Page 33 of On His Mind

“It’s a thing.” She nods. “You’re very quiet.” She says it like she’s only now deciding it. “You don’t do keg stands. You don’t play beer pong.”

She’s noticed. “Not my thing.”

“Mm. Not mine either. But Ivory lives for a party, and Ivory drags me everywhere she goes.” She pulls my jacket tighter around her.

“And Theo?”

She shakes her head. “It’s nothing. My best friend’s hooking up with his best friend, so — naturally.” She waves a hand at the whole arrangement and nearly loses the cup.

“How much have you had to drink?” I ask, looking at the cup as we walk.

She laughs. “Hawthorne needs to step up its drinking options, that’s how much. Beer and shots.” She makes a sound of genuine disgust. “Parties should have something good. Something with mango and strawberry and one drop of liquor, so it tastes like juice, and you don’t even feel it coming.”

She’s right, and I catch myself thinking about it.

“Anyway.” She looks up. “This is me.”

I swallow.

She tilts her head. “Do you want to come up?” She closes her eyes and scrunches her nose. “Not like that.”

I look up. The building’s tall and nice, the kind with a doorman during the day.How the fuck can I say no?

“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s get you inside.”

We ride the elevator up in a silence so complete it feels like I might be dreaming. I’ve never been this nervous in my life. I know she’s drunk, and I know exactly what a decent person does with that, which is get her to her door and leave. But leaving her drunk and alone doesn’t sit any better in me than the road did, so I tell myself I’ll see she’s inside safe and go.

The second I step through her door, the place hits me square in the stomach. She isn’t just well-off. She’s rich in a way I’ve only ever seen through windows. I know what Goodwill furniture looks like, what a room looks like when everything in it came from somebody else’s house first, and this is the opposite of all of that. She goes straight to the fridge and pours me water without asking, and I take it, and I watch to make sure she drinks some of her own.

“So,” she says. “Where are you from?”

I don’t know how to answer that one honestly, so I give her the state where my father handed me over to the state; where Josh and Mary are. “Maine.”

“Maine.” She lights up a little. “I’ve always wanted to go. It’s beautiful up there, isn’t it?”

I shrug.

“I’m from Chicago.”

I nod.

She sips her water. “So why Camden?”

I look at her, wondering how drunk she really is. I don’t do small talk, or any kind of talk for that matter. My nerves are high. I rub my hands together, wishing I hadn’t come up.

“Hockey.” I reach for the glass of water so that I stop rubbing my hands like a fucking weirdo. “You?”

“I don’t know.” She smiles softly. “Close enough. Far enough. Good school. Though maybe I should’ve gone to Maine.” She points across the room, toward a long table set up under the window. “I looked hard at Portland. I’m an architecture major.”

I turn and look where she’s pointing. “What’s that over there?”

“My drawing table.”

When I look at it, I picture her sitting there day after day while the light comes through that window and changes on her, drawing whatever it is she draws.

“What are you working on?” I ask.

“Drafts, for finals. Then the internship at Whitmore.” She says the name flat, like she doesn’t like it.