Page 36 of Rage
“Want to grab a drink?” I find myself asking. “There is a bar across the street.”
She looks at me. Something in her face changes like she is recalculating how the night is supposed to go.
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I would like that.”
Babylon is the kind of bar that stopped caring what it looked like a long time ago. Amber lighting. A jukebox nobody has touched tonight. We take the booth near the back.
Rose orders water. I order a beer.
“Make that two,” I tell the server before Rose can say anything.
“I don’t really drink,” Rose says.
“She won’t ask. I won’t either.” The server is already turning away. “Different rules for anything connected to Kenyan.” I sayit lightly, like a piece of campus trivia, not like something I have been quietly mapping since I arrived. It’s obvious nothing about this place follows rules. It has its own.
The beers come. Rose takes a careful sip and holds the glass with both hands. I watch without watching.
We talk about the Plath assignment. The professor’s rubric. Easy things that take up space without asking much.
Then Rose says, after a pause. “The guy I’ve seen you with. In the quad. The tall one. Is he your boyfriend?”
I know exactly who she means.
Azriel.
I look at Rose, and I let my face do the thing it does when I’m buying time—a small tilt of the head, a mild crease between my brows.
“Which one?” I ask, playing dumb. “I tend to end up near a few people in the quad.”
“The swim captain,” she says. “But how about the other one? Dark coat. He was in the periodicals section in the library at the same time you were.”
I take a sip of my beer and keep my expression easy. A girl who ended up near someone in a library and did not think much of it because she was too busy reading what he wanted her to see.
“Honestly, I couldn’t tell you his name,” I say. “He was just there. We barely spoke.”
This is the version of the truth I’m offering her. Not a full lie. What I am leaving out is that I know who he is, and that I have been thinking carefully about what his presence on this campus means.
Rose looks at me for a moment.
I hold a convincing look. Open. Curious. A scholarship girl from Delaware still finding her feet is what I’ll go with.
“The one in the quad. I’m not sure if you know but his name is Azriel,” she says. “He’s a hybrid student. Mostly online. He tutors.”
“Oh.” I let the right amount of mild interest cross my face. “So that’s who he is.”
A beat passes between us.
“He’s nice to look at,” I say.
The corner of Rose’s mouth tilts to almost a smile.
“Be careful,” she says quietly. Just that. Like a warning she is not going to explain.
I file it away. Rose knows something about Azriel she won’t tell me. I know something about Azriel I won’t tell her.
We’re sitting in a bar booth, having a perfectly ordinary conversation about a man we both understand more than we are saying.
This, I think, is what two people who want real friendship look like when it starts and who have both learned to protect first and explain later.
