Page 34 of All That Glitters

Jameson’s lips on mine.

The way he whispered my name in the darkness.

His hands in my hair.

Fear of ruining everything.

Then the searing betrayal of finding out from his mom that he’d gotten the internship at the paper.

The words I’d yelled.

The agonizing, hollow silence that followed.

All of it overtakes me until it feels like I’m drowning in the past. I burst outside into the cold air and gulp it down, trying to relieve the burning in my lungs.

My hand grips the pen he gave me. I look down at it and notice it’s not an average pen. The silver metal has an engraving. I squint at it in the moonlight.

Goldie.

Chapter seventeen

Undersharing

Marigold Belmore

By the time I make it back to my apartment, I’m out of breath and freezing cold. I left the party before Jameson could realize that I wasn’t getting water. I couldn’t go back and face him, not with wraiths from our past haunting me. And definitely not with his pen burning a hole in my pocket.

I kick off my shoes inside the door and walk farther inside to find all of my roommates on the couch. Jasmine looks like she just came home from her date with Shepherd, still in her sweater dress, while Aurora and Saylor are in pajamas.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Jasmine comments, and I wince. Concern furrows her brow. “What happened?”

“Jameson was there,” I say, and all of the girls’ eyes widen. “He didn’t do anything. Well, except make me smile and remember things I’ve been trying to forget.”

I collapse onto the couch in between Aurora and Jasmine. Saylor stares up at us from her pallet of blankets on the floor. Behind her, the TV is paused on the movie Hitch.

“What kind of things?” Jasmine asks. Her tone is cautious. She knows that I don’t like to share about Jameson, but maybe it’s time.

I cover my face with my hands and sigh. I’m so tired. My thoughts have been confined to the jail in my mind, except for when they bleed into my manuscript. The novel is starting to read more like a diary entry at this point. Maybe if I got some of this out, then it would stop showing up in my work.

“Last year, before he betrayed me, I kissed Jameson,” I confess into my hands.

My friends are silent. I can sense the tension in the room.

“You kissed?” Saylor is the first to break the quiet with a shriek. “Why didn’t you say so? That changes everything.”

I drop my hands and frown.

“I don’t know about everything.”

“I agree with Saylor,” Jasmine chimes in. “This changes things.”

When I look at Aurora, she grimaces but nods.

“It makes what he did worse,” I concede. “But that’s all.”

“What happened after your kiss?” Jasmine asks. “Did you date? Were things different between you two?”

I tip my head back against the couch.