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“Why doyou look so sad, babes?” Callie asks as I flop onto my bed after practice, spreading out like a starfish who’s given up on life.
“Brynn said Inez wants to apologize to Jaxon.”
“For what?” Callie’s spinning in my desk chair, eating what looks like Top Ramen with enough seasoning to flavor an entire dining hall. The noodles are basically wearing a dust jacket at this point.
“Apparently he got mad about something she did or said. I don’t know, but whatever it was, they stopped talking because of it.”
His words at the party—when he said “it’s different”—and then his text about “knowing the feeling” when I told him Nathan wasn’t him are starting to make a twisted kind of sense. But now I’m not sure about anything.
My brain’s favorite activity: spinning through worst-case scenarios about why they’re meeting up and why he hasn’t texted me.
“Have you heard from him since he got back from Oregon?”
“No.” I hadn’t, not since the other night when he asked about my date with Nathan. I know he’s back in town—so why hasn’t he said anything?
Callie slurps her nuclear-level sodium noodles. “Really?”
I look at her with curly noodles dangling from her lips like a pasta-faced sea creature. “Not since the other night. I have no idea where he is. Maybe he went to U District or the Ave by himself at night and got kidnapped.”
“Doubtful.” Callie laughs, sets her bowl on my desk, and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand like the refined lady she is. “Jameson says he’s scared of the dark.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What if he was forced to try Boat?”
“What if... he just forgot?”
“That’s even worse.” I grab my pillow and smoosh it against my face, letting out a muffled scream that probably has my neighbors wondering if they should call campus security.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
I don’t argue—she’s right. I’m the queen of Ridiculous Town and serving a life sentence.
Callie stares at me, confused. “What the hell is Boat?”
I force a smile. “Boat? Oh, it’s wonderful stuff. Wonderful.”
She blinks like I just told her I’m planning to marry a potato. “Mhm,” she says, with that smile people give when they’re humoring someone who’s lost their last marble. “I’m sure.”
I check Jaxon’s location like the stalker I’ve apparently become. Starbucks near the stadium. I grab my phone from my nightstand, possessed by the kind of terrible idea that only makes sense to sleep-deprived college students after 8 p.m. “Come with me.”
“To do what?”
“Um, nothing?”
“Okay.”
You don’t have to try hard to convince Callie to do anything. Unless it’s dating Jameson. Then suddenly she’s got a PowerPoint of reasons she can’t, and I don’t understand any of them.
Five minutes later,we’re power-walking across campus like we’re on a covert mission. Mission Impossible: Situationship Protocol. Tom Cruise could never.
“You know this is insane, right?” Callie whispers as we approach Starbucks.
“Shhh! Get down!” I yank her behind a bush when I spot Jaxon about twenty feet away at the Starbucks cart. Becausethe universe hates me and apparently subscribes to my personal comedy channel, Inez is there too.
She’s wearing orange leggings. Who wears orange leggings?
Apparently, Inez Deluca.
I know I’m being petty, but her signature oversized black glasses make her look like a hipster owl. Her black hair’s in that purposefully messy style that probably took two hours to perfect, and she’s got her journalist notebook out because of course she does. Art major by day, campus newspaper detective by night.