I could never go here. Nope. It was way too fancy for me. Kudos to Ash for sticking it up and going here, but me? Hell no. Even if I got a scholarship to this place, a free ride, I wouldn’t be able to cope. Plus, the guys around here just weren’t my style. Me and rich boys didn’t get along.
Granted, I didn’t think I’d ever really spoken to a rich as fuck boy before, but you knew what I meant. There were bound to be some key socioeconomic differences between us. Then again, maybe I was just blowing it all out of proportion. Maybe that was me stereotyping the rich. If Ash could do it on a daily basis, I could do it for a weekend.
I was so focused on the war raging inside my head that I forgot to unlock the door. I nearly jerked out of my own skin when a tap bounced on the passenger side glass, and my stomach sank. Even though I was far away from SCC, a stupid part of me thought I’d look over and see Levi.
A stupid, dumb, ridiculous part of me.
It wasn’t Levi.
It was Ash.
Chapter Twenty-Eight – Kelsey
“I know I’m not a hugger, and neither are you,” I said the moment Ash got in the car, after I finally unlocked it for her. Felt like I’d been saying that a lot lately. “But I don’t care. I missed you.” I threw my arms around her, hugging her tightly. Granted, it was a weird hug, since I had my seatbelt on and it restrained my movement, but still. It felt amazing to see her again.
“I’ve missed you too,” Ash said, giving me a smile once I released her from the sudden hug.
Ash looked like she hadn’t changed a bit. She wore her famous high tops, along with a shirt that had seen better days—and by that I meant holes. A bunch of holes. She was a skater, and she looked the part. Her grey eyes were warm with life, and I couldn’t help but feel my spirits be lifted just by being near her again.
God, I really had missed this girl.
“Still doing the pink, huh?” I asked, slowly pulling my car into the street. I saw a McDonald’s just off campus; we’d go there. Cheap and easy, plus I knew how much my friend loved her chicken nuggets.
Ash reached for her hair—its natural color was so blonde it was near white. It fell just to her shoulders, shorter than my dark mess, but the last few inches of it were dyed a bubblegum pink. She’d started dying it like that the last few months of our senior year. I thought it looked cute, and I was jealous I couldn’t do anything like that with my hair without bleaching the shit out of it first.
“Yeah,” she said. “I can make a tube of dye last for a while.”
“That bastard’s hair still pink?” I’d helped her come up with a plan to get back at that Sawyer dick. He sounded like the worst of the worst. It took a very strange man to rock pink hair, and with everything Ash had told me about that dipshit, he was not one of them.
Ash took her time in answering me, “Yeah. Shockingly pink.”
I chuckled. Men. All of them were fucking idiots, no matter where you went apparently.
When we arrived at the McDonald’s, I paid. Ash got her chicken nuggets, which didn’t surprise me at all. If there was one thing I knew about her, it was that she loved those little pieces of chicken. She was the type of person who watched those video clips where people found beaks and little chicken feet in their nuggets while eating the damn nuggets. She didn’t care what was in them; she just thought they tasted good.
I’d pulled my knotted hair back into a messy bun; those hours of wind had made my head look like a bird’s nest, but I didn’t care.
“So,” Ash began, glancing at me between her nuggets, “what’s going on?”
“I think we should talk about you, first,” I shot back without thinking. Me going on and on about my problems…eh. It didn’t sound like a fun time.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” She didn’t sound too convincing. It was almost like she was purposefully keeping me in the dark, kind of like what I was doing to her. Maybe we had grown apart…
I didn’t want to think about it.
“Fuck off, of course there is. You’re going to a rich, preppy school with rich, preppy boys. Tell me all the details, girl, because I know once we get back to that room, you’re going to be tight-lipped. You never did send me a picture of your roommate shirtless.” I tried my best to act stern, like I wanted all the details. And I did. Details would be nice right about now.
“Never got the chance.” Ash was tight-lipped, and it was ticking me off, a bit.
“Hmm. I guess I’ll see for myself once I meet him, huh?” I paused for a while, munching on my burger. It wasn’t the best burger I’d ever had, but it was better than a lot of the food available on SCC’s campus. A sad day when McDonald’s was better. “And how did your pink revenge go on that other one? Uh, what was his name…” I knew his name; I was just playing dumb, hoping she’d bite.
And she did. We talked for a little bit about Sawyer, how stupid he was.
“The boob probably doesn’t know the difference between temporary and permanent dye,” Ash muttered, shrugging. Her thinness reminded
