by Nella Tyler
Besides, I had no real reason to do anything other than what I’d told the bouncer I was going to do—what did it hurt to take a picture and send it to him?
I took a deep breath before I got into my car, thinking about Nicole and Ashley. I hoped they were getting home safely. The person that bouncer really needs a picture from is whoever they got into a car with—whether it was an Uber or a Lyft driver, I thought bleakly as I started up the car. I glanced over at Kelsey.
She was sagged over in the seat, her head pressed against the wall of the car. She was barely conscious, humming a song to herself. Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible, I told myself. I pulled out of my parking spot and got the car out of the garage, shaking my head and putting the music on the stereo. I couldn’t even really stand to look at Kelsey as I drove away from the club, even if I knew I should probably check in on her every so often to make sure she hadn’t given herself alcohol poisoning.
I drove from the downtown area, thinking about Nicole and wondering if she was going to get home safely. I would text her as soon as I took care of the situation with Kelsey, and make sure at least that she wasn’t being kidnapped, or raped, or anything like that. I would deal with the situation that Kelsey had caused in the morning, but I had a responsibility.
It wasn’t even that I particularly liked Kelsey; after the way things had ended in our relationship long before, I felt like I had done everything that I possibly could to help her, and that I was more than happy to never, ever see her again. I wasn’t sure why I had even considered going to Ibiza when I knew she went to that club fairly regularly. Maybe it was a sign that I had just about forgotten her completely. Maybe it was some kind of bizarre sign that I had doubts about my relationship with Nicole. I had no idea—but it was the worst luck in the world that put me in that club with my drunken ex while I was trying to salvage the night from a moment where my current girlfriend was trying to get over a sighting of her own drunken ex. At least we have that in common, I thought ruefully. Neither of us wants to have anything at all to do with our exes ever again.
I drove to Kelsey’s house by memory; at some point, the alcohol in her system took over and she slumped against the passenger side door, beginning to snore. I ignored it. As long as she wasn’t puking or dead, I was pretty content to have her be quiet. I didn’t want to hear anymore slurred, drunken words, I didn’t want to hear her trying to justify ruining my date, or tell me how it was a sign we should get back together or at least hook up. I just wanted to get her home and then get my own self home, take a shower, and crawl into bed. I wanted to think about just how I was going to explain to Nicole what the situation had been. I had seen the look on her face: she was hurt and confused. Not an expression I wanted to be the cause of.
It felt weird, driving the streets and roads that I had memorized at one point, back when Kelsey and I had been dating. It was sickening but comforting at the same time. I spotted the dinged mailbox that marked the house at the corner of the intersection where I needed to make a turn; it was as if nothing had changed at all since Kelsey and I had separated.
Nothing has changed for her, obviously. You’re a different person—you’re not the same person you were when you were dating her. I pointed that out to myself again and again and hoped that I would eventually believe it—really and truly believe it.
I finally pulled up to her building and reached over to give Kelsey a shake. “Kel. Kelsey.” She groaned and slowly came around, blinking and looking at me blearily in the glow of the overhead light.
“Oh! Ty!” she grinned. “I talked you into coming home with me, didn’t I?” I shook my head.
“I’m just dropping you off. Get out of the car and go up to your apartment.”
“I know you want me,” Kelsey said, giving me what I am sure she thought was a sultry grin.
“Not for a while,” I told her, shaking my head. “Get out of my car and go inside.” She scrubbed at her face and I worried that she was going to hold out for a half hour, arguing with me. Instead she managed to get the door open and stumble out, patting at her purse and rummaging through it to find her keys. I took my phone out of my pocket and took a picture of her walking away from my car, to send the bouncer at the club. I took another picture when she mounted the stairs outside of her building, and then a final picture of her at her own front door.
I sent all three to the bouncer and when I saw that Kelsey had managed to get her door open, I started the car up again and pulled out of the parking spot. Whatever else happened to her that night was on her, I thought grimly.
