: Chapter 5

It’s five thirty in the morning when I clock out of my shift, shoulder open the library doors, and emerge into the real world. The sky is still dark and star-speckled. In the orange glow of the lampposts stationed around the quad, there’s a misty haze from the sprinklers in the grass. No one else is in sight. But that’s typical—no one else has a good reason to be on campus before sunrise on a Saturday. I’m sure most of Clement’s student body is still asleep.

An unwelcome image flickers into my head: Vincent Knight, curled up under a cloud of blankets and duvets, hair mussed and eyelashes like dark feathers in the hollows over his cheeks.

“Oh, fuck off,” I grumble.

It’s been a good seven hours now since he came into the library, and I’m stuck between wishing he never had and wishing I hadn’t let him leave. Because what if that was it? My one chance to see what it feels like to live out my very own romance novel.

I don’t need a man, I remind myself. Nobody needs a man.

I’m fine. I’ll be fine.

I unchain my bike from the racks out front (with a bit more aggression than is strictly necessary) and pedal home, my teeth chattering in the cool California fall air.

Harper, Nina, and I lease an apartment a couple blocks north of campus. It’s an old redbrick building nestled beneath wide oak trees that shed leaves onto the sidewalk below regardless of the season. They crunch under my sneakers as I tie up my bike and march up the front steps.

On most Saturday mornings, I’m as quiet as humanly possible when I get home so I don’t wake up my roommates. But today, I don’t have to bother—as soon as I step out of the stairwell on the second floor, I hear the unmistakable sound of Harper and Nina’s laughter muffled through the wall.

I barely have the keys in the lock before the door flies open, and there’s Harper, her corkscrew curls pulled back in a loose ponytail and fine glitter dusted across her dark cheekbones.

“Surprise!” she whisper-shouts. “We made you breakfast.”

Over her shoulder, I can see Nina standing at the stovetop, spatula in hand.

“You guys are up?” I take in Harper’s smeared makeup and Nina’s deflated brown waves. They haven’t roused themselves at the crack of dawn just to treat me to eggs and toast. “Oh my God, you haven’t slept.”

“Nope,” Harper says with a giddy grin.

“We got home, like, half an hour ago,” Nina tosses over her shoulder. “Do you want raspberry jam?”

“Yes, please.” I toe off my sneakers and slide onto one of the stools at the kitchen island. “The party was good, then?”

“So good,” Nina says as she pops a slice of bread into the toaster. “They hired a bartender, so the drinks were actually cold and not completely disgusting. I had a mai tai. A mai tai, Kendall. I never want to drink jungle juice again.”

“God, I can’t wait until we’re all twenty-one,” Harper says. “But until then, the basketball team knows how to throw a fucking party.”

There’s a soft, dreamy look on her face. Harper is a brilliant swimmer, a disciplined business major, and a complete and utter softy when it comes to stories of recovery, sacrifice, and generosity. Nina and I never go a week without her reading us some Humans of New York post or an inspirational news story. But this look? This one is new. I raise an eyebrow at Nina, who smiles knowingly as she slides my plate of eggs and toast across the counter.

“Jabari Henderson held her hand,” Nina whispers.

I gasp with scandalized delight and turn to Harper, who throws herself onto the stool next to mine and hides her face behind her hands.

“Oh my God,” she moans.

“What happened?” I demand. “Tell me now.”

“After a few too many rum and Cokes, I got way too bold, and my dumb ass decided to ask him what he was drinking—”

“And then he took her to the bar to get her one!” Nina cries. “He held her hand—”

“Because it was crowded.”

“That’s still flirting, you moron. It’s a move.”

I nibble at my toast as I watch my giddy (and maybe still a little drunk) roommates make faces at each other. “I thought the team was on social probation before the season?”

“Oh, they are,” Nina says. “But what a fucking joke. The whole team was there, and I’m pretty sure I saw all the starters do a round of shots together.”

“Except Knight,” Harper amends.

My heart hiccups at the sound of his name.

Nina frowns. “Yeah, he was missing, which was weird. Usually, he’s all over that shit.”

Vincent left the library at about eleven o’clock last night. I figured he went home. But I’m fairly certain all the starters live in the off-campus house the basketball team leases, so that doesn’t seem to line up. What, did he march through a sea of drunk kids and all his teammates—unnoticed—just to shut himself away in his room with Engman’s Anthology?

