“You want these books, too?”
I didn’t bother to turn around. “Yes, everything on my side of the top of the closet can go in that crate.”
“Okay, cool.” He paused. “Carter hasn’t fucked with us like that for a long time now. It is what it is. So I hear you when you say she’s changed. But honestly, she’s been showing you who she is for the last year and a half. At some point, you have to take it for what it is.”
“I know. I just thought it was starting to get better. And then…” I shrugged as I zipped my duffle bag. “This happened.” Shaking my head, I muttered to myself. “I just don’t understand.”
I stared at her neatly made bed. My eyes moved over the soft pink comforter to the glass nightstand with a pink and white book, a small lamp, and a picture of her and her parents. It was bizarre. It was like it was her… but at the same time, it wasn’t her.
When we’d met, she was aware of her wealth and privilege and channeled that into her poetry. She wore dark colors, dyed her dark reddish-brown hair a vibrant red, and swore like a sailor. When we shared a dorm room our freshman and sophomore years, she hated pink and anything that made her look like the princess she was. But all that changed when she tried out for the cheerleading squad.
The cheerleaders embraced Carter with open arms and turned her into one of them. I’d gone home for two weeks during summer break and came back to Carter ditching our plan to share a dorm room. She broke the news that she planned to move to Athletics Way with the squad in a text message.
When I returned, her hair was her natural shade of brown coupled with extensions. Her normally bare face was coated with makeup. Her dark clothing was replaced by lighter, name brand fashions. Her already petite frame had lost an additional fifteen pounds. Even with all that physical change that slapped me in the face, it was the personality change that was the most shocking.
I wanted to believe that the girl I’d been best friends with for three years was the real Carter. I kept fighting the thought that the cheerleaders didn’t change her—they revealed her. It was hard for me to accept that the Carter I knew was a phase and cheerleader Carter was the real deal. But after living with her for a month, I saw less and less of the girl I once knew. And that was a hard pill to swallow.
“You had to have seen it coming,” Jay said gently, pulling me out of my thoughts. “We met her during her rebellious years. She dated me as an act of rebellion.”
I sighed as I looked over at him. “That’s not true. She loved you.”
He checked the zipper on the bags before hoisting the crate up onto the desk. “She loved the idea of me. I was different than anyone she’d ever dated and I’m sexy as hell—have you seen me naked?”
I laughed at his cockiness. “Has she?”
He chuckled along with me. “That’s not the point. I’m sexy, dammit.”
Rolling my eyes, I slid the strap of the duffle bag over my shoulder. “If you say so.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t act like you don’t think I’m sexy. It’s beneath you.”
“You wish I was beneath you,” I retorted, sticking my tongue out.
“Don’t go there with me, Brook. I’ll say some shit you won’t be able to stop thinking about for days.”
The way he ogled me as he said it made heat creep up my neck toward my face.
I changed the direction of the conversation. “Thank you for growing up and evolving for the better through our years here. You’re not the same seventeen-year-old Bronx kid who kept a basketball in his bookbag all summer long.”
Grabbing my two oversized suitcases, he smirked. “Well, you’re an older version of the girl I met four years ago. And even though you’re still strong, put down that crate. I’ll come back up and get it.”
“No, I can take a duffle and a cra—”
“Brook.” He said my name firmly and with an authoritative tone that he only took when he was serious. The look on his face told me he was not playing around with me. “You’re hurt. Stop trying to do everything yourself. I got you.”
I exhaled hard and noisily, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “Fine.”
“Now don’t move a muscle. Or else,” he threatened jokingly, turning the lights off and leaving me in the darkened room. “You’re on timeout.”
I smiled, shaking my head.
A wave of nostalgia hit me. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I had plenty of people I could call to go to a party, but I didn’t have many people that I could really call when I needed them—not back home and definitely not at UFIT. James Williams and Carter Yates were my people. And even though Carter and I weren’t friends anymore, we weren’t enemies.
She wouldn’t have let Dakota and them set me up… would she?
I needed to talk to Carter. I needed answers.
When the glass from the back door opened and banged loudly, a bunch of giggles and loud talking burst through the stillness of the almost empty house. As soon as I heard heels clicking on the staircase, my hands turned into fists. I prepared to see either Carter or Dakota. Although I was furious with Dakota, Carter was the only person in the house who could hurt me. Even though I was physically in pain, I knew if it came down to it, I would kick Dakota’s ass.
