Page 35 of Across His Line

I check it after micro, walking down the steps of the business building. The rink. Then the gym next to the rink. Then, at two-twenty, while I’m sitting at a table in the student center with Elliot going over the practice midterm, it moves.

Corvin Hall.

My stomach flips over.

I’m not even there. I’m half a mile away, with a coffee and a rower and a highlighter, and he’s in a building I’m not in, but my body reacts like he just walked through the door of this café. My pulse jumps. My hand tightens on my pen. I look down at the little dot sitting on top of the little square that is my building, my hallway, my door, and I feel it the way I used to feel his voice in the cafeteria before I saw him.

That isn’t what this was supposed to do.

This was supposed to make it quieter. I was supposed to stop having to listen for him, because now I could just look. Instead, I can look all the time, and so I do, and every time I do, it’s like I’m listening for his door again from half a mile away.

“You okay?” Elliot says.

“Yeah.” I turn the phone over. “Sorry. Where were we?”

“Demand curves.” He looks mournful. “Always demand curves.”

Then my phone buzzes against the table.

Rafferty Waleska: Why are you at the student center?

I stare at it as my stomach churns.

The student center isn’t on the schedule. Wednesday afternoons, the schedule says the library, third floor, and I didn’t think I’d have to account for changing my mind. But he’s looking. He opened the map in his room, looked for my dot, found it somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be, and now he’s texting me.

I hate the way my heart sinks.

Me: Why are you checking?

The dots come up. Go away.

Nothing.

I put the phone in my bag, under my notebook, and I listen to Elliot talk about demand curves for forty minutes, and I don’t hear any of it.

Payton and Elsie FaceTime me at eight.

They’re on Payton’s bed in their dorm, wedged together in the frame with snacks between them. Elsie has a sheet mask on her face, and for the first five minutes, it’s just noise. A girl on their floor who’s been stealing their oat milk. Payton’s psych professor, who she’s decided is in love with her. Elsie’s new obsession, which is a boy in her art history lecture who wears a scarf indoors.

“In the classroom?” I ask.

“It’s so hot,” Elsie says, and then we’re all laughing because apparently, there was no pun intended.

I laugh and eat an apple on my end, sitting cross-legged on my bed in the cream sweater, and it’s good. It’s so good. It’s like warming my hands over something.

Then Payton says, “Okay, that’s six.”

“Six what?”

“Times you’ve looked at something off-screen.” She points a chip at the camera. “You keep doing this thing with your eyes. Down and to the left. Six times.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Seven.”

I turn my phone face down on the comforter. I hadn’t even known I’d picked it up.

Elsie peels off her mask in one long, wet strip and leans into the frame. “Oh my God. Are you FaceTiming us on your laptop and texting someone?”