron handpicked songs for me in every language I failed in Diction,” Mac informs me, referring to her mid-term recital. At the skeptical look I give her, she nods slowly. She picks off a chunk of her blueberry muffin and pops it into her mouth. “You think I’m bullshitting you, but I’m not—“Das Veilchen” and a Russian piece I still can’t pronounce, and I’ve been trying to sing it since the start of the year. I swear everyone’s ears will be weeping blood. What does she have you doing?”
“I seriously doubt anyone’s ears will cry blood, but she gave me “Florian’s Song” and “Vissi d’arte”.”
“Bitch,” she hisses and then shakes her head and laughs. “Not you, but Cameron. Ugh ... that woman hates me. I think she wakes up in the morning and her hatred of me is the only thing that powers her through the day.” Polishing off the rest of her muffin, she raises her brows at me. “All right, quit nursing that scone. I need to go spend my entire paycheck to make myself feel better about failing mid-terms.”
Four hours later, after we’ve spent most of the afternoon at Short Pump Mall and I’ve scored a few new hats for my collection and a couple things to wear during Oktoberfest, Mac drops me off in front of my dorm.
“I’ve got to go pick up Eli from baseball conditioning.” She scrunches the tip of her nose like she can already smell his sweaty body in her front seat. “Text me later and maybe we can get together this week to rehearse. Lord knows I need every ounce of practice I can get.”
Promising her that I will, I return to my room. Corinne’s still out and there’s nothing but silence coming from Hannah and Lara’s room, so I assume and hope they’re gone too. Alone with nothing but my thoughts, I make an effort to take a nap to sleep away the dull headache forming between my eyes. When I wake up an hour later, covered in sweat after dreaming about Rhys Delane, I take the fact that my sheet music is the first thing my eyes land on as a sign.
Looking at the short text thread he and I exchanged nearly two weeks ago, I consider sending him a text. I could ask him to meet me or tell him that I’d like to talk tomorrow after practice, but the thought of him misinterpreting anything I might write makes me cringe. Finally, I suck it up and hit send. The response doesn’t come through immediately, like before, but finally I let out a breath of relief when my phone beeps.
6:18PM: At Ippy’s.
I take those two words as an invitation and thirty minutes later, my heart is in my throat when I walk into the bar. I shove my hands into my back pockets to stop them from shaking. Although there are not nearly as many people as the last time I came here, the place is still busy for a Sunday night. I comb my gaze around in search of him when I see that the bartender on duty is a petite girl with a shock of orange and red hair— à la Hayley Williams.
Did he leave already? I start to text him but then another thought enters my mind, and I jab my tongue into my cheek. Was he just never here and sent me that message in an effort to tell me to screw off?