“Exactly. Which is part of the reason you never saw anything. You were too busy tied up in your own shit. As you should be,” he adds.
I sigh, turning left and right to check my reflection in the mirror one last time. “To be fair, I did suspect something weird was going on when she showed up at your room last semester. Before she took me on a walk to apologize for everything that went down. You guys did this…” I scrunch my nose, waving my hand in the air even though Bear can’t see me through the phone. “Thing where you just stared at each other all weird and didn’t say a word.”
Bear laughs. “Yeah. We’ve done a lot of that.”
“It’s weird,” I admit. “You two. But at the same time…”
“It fits.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “It really, really does.”
“We still have a lot to figure out.”
“Don’t we all.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were cool with it. Erin has been worried.”
I smile. “Look at you, handling shit on behalf of your lady. What a gentleman.”
“I’d do anything for her.”
“Okay, okay, stop before I gag,” I tease, but it’s more like stop before I cry because I’m so happy for two of my best friends. “I gotta go, Kip should be here any second.”
“Have fun tonight. And happy anniversary,” Bear says. “I still think you should have cleaned that motherfucker out in Vegas, but then again, we all do crazy shit for love.”
“You can say that again.”
“Love you, Sky.”
“I love you more. And hey,” I say, pausing a moment. “I’m really proud of you, graduate.”
“Thanks,” he says. “Now, the scary part.”
“Dating Ex?”
“Job hunting.”
I shiver. “I’m not sure which is more terrifying.”
Bear snorts. “Alright, alright, go have fun. I’ll see you at the barbecue tomorrow. My little brother will murder me if he doesn’t get to see his favorite girl before he flies back to Pitt.”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
With a kiss, I end the call, and then I let myself primp for a couple minutes more before I grab my purse and phone and fly down the stairs. The Kappa Kappa Beta house is empty, thanks to the end of the semester, but since I’m president, I don’t have to clean out my room, since I’ll be occupying it again in the fall.
Perks of the job.
I skid to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, chest aching a bit at the sight of the common room empty, the sound of silence echoing through the house.
One more semester, and this place will be a part of my past.
One more semester, and I’ll be on to the next chapter of my life.
Before I can get too wrapped up in the feels, I smile, walking outside and locking the door behind me. I wait on the front porch swing, enjoying the warm yet pleasant evening.
One year ago, Kip and I were head to head at the finals table in Las Vegas. That tournament seems so long ago now, and the girl who sat at that table is almost unrecognizable to me now. I learned a lot in the time Kip and I spent playing games with each other’s heart, and since then, we’ve survived the passing of his father, a semester of long distance, literally being on opposite sides of the country, and this semester? The reality of being in a relationship while also still chasing our own dreams.
Other than Spring Break, we’ve barely been able to spend time together. Kip has been busy directing and producing his show, while I’ve been working on the casino boat, running the sorority, and keeping up with my classes in the midst of it all. Plus, knowing that Bear was graduating, I tried to spend as much time with him as I could.
It makes me kind of sad, really, because just five months ago when Kip told me he was going to be here for the spring and summer semester, all I could think about was how we’d have so much time together, and how great it would be to be at the same university.
And now, on the other side of it, I feel more distance between us than I did when he was in California.
I know this is part of being in a healthy relationship, that we’re both going to have to do our own thing from time to time. And I want him focused on his show. Still, I can’t deny that I’ve had nights I’ve been pretty butthurt that I have an evening free, but he doesn’t. And it seemed like any time he was free, I wasn’t.
We were constantly spinning around each other, rarely ever catching the other in the same place.
But nothing lasts forever, and now that we’ve gotten through the semester, we have the whole summer to be together. Sure, he’ll still be working on the show and I’ll have work, but it’ll be a small break from the sorority, and hopefully there will be plenty of time for beach days and date nights and us time.