“Pretend?”
“Yeah.” Before I can guess her intention, she lifts the edge of her tank top and turns slightly, revealing a white device attached to the small of her back. “I’m a diabetic. So while I can technically have a drink, the sugar content throws my glucose out of whack—”
I pluck the drink back out of her grip.
She stares at me, empty hand poised in the air.
“Why have you been pretending to drink?” I ask, cursing my awkwardness. “Why not say something?”
Her chin lowers a notch, her eyes no longer meeting mine. “I don’t know. Sororities are all about solidarity. Being a unit. I’m trying to convince them I belong. Why let them know I’m different so early on?” She seems to regret that honesty almost immediately, flashing me a teasing grin and twirling her streak of blue hair. “I know what you’re thinking. You’ve never seen a more quintessential sorority girl.”
Not wanting to say the wrong thing, I remain silent in the wake of her sarcasm. Truth is, she doesn’t strike me as someone who’d pledge a sorority.
“You want to say something.” She raises an eyebrow. “Go on.”
I rub the side of my neck. “I don’t even know your name and—”
“Birdie.”
“Birdie.” I let that settle in my chest. “You don’t seem like the type of person who would spend a week trying to gain someone’s approval.”
“You’re right, I’m not…”
“Jerimiah.” A few beats of silence pass. I know it’s probably my imagination, but it feels like we’re savoring the act of knowing each other’s names. “You’re right. I’m not the type to seek approval, although I’ll admit, sorority sisters are a lot more decent than I anticipated. Which is pretty annoying.” She doesn’t even flinch over my rumbling laugh. “We’ve spent the week creating a mural over in the quad. Kind of a serene landscape-type painting.” She lowers her chin. “My twin sister would have been first in line to sign up for Kappa Kappa Gamma. I’m doing it for her. If that means killing a few potted plants with lukewarm Pabst Blue Ribbon, I can soldier through. And I might not like vying for approval, but I found a way to honor her with the mural, so…at least I’m getting one thing out of it.”
There’s something in her eyes when she flashes a look up at me. It’s pain. I don’t have to ask to know that her sister is no longer with us. My arms suddenly feel empty without her inside them, which is crazy. I’ve never hugged her before. I can probably count on one hand the people I’ve hugged in my life when it wasn’t celebrating a touchdown. But that weight in my stomach is shifting, tugging, telling me she needs comfort. Too bad I’m the only one around and I don’t know how. “Would your sister want you to do something you didn’t like on her behalf?”
“What?” She asks the question too quickly, her chest beginning a rapid rise and fall. “I-I don’t know. You…what about you? Do you like running errands for those guys upstairs?”
“No.”
“Why do you do it?”
I can see my answer matters to her. She needs me to tell her the truth, even though it might lower her opinion of me—so I do. “Acceptance. Same as you.” I cough into my fist. “I’m not…you can probably tell I don’t fit in with the rest of them. Talking and trying to find things in common is so much harder than carrying a keg up the stairs.”
“Pretending to drink beer is so much easier than showing off my insulin pump.” She lifts a hand toward me. It hesitates in the air for a moment, then presses down in the center of my chest. My heart spurs into a gallop and I hear her breath catch among the muffled music pumping through the door. “It’s kind of a shame I don’t overdrink. If I was drunk like the rest of the freshman, I might let it slip that I really came down to the basement because I felt something in the kitchen.” Her tongue escapes to wet her lips. “When you looked at me.”
Is this actually happening? Or am I down at the bottom of the steps hallucinating? Not only is this gorgeous girl touching me, but we both felt what happened in the kitchen. That shift in the atmosphere wasn’t some figment of my imagination. She’s not afraid of me. She isn’t turned off by my bluntness and we have a common enemy—the need for acceptance—albeit for different reasons. Furthermore, both of us seem more comfortable in the dark and now we’re standing toe to toe, breathing the same air. While my brain tells me to wait, wait, make sure this is real? My body gravitates closer to hers with every kick of my pulse.
“I had to talk myself out of going to find you,” I rasp, risking a graze of my knuckles along her cheek, my head spinning with disbelief when she leans in to the touch.