Summer snorts, swiveling in her chair again. “One of my sorority sisters caught Levi Hart sneaking out of a dorm window bare-ass naked sophomore year.”
“That sounds like Levi.”
And that’s all I have on my weekend. Because as far as secrets go…
I have none. Not. A. One.
I unzip the bag on the table. Summer warily eyes me pulling out my camera. “I do need a picture of you, Summer. Just one.”
She pouts, gripping the edge of her seat, pushing with her foot to send the chair in a full spin. As it makes several full rotations, she keeps her head on the ground. And just as quickly, I snap my camera. When she’s done, I show it to her. The photo’s in blurred motion, her blond curls hiding most of her face.
After a moment of considering it, she approves and asks what my spring break plans are for the next week.
“Home,” I answer, the very word filling me with happy anticipation. “My sisters are taking me bar hopping for my twenty-first birthday.”
“Oh, fun,” Summer says. She relates to me a story of one of her ABB sisters’ twenty-first birthday celebration, wherein Summer got so inebriated that she’d almost broken her ankle trying to climb the horse statue behind the art building in a brand new pair of heels. But since Summer is technically underage, that story’s Off the Record.
When I ask what she’s doing next week, she replies, “Nolan wants to attend some celebrity fundraiser dinner in LA. I’m flying to Miami.”
Because a typical college student gets invited to celebrity dinners. Or has use of their own personal jet. I know about the jet because she’d told me. It never ceases to amaze me, just how different her life is compared to mine or any one else I know. Not that that’s a bad thing. I wouldn’t trade a week being home with my family for all the private planes in the world.
I gather my things, taking extra care, even as the time on my phone tells me I’m running a couple minutes late. Sure enough, my stalling is rewarded when Summer pulls out a white box from her giant purse and slides it across the table at me. I open it, holding back a smile when I see the pastries inside.
I’d mentioned last week about attending that ABB high tea with Ashton. While I hadn’t cared for the choice in beverages, the catering service the sorority had used made the most divine scones. I’d confessed to pocketing half a dozen in my purse and parceling them out days after that event.
This is the final part of our routine.
It had started after our first couple of meetings, with a bag of blueberry-flavored coffee beans. Summer had foraged them from her purse, which I’d come to envision as having some mystical Mary Poppins-esque properties. With an excuse that her housekeeper had accidentally purchased the coffee on a grocery run—Because typical college students have housekeepers—and that caffeine made her jittery, Summer had tossed the package to me. This had come after a previous meeting, when I had brought my rainbow-sparkly travel mug and she’d asked about it.
The unexpected gift brought me back to last semester, when I’d tried wooing Rylie with lattes. When I’d asked, point-blank, if Summer was trying to get me to like her, she’d scoffed.
“It’s just coffee, Walsh.” She rolled her eyes, typing away on her phone. An avoidance maneuver, if I ever saw one. “If you don’t want it, a group of my sisters can use it for an all-night studying session tomorrow night.”
I kept it. While I pondered over which category to catalog the unexpected gesture, she’d lectured me about how I have bees to thank for every cup of coffee I’d ever consumed.
Summer shrugs now, “We had a bake sale yesterday, and those were left over.”
I take a bite of a vanilla scone. I don’t say anything about how it’s surprisingly fresh for day-old bake sale cast-offs. She dismissively waves a hand at my thanks and shoos me out the door, box in my hands.
Biology class is just about to start when I slip into the seat next to Grayson. He doesn’t look up from writing in his notebook, but he asks, “Did you know that each second, three-point-two cans of Spam are consumed around the world?”
“I don’t know about Spam,” I say, opening the catering box. “But I have scones.”
He lifts his head, pushing back his glasses and selecting a cinnamon-sugar one. I snap the box shut as another hand reaches around him and tries to grab a pastry.
“‘Overstepping due bounds’,” I tell the owner of that hand.
Spencer grumbles under his breath. Gray tells him with a smile, “She’s calling you presumptuous.”
The third member of our group grunts, leaning back in his seat, and shutting his eyes as the professor begins the lesson. In seconds, his breathing’s steady, and I focus on setting up my computer for notes.
Halfway through class, a notification pops up on my screen. I angle my screen away from Gray, though he’s absorbed in nucleic acids and protein synthesis for our upcoming midterm, and click on it.
Room 312.
Quickly, I erase the message and return to my study notes. Meanwhile, I tap the toe of my boot against the leg of my seat. With a sly glance over Gray, whose head is bent close to his notebook as he writes, I see Spencer discreetly put away his phone. My toe-tapping increases. Everything the professor says flies in one ear and out the other. I count down every minute of the clock.
It takes both no time at all and all the time in the world before the lecture’s done. I follow the guys out of the building, then say goodbye when we part ways. Over my shoulder, I watch them walk away, and sure that I won’t be spotted, I turn on my heel and head back inside the building. Climb three
