Charlotte walks to her kitchenette and picks up a kettle that belongs in a design museum. It’s triangular with a blue handle that matches the toaster and with a little bird perched on its spout. Everything about this girl screams that she’s loved.
“Why are you licking your wounds?” she asks.
I stiffen. “Is it that obvious?”
She pulls off the kettle’s lid and fills it with water. “You only ever turn into a hermit when something’s wrong, so spill.”
My hand rises to the back of my neck, and I dart my gaze everywhere in the studio except for Charlotte, whose eyes burn the side of my face. The backs of my eyes grow hot, and I blink, determined not to cry.
I’ve been called worse things than a whore, and it’s silly that I’m allowing myself to get so worked up over a single word and one that he didn’t even say. But it’s those grains of truth in Professor Segul’s conversation that abrade me like sandpaper.
“Has something happened with your dad again?” Charlotte asks.
I shake my head. “No change on that front. He still hasn’t gotten in touch.”
“Then the hot guy?”
My shoulders rise up around my ears. “There is no guy.”
She exhales a long breath. “What happened?”
I turn to the window, where she’s left the curtains open, and gaze out into the campus lawns. Even if I’ve come to terms with how Professor Segul sees me, it’s still difficult to admit that it’s the truth.
Silence stretches on until the kettle makes a high-pitched whistle that pulls me out of my wallowing. I turn to Charlotte and force a smile.
“Let’s just say I heard him and another guy say some things I found unflattering.”
She scowls. “What a bastard.”
I run my fingers through my hair, blow out a long breath, and focus my gaze on the pair of men’s socks by the unmade bed. “I’m over it now. Lesson learned.”
“Phoenix?”
I wait for Charlotte to complete her question, but she remains silent until I turn to meet her eyes. They shine with so much sympathy that I have to swallow to loosen the thickening of my throat.
“What?” I ask.
“You were so happy before. Are you sure he was talking about you? I mean, what could he possibly have said to ruin things?”
I bite down on my bottom lip. In this world, sharing secrets can lead to arrests, and arrests can lead to retribution on the secret-teller. No matter how much I trust Charlotte, discretion has been ingrained in me from before the time I could talk.
“It’s nothing, really,” I murmur.
Her phone buzzes, and she skips to her bag. “That’s probably Axel.” She opens it and pulls out her phone. “We spent the entire weekend together—Oh!”
“What?” I walk toward her and frown.
“I got a first for Advanced Finance and Accountancy.” She turns to me, her eyes round. “I thought I’d get a third. Maybe even a 2:2.”
Some of the tightness in my chest loosens at the change in subject, and I give her my first genuine smile. Hardly anyone gets first classes here. The next grade down is a 2:1, which is great. 2:2 is average and a third means you didn’t mess up enough to fail.
“Hey, congratulations,” I say.
“What did you get?”
“Umm…” I walk back to my bag. It takes a few tries to find my phone under all the books and papers and crap, but when I turn it on, there are dozens of notifications from Professor Segul.
Ignoring them, I tap into the home screen, where there’s a number 2 circled in red on the University Intranet app.