“What are you doing all this work for?” Jackie blurted out in the silence as Charlotte reeled. “Is this the life you want? Letting some asshole berate you twenty-four-seven? Is this really who you thought you’d be?”
And then it was back…the oil slick of shame as Ben leered at her. The noxious gray fumes of Roger’s cruelty. The darkness of a subway tunnel.
Charlotte swallowed, licked her lips. “I’m sorry I don’t have the luxury of thinking like that,” she hissed. “I’m just trying to get through the day, every fucking day.”
Jackie looked desperate. She floundered for something to say, her eyes darting. Finally she gasped, “You don’t have to live in survival mode!”
“I don’t have a choice.” Charlotte’s voice had turned to steel again, low and uncompromising. “I don’t have a family, Jackie. I can’t depend on anyone but myself.”
Jackie’s eyes finally brimmed over with tears. Her mouth flattened into a thin line. “You’re gonna feel like a real asshole tomorrow for saying that,” she said.
Goddamn it, she already did.
“I can’t be here right now.” Charlotte dropped from the bed and shoved her feet into her loafers.
Jackie watched open-mouthed as she grabbed her phone from its charging cradle on the dresser. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see you later.”
The heavy dorm room door slammed shut behind her, locking automatically. Charlotte realized a second too late that she forgot the keys.
—
TEXT MESSAGE FROM REECE KRUEGER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 1:17 AM: hey. just making sure you’re okay?
Charlotte took the long, winding footpath from the dorm to the south side of campus. The ambling route let her skirt University Road and the foot traffic to Senior Housing. It also kept her far from frat row, where Ben would retreat when he tired of the Lawn Party.
Better to stick to the dirt path and the dark.
She couldn’t think. All she knew was swirling color, anger clotting red in her lungs, guilt blue-black in her throat. She tried to breathe, gathering lungfuls of oxygen and expelling them in slow exhales. It didn’t help.
You worthless piece of shit.
Reece was mad at her. Now so was Jackie. Maybe Jio and Nina too, going off what Jackie said about them not hearing from her enough. She had neglected huge swaths of her life, and then tonight she’d burned whatever had survived the drought.
Jackie was wrong. Jackie was right. Charlotte hated her job, and she needed her job. She missed her friends, and her friends didn’t understand her anymore.
She hated her life, and she couldn’t live it any other way.
Right now she needed to be somewhere safe. Somewhere she didn’t have to deal with Jackie or Ben or Reece. Somewhere free of traumatic memories or insulting advice. Somewhere she was accepted without question.
She turned the corner on University Road and headed down the row of student program houses. The front door at Acronym would be unlocked. She could pour herself a steaming cup of coffee in the kitchen. Maybe someone would go halvsies with her on a pizza.
Charlotte stopped short on the sidewalk. A man stood in front of Acronym, his hands thrust in his back pockets. He stared at the wood-frame house like a soldier preparing himself for battle, his body rigid with anxiety. It seemed she wasn’t the only person on their own tonight, avoiding the crowds and battling inner demons.
The man shifted his weight onto his other foot. The beam of a streetlight caught his profile, illuminating his furrowed brow. Garrett still wore his clothes from the quarry, a loose bro tank and basketball shorts.
It didn’t make sense: him, here, with that expression his face. She knew it deep in her soul, his frown severe as he worried over the house in front of him.
She had stumbled across a private moment of reckoning. Once upon a time as a freshman, Charlotte stood there herself, weighing her preppy clothes and fledgling queer identity against the explosive color of the LGBTQIA+ center and worrying that she wouldn’t belong. Gathering the courage to ring the doorbell. Not knowing the doorbell was broken and she should knock, or better yet just let herself in.
Charlotte hesitated. Her riot of emotions quieted as she considered Reece’s best friend. Should she turn around and leave him alone, pretend she’d never seen him here? Surely Garrett didn’t want an audience, least of all her.
Then again, taking that first step up the path was so much easier with someone by your side.
Before she could decide, Garrett noticed her in the distance. He stiffened, his shoulders hunching. They eyed each other for an uncertain moment, their usual tension not fitting this new setting.
“Hi,” Charlotte ventured. She knew better than to smile and feign a friendship that didn’t exist.
Garrett didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move either.
After waiting a beat, she closed the distance between them, stopping a few feet away.
Still, he stayed quiet.
Charlotte mirrored his posture and turned to face the house. Even at the late hour, Acronym pulsed with life and belonging. The curtains were drawn but figures passed by the windows, silhouetted against the glow. A Mitski song flirted with the breeze from an open window.
“Quiet down here, huh?” Charlotte said. “The tent got too loud for me.”
In her peripheral vision, Garrett’s mouth twitched. “Hot too,” he agreed. He sounded wary.
“I need coffee,” she carried on, like they made small talk all the time instead of glaring at each other behind Reece’s back. A Progress Pride flag fluttered on the porch railing, pleasant as a queer Norman Rockwell painting. “They always have a pot brewing in the kitchen.”
Nothing from Garrett.
“I nearly started a fire junior year,” she added. “Poured in too many grounds.”
Garrett laughed, and then coughed. She cast him a quick glance. The tension in his shoulders relaxed somewhat, which seemed like a good sign. They formed a united front and considered the façade of the house together.
