Ritual - Palm South University

I clear my throat, aiming for nonchalance. “Fine.”

With my mission accomplished, I turn, tossing the ping pong ball across the table. It bounces once and sinks into the right back cup, and the boys roar in approval.

I wink at Kade, who’s laughing his ass off, and then I waltz my ass right on out of there with a victory smile on my face.I AM THE MOST pathetic piece of shit.

I run another hand through my greasy hair, feeling that sentence sink into my veins like venom. I haven’t slept more than a few hours since the Halloween party, when Cassie told me she wouldn’t choose between me and Grayson, and to me, that meant she’d already made a choice.

And once again, it wasn’t me.

Eating has been impossible. I’ve taken to drinking protein shakes with a shit ton of vegetables just to keep my nutrition up because solid food just isn’t an option. And currently, though it’s gorgeous outside, I’m in my dark bedroom all alone with Thirty Seconds to Mars blasting in my headphones.

I’m perfectly content to waste my day away. It’s what I’ve been doing for the past week and a half, and every day I go without Cassie showing up at my door, I realize I’d be content to do this for the rest of my life. Who needs a presidency? Who needs a college degree? Who needs sunlight or friends or something to live for?

I’ve hit some lows in my life, but this might be the lowest.

Because for the first time, I’ve lost Cassie not because of something stupid, but because of something real that we couldn’t see eye to eye on.

That we maybe never will.

And I have to decide if this is what will end it all.

I roll over to face my wall, but before I can curl into a fetal position, my headphones are ripped from my ears.

I don’t even yell at the offender — especially when I see Jeremy’s annoyed expression staring back at me in the dim light of my bedroom. I just sigh and face the wall again, resigned.

“You’re wasting your time,” I mutter.

“Yeah. And you’re wasting your senior year.” Jeremy reaches over me, ripping the navy-blue curtains on my window open before I can prepare for it. I shrink away from the sunlight, shielding my eyes and shoving him off my bed.

“Asshole.”

“Get up.”

He yanks the covers off me, and I try to rip them back, but he chucks them across the room before I can.

“Look. It’s been almost two weeks. I’m tired of this shit, and so is everyone else. So, if you need to talk about what happened at the Halloween party, let’s talk.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t?” Jeremy deadpans.

When I say nothing, he shakes his head and pulls up my desk chair to sit in front of my bed. He straddles it backward, leaning his arms on the back of it with a heavy sigh.

“Fine. I’ll talk.” But before he says another word, he reaches over and thunks me on the forehead. “Why are you such a fucking idiot when it comes to Cassie McBee?”

I sit up, a bit stunned and a lot pissed, ready to slug him off his chair, but he easily dodges my fist and shoves me back onto the bed — hard.

“No, you had your chance to talk and didn’t say shit. So you sit there and listen.”

I’m panting, gritting my teeth, but I know Jeremy well enough to know he’s not here out of disrespect.

If anything, he’s here because he cares about me.

And that’s a helluva lot more than I can say for anyone else.

“Look. I get it. If I had a girlfriend and she was hanging out with her ex-boyfriend, I’d be fucking livid, too. In fact, I probably would have run over to them the first time I saw them together and laid him out. But here’s the thing — you sat on it for weeks, and grew all this resentment, so much so that by the time you two hashed it out, you were so heated and so far up your own ass that you couldn’t even listen to her.”

“What the fuck was I supposed to listen to?” I argued. “She told me that no matter what I said or did, she wasn’t going to choose between us.”

“Because she doesn’t think she should have to! And honestly, Adam — do you?”

I blew out a breath like a dragon. “I don’t think I even should have had to ask her.”

Jeremy holds up his hands. “Just think about it for a second. Okay? Do you remember all that fucking shit that went down with her and our stupid asshat for a president?”

I swallow, because I’ll never forget the night Cassie climbed into my window and into my bed and I held her against my chest while she cried. She told me I was right about Clay, who had been fucking around with her and her high school best friend at the same time. She found out in the crudest way possible at a party after her first semester at PSU, and I’d been there for her.