I turn back to the girl and she looks away, down at the ground. I let out a breath and step over to her. “You okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine. He’s just… he’s just an asshole. I don’t think he was going to, you know… do anything.”
“I saw a lot of it,” I say, my voice soft. “He already shoved you.”
She looks away again. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“Chloe…”
“It wasn’t that bad,” she repeats, meeting my gaze, her eyes hard.
I nod once. “Sure.” We lapse into silence and I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to push her if she’s not ready to talk about what just happened, but I also can’t just let her be alone. I cock my head a little and lets my eyes roam along her body before landing on her lips again. “Why don’t you let me walk you home.”
She hesitates then shrugs. “Sure, whatever. It’s not that far. I’m fine, though.”
“You got anyone at home?” I ask.
“My roommate,” she says. “We live in an apartment just off campus.”
“Good, okay.” I let out a breath. “I don’t want to leave you alone tonight.”
“I’m really fine,” she says.
“I know you are. Come on, let’s get you home.”
She bites her lip but doesn’t argue. She falls into step with me, leading the way across campus.
CU is right in the heart of LA, not too far from USC. We’re minutes from the beach, and a lot of kids come here to party and surf. That’s not so bad, if they’re getting their work done, but a lot of them don’t, and CU has high academic standards. Because of that, CU has a high dropout rate.
But the campus itself is beautiful. Contemporary architecture meets classical Ivy League styling, though we’re not an Ivy school. Chloe walks down the brick sidewalk, past a large bubbling fountain just outside of the admin building with its long white columns, and heads toward the main road that cuts through campus.
“So how do you know Erik?” I ask her, trying to think of anything to say.
“Tutoring,” she says. “We met tutoring, you know, for the team. He wasn’t so bad at first.”
I hesitate but decide to press a little. “But then?”
She glances at me. “He can be a little pushy. Entitled, I guess. I’ve been tutoring him in math, which is pretty bad considering he’s in the dumbest math class available.”
“Math for athletes,” I say with a grin. “We refer to it as Math for Toddlers.”
She laughs a little. “Exactly. And he needs tutoring. For a really smart football player, that kid is dumb as a rock.”
“Probably just doesn’t care,” I say. “So what happened with him?”
“Well, he wanted me to go to his place on campus for studying. We’re not really supposed to do that, since I get paid. I’m supposed to do it during official hours, you know? But I figured, what the hell, he’s the star player. Can’t hurt to help out a little more. So I went over.” She stops talking as we get to a crosswalk. We stand and wait for the light to change before heading out. When we reach the other side, we’re officially off campus. There’s a row of low buildings, shops at the bottom, apartments at the top. Most of the shops are chains, like Chipotle and Gap, the sort of stuff college kids want.
“What happened next?” I ask.
“He got pushy,” she says. “Wanted… you know. More.” She looks away. “I wasn’t interested. I managed to get out of there, but he kept following me, you know? Kept pestering me. Eventually I told him to fuck off, and I guess that’s when you came over.”
I let out a breath. “I see.”
“I don’t know what he planned on doing. I mean, he wasn’t going to really hurt me, right? He was just mad I told him to fuck off. Just wanted to get back at me.”
I frown a little but don’t say anything. It didn’t look like he was going to back down to me. In fact, in the moment, I was pretty sure he was going to hurt her even more if I didn’t stop it.
“This is me,” she says, stopping at an unmarked green door. It’s made of wood and metal, and some of the hinges are starting to rust. It looks like an old building, and I bet it hasn’t been updated since the day it was built. There are two intercoms on the right side and two small mailboxes hanging on the left. “We’re on the top floor.”
“Above a McDonald’s. Really nice.”
She smiles. “Smells like fries in my place all the time,” she says. “It was cool at first, but now I can’t eat the stuff anymore.”
“Not the biggest loss in the world.”
She laughs. “It is when you’re in college.”
“Fair point.” I smile at her and can’t help but move closer. She has a nice laugh, and her smile lights up her face. “Listen, are you sure you’re okay? We can talk, if you want, or we could—”