Undecided(79)

“I said I was sorry!”

“Who was it?” he asks abruptly.

I freeze, confused. “Who was what?”

“The guy. You said there was a guy last year. He obviously did something to make you…like this.”

I gape at him. “Like this? Like, what, exactly? Like, sees that her boyfriend supposedly slept with three girls and dares ask him about it? Like that?” I toss the book at him and swing my feet to the floor, halted by his grip on my arm.

“Seriously?” he demands. “You’re going to storm out? After you stormed in here in the first place? You’re the only one who can ask personal questions?”

“No one ‘made me’ like this,” I snap, jerking away my arm and standing. “I chose this. I chose to ask if you cheated on me. I chose to believe you when you said you didn’t.”

He’s breathing hard, his chest rising and falling beneath the thin T-shirt, and finally he pushes to his feet. “You know what?” he says irritably. “Fine. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“To get rid of the list, once and for all. We’ve got some paint around here somewhere. Maybe Kellan’s list came in handy, but mine sure as f*ck hasn’t.”

I watch as he stuffs his feet into sneakers and grabs his jacket from his desk chair, tossing me mine. Unable to believe we’re really doing this, I trail him down the stairs and wait as he confers with Dane in the living room to determine where they keep the paint. Why this is something they would have, I don’t know, but he disappears into the basement for a minute and comes back up with an old can of blue paint and two brushes. “All right,” he says tersely, grabbing a wool hat with a hockey logo and sticking it on his head. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s go,” I echo. “To the Student Union building.”

“Uh-huh.”

He starts to stomp down the path to the street, but reconsiders when he spots my bike on the grass. Instead he snatches it up and gestures for me to get on the back.

“Crosbie—”

“Are you coming or not, Nora?”

I sigh and swing my leg over the seat. It’s not even remotely comfortable, and for the first minute I expect us to topple over in an uncoordinated tangle of angry limbs. Eventually Crosbie finds the right balance and pedals us toward campus, the paint can hanging from the handlebars and thumping against his knee.

“We don’t have to do this,” I say when we park at the building and clamber off awkwardly. Painting school property seems like a pretty solid way to get in trouble again, and Crosbie’s making no effort to hide the evidence of our poorly thought-out plan. Fortunately the lobby is even emptier now than when I first visited, and the security guard is nowhere in sight. Crosbie’s breathing hard from the exertion but I’m shivering from the cold and the warmth of the indoors is no match for my common sense.

Still, I’m supposed to be behaving better. “Crosbie,” I hiss, yanking my hand from his while he jabs the button for the elevator. “This seems like something that is most definitely against the rules.”

“It’s my name,” he says stubbornly, nudging me into the elevator when it arrives. “And I want it gone. If they won’t paint it, I will.”

We don’t speak for the rest of the ride, nor when we enter the women’s bathroom. Crosbie shucks his jacket so he doesn’t get paint on it, and after a reluctant second I do the same. “You seem pretty comfortable in here,” I comment, earning myself a cutting look and a brush slapped into my hand none too gently.

He shakes up the can then wedges off the lid, sticking it in one of the sinks. “Which stall?” he asks.

I sigh and point to the correct one, trailing him inside like the world’s most aggrieved accomplice. He scans the wall until he sees his name, and I believe him when he says he’s never seen it before. From the way his eyes widen, I don’t think he’s seen any of this.

“You’ve never been up here?” I confirm. I know the lists are copied in the men’s bathroom as well, so he could have seen it.

He shakes his head distractedly, trailing a finger down his list to find the three most recent entries. They seem legit, first and last names, carefully dated. “I don’t know them,” he says, glancing at me. “And I know Kellan hasn’t exactly been a good example, but I learn names.”

“Okay, Crosbie.”

He sticks his brush in the paint and swirls it around, then carefully swipes it across his own name at the top. Watching it disappear is unexpectedly sad and satisfying.

I’m envious. I wish erasing my own mistakes were this easy. Failed a bunch of classes? Nope. Got arrested? Never happened. Slept with your future boyfriend’s best friend? Definitely not.

I’m already addressing those mistakes the best I can, so I bend down and stick my brush in the can and help Crosbie cover up his. It only takes a few minutes but it’s unexpectedly rewarding, and soon we’re marching into the men’s bathroom and doing the same. It’s worth noting that the list in here still ends at twenty-five; the three mystery women are conspicuously absent. He doesn’t comment on it, though, and we paint in silence until the list is gone, a pale blue void on the graffiti-covered wall.

For a long moment we just stare at the empty space, and I wonder if he regrets it. If that list was the most tangible type of bragging right, proof positive that he’s a stud. “What do you think?” I ask eventually.