After class, as if nothing is wrong, Vince gives me a warm smile. “Hey, you.”
“Hey,” I say, but with much less affection.
“How are you this morning?”
“Good.”
He nods, seeming to retreat. I guess I can’t blame him, since I’m being shorter than I want to be, but he hasn’t been stuck inside my head all morning.
Out of the blue I ask, “When do I get to meet your friends?”
His eyebrows rise in surprise. “My friends?”
I go for casual and give him a little shrug. “Yeah. You never talk about your friends. You know who mine are—we haven’t hung out with them yet, but you know who they are.”
Smiling slightly, he says, “I don’t want to hang out with your friends.”
Well, they don’t want to hang out with him either, but I don’t say that. “But you never mention yours.”
“I don’t really have friends here,” he tells me.
“I just… I don’t get to meet your family, I don’t get to meet your friends…”
He slows down, wariness transforming his expression. “What’s going on? Is this about last night?”
I feel so lame, but I can’t help feeling weird about missing out on all the normal stuff, about how little he can actually offer me. “No, it’s just… You won’t even give me your phone number, Vince. You get to do whatever you want, and I get…”
I don’t say ‘nothing,’ but I may as well have. The word hangs, unspoken, in the air between us.
He sighs, looking past me. “I told you that from the start. I told you I didn’t have much to offer,” Vince reminds me.
And I didn’t want to get involved, I want to remind him. I want to revisit how I resisted—but I ultimately gave in, because there’s this sadness in him that I feel like I should tend to.
Finally he asks, “What do you need from me, Mia?”
But I don’t know what to tell him. I need more than he can give, and yet even as that thought emerges, I shove it away. I’m not ready to give up on this. It might be foolish, it will definitely hurt more the longer I hang on, but… I’m just not.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking down at the ground instead of at him.
He sighs, and I’m surprised when he wraps an arm around me, giving me a loose hug right here in the middle of the hallway. “I don’t want to make you sad.”
“You don’t make me sad,” I tell him. “Your circumstances, maybe.”
“Yeah, me too,” he mutters.
“Promise me something,” I tell him, swallowing my doubts. “If you start seeing someone else, you have to tell me. Don’t make a fool out of me because I’m trying to make all these exceptions for you.”
Vince scowls, but I can’t tell why. “I wouldn’t do that, Mia.”
I nod, feeling a little less anxious.
He catches my chin lightly and tilts it up until I’m gazing into his earnest brown eyes. “I’m not interested in anyone but you. That’s not what any of this is about. You know that, don’t you?”
“It’s what I believe,” I say. But that’s not the same thing as knowing.
He frowns a little, brushing his lips across my forehead before pulling away. “We should start walking or we’re gonna be late again.”
I nod, slowly making my way down the hall with him beside me.
—
It’s a long day. I’m worn out from Vince and Lena and my own stupid brain—I’m just depleted. What I want most in the world is to go home and fall into bed, sleeping peacefully for four or five days. What I want least in the world is what actually happens.
“Hey! Hey, are you Mia?”
I slow down at the sound of my name, turning around to see who’s chasing me.
And it’s Minka Kelly.
I’m able to pretend for zero seconds that I’m pleased to see her. “Yeah.”
“Hi,” she says, grinning at me. God, she’s so pretty.
“Hi,” I reply, not smiling back.
“You’re Vince’s friend, right?”
Hearing her refer to me as Vince’s friend is maybe the only thing that could piss me off more than I already am at the world today. “Yeah. I’m Vince’s friend,” I say flatly.
Her smile dims slightly, then she grimaces a little. “Sorry, he told me you guys were having a rough day.”
My stomach twists up into a knot, and it takes a Herculean effort to remain there instead of turning and literally running away.
“Do you like cupcakes?” she asks.
I stare at her wordlessly.
“Vince thinks we should be friends,” she says, trying again. “Sorry, I know it must be weird to be accosted by a stranger, but he asked me to.”
I don’t know how to feel about that, but my stomach is still knotted. I did ask to meet his friends. Maybe this is his way of trying.
Thrusting her hand in my direction, she says, “I’m Cherie.”