Page 82 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
Now I’m standing in a university bathroom trying to convince myself that wanting her is not already a form of violence.
The problem is, I don’t believe myself anymore.
The voices outside the bathroom drift closer in uneven bursts of laughter, sneakers squeaking on polished floor, backpacks thudding lightly against lockers as people pass. The whole building has settled into the rhythm of first period already, andI know without checking the time that Creative Arts has started without me. The fact should matter. It doesn’t. Right now, the class is just another place where she exists, another room I’m supposed to walk into and sit in like I didn’t put my hand on her in the car and then spend twenty minutes in here trying to convince myself I’m not exactly the thing people have always said I am.
I move toward the door because hiding in a bathroom is pathetic even by my standards.
Just as my hand reaches the handle, the door swings inward and almost clips my shoulder. A group of guys is clustered outside, one of them peeling away from the rest with a grin still stuck on his face from whatever conversation he’s leaving behind.
“I gotta take a leak,” he says over his shoulder, waving the others on.
They laugh and keep moving.
He steps inside, letting the door swing mostly shut behind him, still halfway turned toward the hallway until he finally looks up and sees me standing there.
Recognition takes a second to settle.
“Oh,” he says. “You.”
Kadin.
Of course.
He straightens a little, surprise giving way to something more measured. “You’re Octavia’s exchange kid.”
The phrase sits there between us, clumsy and too casual for how badly it lands. He clearly means it as shorthand, not insult, but it irritates me anyway. He studies me for another second, the expression on his face changing in a way I know too well. He’s recalibrating. Reorganizing everything he saw last night around the fact that I’m standing in front of him sober enough to be looked at clearly.
“Look,” he says, his voice shifting into something more serious. “I never got to say thank you for trying. Last night. By the time the medics were done, you and Octavia had already left, and everything kind of went to shit after that.”
He stops, maybe waiting for me to say something decent enough to keep this conversation in one piece.
I don’t.
He doesn’t fill the silence immediately, but I can feel him starting to realize this isn’t going to be an easy exchange. I stay where I am, one hand still near the door, not because I want to leave anymore, but because suddenly I want to know how much he sees.
He mistakes the silence for distance, maybe even discomfort, and keeps going.
“I mean it,” he says. “Most people froze. You didn’t.”
That gratitude should make this easier.
Instead it makes something in me turn mean.
Because I can still see him in the pool with her. His hands on her. Her legs around his waist. The easy way he gets to stand in the world and touch things without immediately hating himself for wanting them.
The question is out of my mouth before I decide to ask it.
“What do you want from her?”
He blinks, caught off guard. “What?”
The bathroom feels smaller now, the fluorescent lights harsher. “From Octavia,” I say, the words coming flatter than I mean them to, but no less sharp. “What do you want?”
His expression changes almost immediately. The open gratitude narrows into something more cautious. He doesn’t get angry yet. He gets attentive.
“I like her,” he says after a second.
“That wasn’t my question.”