Chapter Nine
After I had managed to get home with Ashley—splitting a Lyft ride with her for about fifteen dollars each—I got my makeup off, took my hair out of the intricate style I’d managed to braid and twist it into before Ty had arrived, and crawled into bed. I hadn’t even bothered with washing my face more thoroughly, or brushing my teeth, or any of my usual rituals.
I was too upset from the double-whammy of seeing Dillon and watching some drunk girl who apparently knew Ty grind all over him. I’d told myself that I would somehow make sense of the whole situation in the morning, after a reasonable few hours of sleep.
When I woke up late in the morning I felt like I had a hangover. At first it confused me—I hadn’t even had that much to drink the night before, and I hadn’t been up later than I generally was during the week, studying. I’d had plenty of water. But my head throbbed and my eyes felt dry and scratchy, and I was exhausted. My teeth felt as though they’d been coated in fur, my feet ached, and my lower back might—according to the stabbing pain that rose up every time I moved—as well have been stabbed the night before.
First things first, I thought as I forced myself to climb out of the bed. I would take a long, hot shower and get truly clean, and I would drink some more water, and brush my teeth, and see how that made me feel. When I stepped out of my side of the dorm room, armed with my shower caddy, robe, and towel, I listened to hear if Ashley was awake yet; there were no signs of life coming from her end of the room, so I figured I was safe from any uncomfortable questions for at least a little while.
I went into the shower room and turned the water on as hot as I could stand, holding my hand under the flow until it came up to temperature. I stripped out of the clothes I had been too exhausted the night before to take off, and got into the shower cubicle, pulling the curtain shut behind me. I stood under the water for what felt like maybe an hour even before I started to scrub myself from head to toe. I shampooed my hair twice and then covered every inch of it with a deep conditioning mask. I bundled it up into a shower cap to keep it from rinsing off while I applied my favorite scrub on my skin, starting at my neck and working my way downward bit by bit until every part of my body tingled. I rinsed off the exfoliating scrub and then slathered a moisturizing shower cream all over to follow it. I didn’t have to shave; I’d shaved the night before, while I was getting ready for the party.
I sat down on the shower bench that Ashley and I had split the cost on and let the water flow over my body while I gave the conditioner ample time to work on my hair, and I thought about Ty. He was such a good guy—wasn’t he? He was at least a hundred times better than Dillon had been.
But my mind kept flashing back to the sight of the drunk girl from the club plastering herself all over Ty, saying something about “their” song, grinding against him. It had seemed an awful lot like Ty knew the woman pretty well; certainly she seemed to know him. It was the cap to a night that had gotten incredibly horrible only an hour or two before when Dillon had appeared at the party out of the blue. It had made me feel like I was just as inferior to Ty as Dillon had thought I was to him. It had made me feel insignificant.
I rinsed my hair out and got out of the shower, stopping long enough to brush my teeth and smear a purifying mask on my face while I shivered in my robe before walking back into my bedroom in the dorm. I threw myself onto my bed, staring up at my ceiling and thinking about
how things had managed to go so completely and totally pear-shaped the night before. Should I have just insisted that Ty and I go back to campus? It wouldn’t have been all that fair to Ashley, who was still having a good time when we’d left the party. But it hadn’t really been fair to me that the club we’d ended up going to had a girl who thought she had the right to grope my boyfriend.
My phone chirped and I managed to turn over enough to grab my purse and take it out. The screen flashed the time and then a notification: I had a message from Ty. Part of my brain told me not to take it; I needed time to figure out how I felt about what had happened, and what I wanted from the situation. But another part of my mind insisted that I owed him the benefit of the doubt. I should see what he had to say. I took a quick breath and unlocked my phone.
I opened the message app. Hey babe! I’m sorry last night ended so badly. Feel up to doing brunch? I want to make it up to you. I caught my bottom lip between my teeth and worried it for a moment while I thought. It was almost eleven; I could get dressed, put on a little makeup, and do something with my hair in twenty minutes. But did I want to see him?
