“What’s this?” She swipes something up off her desk and holds it out to me. It’s Leo’s black candle and the ziplock bags of herbs.
“Oh, uh. Sorry,” I mumble, taking them and hastily tossing them in my desk drawer. “Just some stuff from last night. You were saying?”
Liv busies herself with her jewelry, removing earrings, necklaces, and bracelets, and placing them in the ceramic dish in her desk drawer. “Zander’s in a bad way.”
“Is he?” I have no idea what to say.
“He misses you, Betts.” There’s a plea in her voice that, while it doesn’t surprise me, still rubs me the wrong way. “Couldn’t you atleast, you know, talk to him? He said you haven’t taken any of his calls or texted him or anything.”
Zander started leaving me messages late this week. I’ve read and listened to them all, but I can’t bring myself to respond. I tell Liv, “I’m not ready to talk to him yet.” Hopefully I will be soon. We have too many friends in common to ghost one another for the rest of our time at Brownhill.
Liv wraps herself in her lime-green fleece bathrobe and shimmies out of her panties. She avoids looking at me as she collects her toiletries and towel. “It was so sad. He hardly talked to anyone last night. He just kinda sat there looking all lost and whatnot.”
I mutter, “I’m sorry,” as I unhook my robe from my wardrobe door. “It wasn’t my goal to hurt him.”
“I know,” she sighs. “I’m not trying to guilt-trip you. I just thought you should know—you know, in case you thought he didn’t care.”
Sure, I know that, in his own way, Zander cares. And I know he might even think he loves me. But the way he has of showing it, with that over-inflated sense of ownership, that’s exactly what I need to get away from. I can’t help but compare him to Leo, who’s protective but not possessive. Zander is vice versa, and there’s something really warped about that, like he doesn’t care who I am or how I feel, so long as no one doubts I’m his.
Liv waits for me to get ready before we head down the hall to the bathroom. “Everyone was talking about the masquerade ball,” she tells me.
“That’s in a couple of weeks, isn’t it?”
She backs into the swinging bathroom door and holds it for open me. “And you have that gorgeous dress?—”
I know what she’s getting at, but I play dumb. “Do you wanna borrow it?”
“No, I have my black one, but thanks.”
We find shower stalls side by side, the metal doors banging simultaneously as we pull them closed.
Liv says, “You should still go.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Not with Zander, just with all of us.”
And with the hope that I’ll end up with Zander by the end of the night.
“But you’re going with Braden,” I argue as I crank on the shower. The water pressure is so strong that the streams hit the concrete floor with reverberating slaps.
“Yeah,” Liv shouts over the noise. “But it’s not like I’m gonna be with him every second of the night.”
“I’ll think about it,” I lie. I don’t see myself surviving an entire evening around Zander, even if he’s not my date.
Back in our room, scrubbed clean and considerably more awake, I check my phone. While I was in the shower, Leo texted.
Leo: I’m sorry I stole your bed.
Me: Rude.
Leo: You could have joined me.
I consider it—in vivid detail—and blush as I type my reply.
Me: I wanted to, but I was worried Liv would come home.
Leo: I thought so. That’s why I left when I woke up.
