Page 41 of Fighting Spirit

“The best,” she slurs a little, her tongue edging out the corner of her mouth in concentration.

As she speaks, I realize I have no idea where she’s been. I feel bad that I was mad at her for breaking the bestie code the night of the football house when I totally failed to check in on her tonight. “Where did you go?”

“Me and the girls went to that place on 7th?”

I know the one. Georgie and I had talked about it, planning on going sometime with a couple of the girls from our economics class.

“I missed you.” She whispers like it’s a secret as she rests her head on my shoulder. She’s so cute when she’s drunk, all cuddly and silly.

“I missed you too.”

A tiny part of me is hurt that she didn’t invite me to go with her, but I quickly brush it off. She’s always been someone who hangs with different friend groups, flitting around like the very essence of a social butterfly.

I’m about to ask who she was with tonight, though I wonder if I really want to know. But before I can probe further, Georgie turns a worrying shade of green, spins on her heel, and pukes into the open oven.

Chapter Sixteen

RUTH

“You’re an asshole, you know that, right?”

“So you’ve mentioned,” Rowan drawls down the phone.

“And I mean it!”

“Sure.”

“You seriously didn’t study at all?” I roll onto my back, clutching my phone to my ear as I prop myself up with a pillow. I’m lying on my bed, books and bits of paper strewn around me. Rowan and I are supposed to be keeping each other company while we study, but we got off track about twenty minutes ago and haven’t stopped talking since.

“I skimmed the textbook the night before?”

My fist clenches. He’s telling me about a test he took last week, and apparently, he’s one ofthosepeople.

“Oh, fuck you.” I laugh. “Don’t ever give me study advice again.”

“I didn’taceit.”

“You got an 81.”

“Yeah.” I can practically hear his smug smile through the phone.

I pick up my notebook, where I’ve got a rough outline drawn up for the first extra credit assignment that Professor Melville set. I think I’ve got the introduction and the first section down, but now I’m hitting a wall.

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I’m starting the timer again,” I huff, pulling the phone away from my face to start a twenty-minute countdown. We’ve been doing sprints all evening, twenty minutes of silence, then a five-minute break where we can talk. Rowan, obviously, is finding the silence element a lot easier than me.

“You got it.”

I get a couple more sentences out before my mind starts drifting. Is Rowan at home? He never said. Is he on the couch or in his room? Does he have the big light or a desk lamp on? I picture him strewn across his bed the same way I am, see him lit by the soft glow of a bedside light. What’s he wearing? What does he sleep in?

Ugh. No. I am not going there. Rowan is my friend. It doesn’t matter how nice he is or how unreasonably attractive I find him, it can’t happen. Besides, these aren’t real thoughts. This is just my brain trying to find something to fixate on that isn’t this paper. I check the timer, certain we must be nearly finished.

Sixteen minutes left.

Fuck.

I grumble under my breath. Rowan must hear me because I hear his soft chuckle over the line.

“Don’t laugh at me.”

---