Page 26 of Secret Obsession
It’s not on her phone.
What sort of psychopath doesn’t keep a calendar on her phone?
And as far as I could tell from clearing her apartment, and then her bag, she doesn’t keep a written schedule either. Her laptop was password protected. So maybe there are notes there, but nowadays everything is synced together. What’s on her phone should be on her laptop, and vice versa.
I sense the moment she wavers. She doesn’t really have another choice, does she? Unless she wants to camp out on her front stoop and wait for her landlord to come home.
“Here.” I flip my notebook to an empty page and set a pen on top of it. “Write.”
“You’re a fucking asshole,” she says under her breath. But then she drags out the chair and drops into it, her bagthunkingto the floor beside her. She picks up the pen and clicks it, then taps the top against her lower lip. “What if I lie?”
“I’ll find out,” I promise her.
She exhales.
And then she starts writing.
And writing.
And writing.
It’s actually a little impressive how she has it all in her head.
When she’s done, she shoves it across the table. I catch it and flip it around, scanning her messy handwriting. She probably wrote like this on purpose—it’s half print, half cursive, and all the letters are practically on top of the previous one. She’s given me her classes, when she studies. She started to write dance practice, but that’s crossed out. In its place, she wroteexercise. Then there’s more studying on the weekends, huge blocks of it.
“I don’t think you study enough.” My tone is dry.
She sighs. “Well, I’ve actually got a future besides getting my teeth knocked out to look forward to.”
“You were enamored with hockey when you were dating my brother.”
She tsks. “Now who’s bringing him up?”
I grimace. “I told you not to bring up his—”
“Yeah.” She rises and holds out her hand again. “Keys.”
I hold them out.
She lifts them from my fingers and pockets them, wasting no time to snatch her bag and hook it around her shoulder. And then she’s gone, moving swiftly away from me. I watch the sway of her ass until she rounds the corner, out of sight.
I smile to myself and open the app on my phone. I watch her cross campus, exiting onto a side street to head for home. She arrives there and puts music on her phone. I put my headphones in and turn on her mic, just so I can hear her sing along to the melody.
To my utter surprise, her voice isgood. She harmonizes with the singer, a name and sound I don’t recognize. I press a button to turn her camera on, but all I get is a shot of her ceiling.
Huffing slightly, I focus back on the song.
And her voice.
Eventually, she stops. I don’t know what to make of it. Or her. I turn my attention away from my phone and back to the text at hand. This English class was recommended by Knox. Apparently, it used to be taught by Jacob’s professor. But she up and quit, and the job was taken over by an old-timer last spring. He’s a journalist who doesn’t want to write anymore, so now we just analyze old stories.
Whatever.
Knox said it wasn’t too hard, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s just a fuckton of reading… which is why Jacob was failing it so spectacularly, if the syllabus was anything similar.
I stay until midnight, then grudgingly head home.
Or, Ishouldhead home.
