Page 138 of Bitter When He Begs

He likes it.

And fuck—so do I.

I thought this would be awkward. I thought I’d feel trapped while waiting for the other shoe to drop. But instead, even with that lingering dark cloud, even with the loss, even with my father’s voice still echoing in the back of my head—

I’m happy.

Sage

Myforeheadisweldedto the stone table outside Blackthorne’s west lecture wing, and I don’t care how ridiculous I look. I’m too far gone to move. The surface is cold against my skin, which is probably the only reason I haven’t completely slipped into unconsciousness.

The sun is stabbing through the cloud cover, and it’s way too bright for someone who just sat through four straight hours of Film Historiography and Advanced Media Critique. My skull feels like it’s packed with cotton balls that someone decided to set on fire and then drown in syrup.

Everything inside my brain is slow, heavy, and vaguely sticky. It’s one of those days where I can literally feel how many thoughts I’ve processed, and it’s too damn many.

So much for the joys of being a double major with so-called genius genes and a photographic memory. Those don’t mean shit when your brain is officially done.

“You good?” Nate’s voice cuts into the fog, smug as hell.

“No,” I groan, not lifting my head. “I’m dying.”

“You always say that after a double block.” His boot nudges my shin under the table. “What happened? They make you watch another twenty-minute silent short on German expressionist lighting?”

“Worse,” I mutter, rolling my face to the side so I can squint up at him. “We spent two hours deconstructing a single montage fromBattleship Potemkinand then broke down the metaphors in an ad for butter.”

Nate snorts. “Tragic.”

“It was the butter thing that broke me.” I lift my hand weakly and drop it back down with a thud. “You ever try to apply Lacanian psychoanalysis to dairy? Don’t. You’ll start questioning the meaning of life.”

“Or the meaning of lactose.”

I groan louder and cover my eyes. “I’m dropping out,” I declare, not lifting my head again. “I’ll become a sugar baby. Or throw my laptop into a river. Or become a hot trophy husband with no responsibilities.”

Nate grins. “You already halfway qualify for that last one.”

I flip him off with the same hand I’d been using to shield my face, which makes him laugh harder. He opens his mouth to say something else but my phone buzzes against the table under my cheek. The vibration sends a shockwave through my whole skull and I fumble to answer it before the noise repeats.

Dad.

I sit up fast, wincing as blood rushes back into my brain, and swipe to answer before I can even think about how tired I sound. “Hey.”

“Hey, kiddo,” comes my dad’s familiar, upbeat voice. “You sound like you’ve been hit by a truck.”

“I kind of have,” I say, rubbing my temples. “It’s called Tuesday.”

“Rough class?”

“Yeah. Cotton-brain level rough.” I slump back in the chair. “I’m over-educated and under-caffeinated. And if one more professor asks me what auteur theory means in modern streaming landscapes, I’m gonna start sobbing in public.”

Dad laughs, warm and sharp like it always is. “That bad, huh?”

“I’d rather be back on set watching you do three takes of the same shot from a different angle than sit through another lecture about semiotics in Pixar’sUp.”

“Did they hit you with the ‘meaning of the balloons’ analysis?”

“Don’t even start.” I groan. “If I hear one more breakdown of colors representing emotional trauma, I swear to God, I’m gonna move into a silent film cave and live off of Chaplin reruns.”

“Ah, my dramatic little prodigy.” He laughs again, and it actually helps. Just the sound of his voice makes me feel less like a half-melted brain slug. “Well, it sounds like you’re surviving college the way you survive everything—one sarcastic breakdown at a time.”