Of course I did. Who was I trying to fool? I texted back. Give me fifteen-twenty minutes, babe? An instant later he sent back an emoji with a kissing face and then a quick “Sure thing!” and I got to work.
I pulled on a bra and panty set, wriggled into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and unwrapped my hair from the towel. A quick blast of the hair dryer and a little creative brushing and my hair looked as if I had spent an hour styling it. I put on a little bit of mascara, some highlighter on my cheeks and eyelids, and some lip color, and I was done. By the time I heard the soft knock at my door, I was stepping into a pair of ballet flats. I grabbed my purse and made sure that I had everything I needed: keys, ID card, wallet, and phone.
Ty looked just as hot as he always did, effortlessly handsome in a pair of fitted jeans and a sweater. I pulled a cardigan on over my shirt and let the room door close behind me. “I know last night kind of ended up sucking,” Ty said, reaching for my hand as we started down the hallway.
“That’s kind of an understatement,” I said, looking up at his face through my eyelashes.
“I know,” Ty said, smiling wryly. “But at least it started out okay, right?” I pressed my lips together, shaking my head slightly and trying to suppress a smile.
“Yeah, right up until my ex-boyfriend showed up and ruined everything it was pretty great,” I admitted. If Dillon hadn’t shown up, we wouldn’t have ended up going to the club. If we hadn’t gone to the club, I wouldn’t have had to see the stupid drunk girl rubbing herself all over Ty.
“I want to make it up to you as best as I can,” Ty told me.
“We’ll see how this goes,” I said, smiling in spite of myself. We went downstairs and walked out to his car, and I noticed as we got in that Ty looked like he’d probably had a shower too. I wondered what had happened with the girl who’d been grinding on him—had he just shoved her away? He couldn’t have reacted all that quickly. Ashley and I had made our way out of the club in a matter of minutes, but we had had to wait about ten minutes longer for our ride to get there. If he had extricated himself from the girl quickly, he could have caught us—and yet he hadn’t.
Questions bubbled and simmered in my brain as Ty drove us off campus and toward a diner we both liked: Green Street Eats was only about ten minutes away from the dorms and had one of the best—and cheapest—brunch menus in town. It was a little early, which meant that we were able to find a parking spot, and the tables weren’t jam-packed when we got there. I wanted to know who the hell the girl had been, what she had meant to Ty, why she had thought it was okay to grope and grind on him like that. I wanted to know why Ty hadn’t just pushed her off of him and walked away, why he hadn’t come after Ashley and me to keep us from getting home on our own. I wanted to know how to feel about everything that had happened the night before.
I ordered my favorite: the chocolate breakfast bread pudding with eggs and bacon on the side, and a big coffee with toffee syrup. Ty ordered an omelet, and we settled into our seats at one of the booths, looking across the table at each other. “Who was that girl from last night?” I licked my lips, feeling the stinging tingle starting in my eyes. Ty shrugged.
“She’s an ex-girlfriend, that’s all,” Ty told me. “She got sloppy drunk last night and when she saw me she thought it would be a good idea to throw herself at me.” There was some kind of edge in his voice—something I couldn’t quite read. Ty shrugged again. “By the time I got rid of her, you and Ash were long gone.”
“We grabbed a Lyft,” I told him. I took a quick, deep breath, waiting to see if Ty would explain anything more about the girl who had assaulted him on the dance floor. He didn’t. “It was actually kind of fun—the guy had free candy in the back seat of his car, and a cat hanging out in the front seat that we could pet.”
“So hey—it looks like the very end of your night wasn’t terrible, at least,” Ty said weakly. “You look amazing this morning, by the way. A thousand times better than me.” I rolled my eyes.
“Right, sure,” I said, feeling my cheeks warm up. “You somehow always manage to look hot, even if you’re hung over or whatever. This is just the result of a long shower and some quick preparation.”
