Page 21

21

SCARLETT

F uck, I can’t wait to get home.

These shoes looked so cute when I tried them on while out shopping with Harper, but my feet are screaming after standing in them for two hours.

Story of my life, right?

Every year at the beginning of the semester, there’s a traditional mixer event for pre-law students and faculty. Fittingly, it’s a dress-up affair, so I’m rocking a frilly blouse with a pencil skirt and the black heels that I picked up at a local boutique.

I loved how I looked when I glanced at the mirror in my room before I left, but now I’m just dreaming of kicking off these shoes and jumping into something loose and comfy.

It's just my luck that the mixer is being held in the very furthest building on campus from where I’m living.

I groan in discomfort as I clumsily clamber down the front steps of the building in these toe-pinching shoes.

“Hey!” A sudden booming voice cuts across the still air of the early night, giving me a start.

I turn to see Lane, getting up from a bench on the other side of the building and striding toward me.

“Lane?” I ask, the startle morphing into surprise. “What are you doing here?”

His mouth slides into a grin, and he hoists up a tote bag in his left hand. “Thought you might want a change of shoes for walking home.”

He reaches into the bag and pulls out my regular pair of sneakers. Suddenly, I don’t feel the pinching in my feet anymore—I feel it in my heart. My mouth pops open, and all I can do for a minute is blink silently with my eyes fastened to the shoes in Lane’s hand.

He steps forward, holding them out to me. “I know sometimes your flair for fancy footwear bites you in the ass,” he says with a nostalgic wink.

My stomach feels like it’s turned upside down. A warm feeling seems to make every molecule in my body hum and buzz.

“Flair for fancy footwear, huh?” I say, taking the shoes from him, using a joke to try and keep myself from feeling so sappy that the corners of my eyes water. “Try saying that three times fast.”

Which Lane promptly does; five words into the attempt, his tongue is contorting and spewing out sounds of blabbering nonsense, making both of us laugh like idiots.

But even as I laugh, a tender, nostalgic feeling sweeps through me while I tug off my tight heels and slide my sore feet into my roomy, comfy daily sneakers.

An intense feeling shoots up my spine. For a beat of time, I’m overwhelmed by a powerful sense of déjà vu, and it’s like I can hear the roar of the downpouring rain outside the bar that day in Chicago when Lane also brought me a pair of shoes to change into.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been waiting out here all evening,” I say to him.

He shrugs, taking my heels from me and carrying them by hooking his index and middle fingers against their backs. “Didn’t really have anything else to do.”

There’s no way that’s true. The captain of one of the best teams in college hockey, who just made his victorious return to the ice, probably the single most popular guy on campus, had nothing to do with his evening other than sit on a bench in the cold and wait to give me a pair of shoes?

I can’t figure Lane out. This isn’t something you do just to be a good roommate. It isn’t something you do just to be a good friend. This is bonafide down bad behavior.

But then I remember how things ended for us in Chicago. Blowing off our last meeting to hang out with another girl at a house party? Not exactly the actions of a lovesick romantic …

Is he just playing some game right now? Is that what he was doing back then? But it’s so hard to square that with how genuinely caring and thoughtful he seems.

I’ve seen people fake thoughtfulness before—trust me, I’ve seen it a lot—and Lane’s never shown any of the warning signs. Maybe he’s just that good at it? An unpleasant feeling curdles in my stomach at the thought, though I still can’t bring myself to believe it.

Is it possible I … misinterpreted what happened at the end of our stay in Chicago?

Hmph. Fat chance. I know what I saw with my own two eyes. Another girl in his lap, hours after he blew off our date. It’s really, really hard to misinterpret that.

But I spent that whole day without my phone, without contacting him. Is there a sliver of possibility that I missed a text, or a call, or something that would have somehow explained …

No. It’s not possible. The last thing I need is to indulge in false hope.

“When’d you get that one?”

Lane’s question pulls me out of my thoughts and back into reality.

“Huh?” I question.

He nods toward my calf as we cross the street off campus. “The butterfly tattoo on your leg. It’s new. Or newer.”

There’s a skip in my heartbeat. “Oh. I got that one about eight months ago.”

Lane makes a sort of humming noise in his throat that I can’t quite read. “The pair of dice above the inside of your elbow is new, too.”

“You can tell?”

He quirks an eyebrow, the edge of his mouth twitching. “Of course I can tell . They’re inked right on your body.”

I roll my eyes. “No, I mean … you can tell they’re new ? You actually remember which tattoos I had … back then?”

An unsteady feeling bubbles in my chest. I’ve danced around our history so much that I should change my major to performing arts. Actually talking about it, remembering it when I’m right next to Lane on a still, quiet night feels like doing cartwheels at the edge of a cliff.

“I remember everything about back then.”

My stomach lurches like I’m strapped into a roller coaster cresting over a peak.

His declaration is simple, but every word feels charged. Pure honesty drips from his tone. But then … why?

“Really?” My words feel unsteady in my mouth. “It was a long time ago.”

“Not for me.”

My heart leaps up to lodge in my throat. My brow draws down. What’s going on here? How can Lane act like what we had two summers ago matters to him still when he was the one who stood me up to go feel on other girls at a party?

Is Lane just one of those hot-and-cold guys who gets off on giving girls emotional whiplash? Again, I can’t convince myself to believe it. It’s totally at odds with everything I know about Lane, from the month and a half we spent that summer to the brief time I’ve known him again here at Brumehill.

Anger coils inside me. How dare he do what he did and then act like any of it mattered to him? What excuse could he possibly have?

Yeah, maybe he texted me on that day when I lost my phone and didn’t get a response, but so what? He knew where and when we had agreed to meet, and he didn’t show up. He didn’t stop by Demi’s place. He didn’t even show up the next day before I had to leave for the airport to say goodbye one last time. He knew when I was leaving.

And now, eighteen months later, he wants to act like I’ve been stuck in his mind ever since?

Does he just want to get me in bed again? Is that his angle? Outrage boils through my body at the thought. I don’t really buy that as an explanation, but what other explanation do I have?

All I know is, by the time we get back to the house, I need space and I need it bad.

“Do you …” Lane starts to ask just as we’re walking up to the porch, right where I fell into his arms not too long ago.

But I don’t want to know the question that’s on the tip of his tongue. He’s thrown me through enough of a loop tonight. My heart is going crazy, my brain is filling with so many questions it feels swollen against the inside of my skull, and I’m too damn close to yelling at him about how much he hurt me two summers ago, finally blowing up the facade of coolness I’ve been able to maintain and maybe ruining my housing situation.

So, I grab my heels from his hand and hurry up to the door.

“Thanks for the sneakers,” I say, not even sparing him a backward glance. “Good night.”

Then I run up to my room and shut myself in. But I can’t take my eyes off the wall that I know he’s on the other side of when I hear his door close, too.