“Maybe he went to a bar?” Nina suggests.

“I don’t think he’s twenty-one.”

“But he’s a senior, right?” I ask before I can shut myself up. “Maybe he decided to get serious and cut back on the drinking.”

“Or,” Nina says, “maybe he’s got a girlfriend.”

The toast in my mouth turns to dust.

Harper, savior of my sanity, shakes her head. “Knight’s never had a girlfriend. He probably skipped the party because of his wrist. If he’s on painkillers and he’s not allowed to have any alcohol, I doubt he wanted to spend all night surrounded by drunk people.”

Nina hums in agreement, then yawns. “God, I cannot wait to pass out.”

“We’re all sleeping in, right?” I ask.

“Oh, of course.”

“Wait, Kendall,” Nina says, “how was the library? Any new book recommendations for me?”

I smile down at my eggs. “I got through the first few chapters of The Mafia’s Princess. I think you’d like it—the writing’s solid, the love interest isn’t obsessive or creepy, and I think it’s going to get pretty spicy. I’ll leave it on your desk when I finish it.”

“You didn’t finish it? It must not have been that good, then. You always finish books in one sitting.”

I shrug. “I had a busy shift.”

For a moment, I worry Nina is going to press me and I’ll have to choose between lying to her (something I hate doing) and telling her what, exactly, made this shift so special. But then Harper finds glitter on her palm and asks if her eye shadow is smudged, and Nina cackles and informs her that her eye shadow has been all over her face for the better part of the night.

I decide not to tell them about my little rendezvous with Vincent.

If I don’t talk about what happened, then it’s mine. Mine to turn over in my head late at night and analyze. I don’t want Harper and Nina’s input to distort things, especially if one of them tells me something that’ll completely rot the memory—like that Vincent Knight always wanders around campus looking for quiet corners to seduce naive girls, and that what happened between us was nothing more than a routine seduction for him.

It probably was.

But I don’t want to know. I’d prefer not to ruin the story in my head.

• • •

All week long, I do my best to forget Vincent Knight—and all week long, I fail miserably.

I’m haunted by thoughts of dark eyes and love sonnets. There’s no escape. Not when I’m brushing my teeth. Not when I’m sitting in the middle of a crowded lecture hall and frantically scribbling notes before the professor clicks to the next slide. Not when I’m scrolling through Instagram. Not when I’m snuggled under my covers at night, listening to podcasts about meditation or true crime. Not even when I’m at the grocery store with Harper and Nina, all three of us in our sweats and flip-flops as we congregate in the candy aisle to select our movie night snacks.

And definitely not when, instead of our agreed-upon movie, Harper turns on basketball.

“Hey!” I protest. “We agreed on a Tom Hanks movie.”

“I just want to check the score, you big baby.”

Clement’s playing our first game of the season. It’s only the end of the first quarter, but we’re already up by twelve. I watch the players run up and down the court and tell myself that I’m not looking for floppy dark hair, devilishly intelligent brown eyes, and the mouth that kissed me senseless. But he’s not out there. He must still be recovering.

I’m still recovering too. And that’s a nice thought. That eventually I might be healed from this, and I won’t have to try so hard not to think about being kissed by a boy who doesn’t even know my last name.

Nina clears her throat. For a moment, I think she’s on to me, but then she says, “Jabari looks good out there.”

Harper chucks one of our decorative pillows at her. Nina cackles as it hits her square in the chest and knocks her backward in the armchair.

I laugh, too, but the camera angle shifts, and I almost choke on a peanut M&M—because there’s Vincent Knight. On our television screen. In my apartment. Where I live. He’s standing just behind Clement’s bench in a suit jacket and a crisp white shirt with the top two buttons undone. The sling is gone, but he’s still wearing the bulky black brace around his wrist.

He looks like a fucking prince. Beautiful, regal, and completely untouchable.

“Can we please change the channel now?” I snap, my heart hammering.

My roommates are too busy launching pillows back and forth—Nina has started making kissing noises; Harper is threatening to strangle her with her bare hands—so I’m the one who has to grab the remote.

I’ve never been so grumpy during a Tom Hanks movie.