“Whatever it is, you look great,” Ty told me. I tried to push my thoughts and worries about his ex-girlfriend out of my mind, especially when our food started to arrive, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was a lot more that I wanted to know, and that Ty should have volunteered more information about the woman since it was obvious I was upset. The girl who’d plastered herself onto my boyfriend seemed like something more complicated than just some ex-girlfriend. I didn’t bring it up again, but I was worried.
Chapter Ten
I had expected Nicole to grill me a lot harder about the run-in with Kelsey the night before; I had expected her to ask me for more details about the relationship with my ex, and why it had ended, and why Kelsey might think it would be a good idea to come onto me in the middle of a club while I was on a date. Instead, she had simply accepted my explanation that Kelsey was an ex—I was in the clear.
I ate my brunch as hungrily as ever, and we talked about other things. I wanted more than anything to invite Nicole to come back to my dorm with me and spend the rest of the day making love and lounging around; but I had to meet with a group from one of my classes to get started on a final project for the course.
“Are you doing anything tonight? Maybe after I meet with this group I can put something together to make up for last night’s debacle,” I suggested to Nicole, as we were both finishing up our meals.
“I think I’m probably just going to study, maybe try and get ahead on some of my classwork,” Nicole told me, shrugging slightly. We were getting close to finals, and I knew that Nicole was stressed about her classes, even with the small victories she’d been having in recent weeks.
“Well, if you want to study together, we can do that,” I suggested.
“I’ll stay in touch, keep you updated,” Nicole told me. I leaned across the table and kissed her lightly on the lips.
“If nothing else, you can come to me for a quick twenty-minute study break,” I suggested, grinning at her as I sat back down. The check came and I grabbed it before Nicole could get a chance to; I put my debit card down and the waitress took it to process.
I had been dreading the conversation with Nicole ever since I’d gone to bed the night before; finding that it had gone so much better than I expected made the rest of the day open up before me like the sun coming out from behind the clouds on an overcast day. I had seriously underestimated the woman I was coming to feel more and more strongly about; I should get her flowers the first chance I got.
The waitress brought the receipt and I gave her a decent tip, and then Nicole and I left the diner, hand in hand once more. She was more quiet than usual, but I thought that considering she was probably
a little vaguely hung over, and that she probably had plenty to think about and process with the appearance of her own ex-boyfriend, it was only natural for her to be a little quieter than usual. We drove back to the dorms together, talking a little bit more about our plans for the weekend, and I tried to think of ways that I could spend a little bit more time with Nicole. I would have to really dive into studying for the CPA exam starting at the beginning of the spring semester—so I should do as much as I could with the girl I loved while I had the chance.
“Let’s make plans to grab dinner tonight,” I told Nicole as I walked her to the entrance of her dorm.
“I think I might just grab something from the dining hall; or maybe if one of the girls needs me to do her hair, I’ll get her to buy me dinner in exchange,” Nicole said, smiling.
“Well if you do go down to the dining hall, shoot me a text, okay? I want to spend as much time as possible with you before finals get here.”
“Okay,” Nicole said. I kissed her on the lips and hugged her tight, and then I left her at the entrance to her dorm. I had maybe fifteen minutes to get my things together and meet up with my group at the library; one of the other kids in my class had reserved a private study room for us to work in, and I didn’t want to hold anyone up.
Alex had had better luck the night before than I had, to judge by the necktie hanging on his doorknob when I went into the dorm room. I heard muffled sounds of music playing, confirming my belief that Alex had found someone to hook up with, if nothing else.
Good for him! I unlocked my bedroom door and started getting together the stuff I would need for the project: my textbook, my laptop, a notebook, some pens, and a few other things. I thought again how lucky I was that Nicole had just accepted that Kelsey was my ex, and hadn’t probed for more details. She’s way too good for you, dude. You are out of your league with a girl like her—you’d better appreciate the hell out of her or you’re going to lose her. I made a mental note to look into getting her flowers and chocolates—maybe some coffee from Starbucks to help her get through her study session. I was more than willing to give Nicole all the affection she could stand.
