Begin Again(30)

We’ve reached the dorm. Milo uses his ID card to let us in, and we make small talk in the elevator that I know we’re both only half paying attention to. Underneath the banter about the cafeteria menu we’re both raw and uncertain, like coming in from the cold slammed us back into reality—the mom-less, dad-less, uncertain reality that we just shared with each other, for better or worse.

We reach my room first and come to an abrupt stop.

“Well—g’night,” I say, my throat tight.

“Semi-night,” Milo corrects me.

I let out a laugh that borders on a wheeze, leaning closer to him. Or maybe he leans closer to me. All I know is that one moment we’re both hovering uncertainly in my doorway, and the next his arms are wrapped around me, and mine around him. The hug is quiet and firm, and as I lean into the warmth of it, into the familiar citrusy, clean smell of him, I realize it’s been a long time since I’ve really hugged anybody. An even longer time since I hugged anybody and felt this kind of mutual understanding in it—that sometimes words might not fix things, but this can make them hurt less.

We’re just starting to pull apart when we’re interrupted by an ear-piercing wolf whistle from down the hall. The noise is so loud that I stumble backward, and Milo steps back and lowers his arms so quickly that it almost seems impossible that they were the same ones that wrapped around me a split second ago. I follow his eyes down the hall to the student who catcalled us, ready to glare, but they’ve already ducked into the bathroom.

“Well,” I say, putting my hands on my hips, “that was rude.”

But when I glance up at Milo, his head is bowed so I can’t see his face. He just mumbles a “good night” at me as he turns and lets himself into his room without looking back.





Chapter Eleven


“Uh, I think it’s safe to say we’ve been banned from the food science department until further notice,” says Shay, muffling a laugh in her scarf as we hightail it away from the science building.

I glance back as if afraid we’ll be followed, trying to wring out my very wet ponytail. “Well, on the upside, at least we know how to set off a LaCroix bomb now?”

“Ah, yes. Can’t wait to get into that specific vein of supervillainy with you.” She stops me, raising a thumb to wipe off the mascara under my eye. “Hold up, you look like you just got broken up with at prom.”

I sigh and let her fix my face, grateful that when we did, in fact, set off a small geyser, most of it spilled on me and not Shay or the other unsuspecting people around us.

Our shenanigans in the science building aside, two weeks into the semester, things are considerably looking up. Thanks to Valeria, I’m no longer failing statistics—once we showed Professor Hutchison my emails weren’t set up, she let me retake the exam. Thanks to Shay and the trivia team, I have accumulated enough blue ribbons to match pace with the other students, both for me and for Connor. And thanks to me . . . well. Shay isn’t necessarily any closer to finding her major, but she is certainly closer to finding out what it isn’t.

I pull up the list-making app on my phone and cross “Food Science” off the list. This recent disaster is one of three “let’s find Shay’s major”–related adventures we’ve taken already, which included an invitation from the premed students to watch a pig dissection (we made it about five minutes before peacing out and watching several episodes of The Great British Bake Off to bleach our brains), a workshop on connecting with your inner child from the drama department (they had us crawling on the floor and making animal noises; I’ve never had a full-grown woman moo at me with as much resentment as Shay did that afternoon), and an interactive experiment with the food science department that, well. Didn’t not end with us ricocheting a drink cap into a light fixture and onto a professor’s head.

While the progress on finding Shay’s major is approximately zero percent, the two of us, at least, are forever bonded by the mutual horror of Blue Ridge State’s curricula.

It’s helped that we’ve gotten into a familiar groove—Shay’s alarm goes off in the morning and I head right out to the recording studio with her and Milo, mostly to answer the emails (we’ve cleared out half of them now, I can’t help myself) but also because it’s an easy way to find out firsthand when ribbon events are happening for my sake, and when other departments are doing open classes for Shay’s. That, and I do feel just a little responsible for Milo’s well-being, considering I am weaning him off a legal drug one version of Semi-Eternal Darkness at a time.

But as it turns out, I am justified in my meddling. A few mornings after we started half-caffing him, Milo showed up to the studio looking slightly more alive than dead. And now, as Shay and I make our way to the studio for the prep meeting they always have on Sunday afternoons, he looks downright human. The skin under his eyes is considerably less dark, and for once he doesn’t look like he’s on the perpetual verge of a yawn.

“You know we’re not paying you, right?” Milo asks when we walk in, his customary greeting for me most times I’ve followed Shay here.

“Our company is priceless,” says Shay.

Milo looks up with a smirk, then zeroes in on me fast. “What happened?” he asks, with undisguised concern.

It’s more eye contact than I’ve gotten from him in the last week, ever since that awkward moment when we hugged in the dorm hallway. I haven’t worried about it so much—I knew it would resolve itself on its own if we just let it. It’s not like either of us is actually interested in the other, especially given that I am in a committed relationship and Milo has declared on multiple occasions that love is a scam.