Mads tilted her head in question.
“What?” I mashed the pillow beneath my head. “I listen to music when I sleep.” If she had a problem with it, too bad. I figured it was my room, so my rules.
She got under the covers, lying on her side so she could look at me from the other side of the bed. “I wouldn’t have guessed you listened to emo music.”
Because the music was soft and stripped down, just piano, or acoustic guitar. “Yeah, well, we don’t really know each other, do we?”
Why did something like sadness flicker through her eyes? It was gone a heartbeat later. “No. We don’t.”
“That reminds me. Give me your phone.”
Her expression turned suspicious. “Why?”
“I’ll give you my number.”
She unlocked her phone and reluctantly handed it over. I opened a new text message, put in my number, and typed out a message. As soon as I hit ‘send,’ my phone’s screen brightened with the incoming message, momentarily lighting the room.
When I passed her phone back to her, she read what I’d sent and gave me a plain look.
Madison: Hi Colin, it’s Mads. You’ve got a big dick.
I flattened my palm to my chest, acting pleasantly surprised. “Why, thank you.”
She didn’t want to be amused, but she did a terrible job of hiding her smile. The bed shifted as she got comfortable, pulling the sheet up over her shoulder. If she was sending a message she wanted to sleep, I didn’t get it. Her eyes were alert as she peered at me. If she didn’t want to talk, I would have expected her to roll away from me.
“Are you going to the ABC party on Friday?” I asked.
“At the Sig house?” She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Um, no.”
Every year at the end of finals, the Sigs always hosted the biggest party of the semester. This one was going to be an ‘Anything But Clothes’ party, where people showed up wearing all sorts of crazy things like shopping bags or beer boxes duct taped together.
“Why not?” I asked. “We got kicked out, but we’re not banned. The party’s open. Anyone can go.”
“Oh, gee, I don’t know.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “Maybe because I’m public enemy number one over there?”
“You’re not. The Fidelity Cup shit went down a month ago. That’s like a lifetime to us frat guys, plus—”
“Jack will be there.”
My heart thudded slower. “You’re still hung up on him?”
“What? No.” She made a face. “But you said he told everyone I cheated on him.”
I didn’t understand why I cared about her going, but I pressed on anyway. “Then go to set the record straight.”
Her laugh was empty. “Right. Because they all totally believed me when I said Riley cheated.”
She had a point. Her focus drifted away, moving down to look at my hand that rested on the mattress between us. She seemed to trace each of my fingers with her gaze, and the room went quiet, other than the gentle music streaming from my phone.
“Can I ask you something?” Her voice was hushed. “Another favor.”
“Sure.”
She seemed to struggle with how to put it into words. “I know it’s stupid, and it doesn’t matter anymore, at least not to anyone else, but Riley cheated, Colin.” She swallowed a breath and her gaze slid back to mine. “Even if no one else believes me, it’d mean a lot . . . if you did.”
Tightness squeezed my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
There was no reason for her to lie about this, not a month later, and if she were telling the truth, she wouldn’t really gain anything except my support. She’d lost her friends and her house, and she stared at me like if she’d known that was going to happen—she still would have told the truth.
“I believe you,” I said.
She sighed as if she’d been holding it in for the last month, and her body softened with relief. It was such a big response for a simple, small thing.
“Thank you,” she said genuinely. “You probably think it’s strange I wanted that, but I went through some stuff a while ago with my parents, and since then, I’ve been,” she searched for the right word, “sensitive.”
It felt like it was okay to ask. “What happened?”
She took so long to speak I wasn’t sure she was going to answer, but then she shifted subtly closer to me. “My dad’s a compulsive gambler.” She let that statement sink in before continuing. “He hid it really well, too, but by my senior year of high school I started to suspect. Stuff would go missing—like, the expensive stuff—and he had these wild mood swings. Some days he’d come home from work elated, and other times he was so angry you could barely talk to him.”
There wasn’t much emotion in her voice, but I wondered if she was working hard to keep it that way.