Page 15 of Built to Fall
My eyes widen. “Jesus.”
Eden lets out a small, shocked sound. “Braxton’s okay with that? Even with him knowing Grant’s reputation?”
Kara lets out a‘ha!’sound. “If you knew Savannah Sinclair, you would understand. She’s pretty set in her ways. I doubt Braxton’s opinion would have any effect on what she does or doesn’t do.”
“Makes sense.” Eden takes another bite.
“Anyway, back to the topic at hand.” Meredith returns from the fridge with an apple in her hand. “Did you bitch him out?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” I don’t need to think back to what I said. The conversation is already burned into the back of my mind.
The girls have always made jokes about my memory—how I’m incapable of forgetting anything. It’s true; my brain perfectly memorizes everything from word-for-word conversations totextbook information to what someone was wearing last Monday.
“Although the door did almost come off the hinges when she came back into the apartment,” Eden jokes.
“Okay, yes, I bitched him out.”
“You slammed the door in his face?” Kara gawks.
“Yeah, so if you see Grant and he has a bruise with our unit number stamped into his forehead, tell him good riddance for me,” I say sarcastically.
“That’s poetic.” Eden isbeaming.
Meredith, still mid-chew with her apple, gestures lazily with it. “Honestly, if a concussion knocks some sense into him, we all win.”
“I’m not saying he wasn’t being dumb,” Kara says. “But it feels like maybe he touched a nerve that wasn’t really about him.”Leave it to the neuroscience major to read me to filth.
I raise a brow and sip my water instead of answering.
Kara doesn’t push. She gives me that knowing look—the one that says she’s already run the diagnostics and filed her findings underself-sabotage, probable trauma response.
“Well, I think I’m done with my food,” Eden says, filling the silence. She pretends to curtsy as she hops off the stool and takes her bowl over to the sink, humming to herself as she rinses it out before setting it neatly in the dishwater.
We all move in sync around the kitchen, picking up from lunch as the conversation settles. Once all the dishes are in the dishwasher and the counters have been cleaned, we make ourselves comfortable in the living room.
“It may be a sore subject at the moment, but Braxton asked if we could all go to the game this weekend and the after-party,” Meredith says cautiously.
I pull one of the throw pillows over my lap, asking, “Why would that be a sore subject?”
“Grant is also on the football team,” Meredith informs me.
“He is?”News to me.
“You didn’t know that?” Eden seems just as confused as I was.
I shake my head. Yeah, it would have been easy for me to assume that fact, given how close of friends he and Braxton are, but I never really thought about it.
“He’s like their best player. The school is paying himmillionsto play here,” Kara says with an incredulous laugh.
“Yeah,” Meredith says, tone dull, “like I said, Braxton wants us to come. He got us all tickets.”
Eden perks up, but before she acts on it, she looks toward me. “Do I have permission to be excited? Or would you rather me withhold it?”
“Permission granted,” I say, waving her on.
“Oh my gosh! You have to admit, that is going to besofun!”
We all are swept up in her enthusiasm, and Meredith grabs the remote and flicks on the TV. The low hum fills the room as she flips through the channels, settling on a sports highlight reel.
