Chapter Thirty-Eight

I arrived home to a fuming Sophia. She was pacing when I opened the door and strode over to me in two steps. My mind flew into a panic, wondering how she knew already, logic not having time to filter through.

“Where have you been?” she seethed.

“I told you before I left that I was going to work on LGBTQA stuff with another officer,” I told her, puzzled by her anger.

“If that is what you were doing, why didn’t you answer any of my texts?” Her face contorted into a snarl.

My brows furrowed in confusion. I pulled my phone from my purse. Sure enough, there were ten texts waiting for me. I opened them and read the progression of Sophia’s patience and mood.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I got caught up in conversation with Hugh, and I didn’t hear my phone.”

“Seriously? Ten times! What if something had been wrong? What if I had needed you to come home?”

“I already said I’m sorry. And you didn’t need me to come home—you wanted to make sure I wasn’t out cheating on you. Are we still limiting this to Summer, or do you think I’m just giving it to everyone but you?”

My temper, so close to the surface from our almost constant fighting, boiled over. I hadn’t moved away from my mother to be bossed around by someone else. My revelation for the night was wiped from my mind as I reared back to defend myself from the coming onslaught.

“I don’t know, you tell me. Are you giving it to everyone else? Obviously someone enjoyed the show you gave them for the two of you to have been out so late. Or was that just a rehearsal before you take your show on the road?!”

In a snap reaction which took into account little to nothing about the consequences of the action, my hand came up from my side, almost of its own accord. The sound it made was deafening as it struck its mark. I had never slapped someone other than Clayton, and I hadn’t stayed around to watch the aftermath when I had hit him. Sophia’s face lit up with shock. Her hand flew to her cheek to grasp the place where a red hand print was already rising up in the wake of my hand. She stepped back from me, and I stood there glowering at her, unable to move to help her or escape her and completely unsure I wanted to do either.

After the initial surprise wore off, Sophia dropped her hand from her face and squared her shoulders, an emblazoned replica of my hand shining on her face.

“Are you proud of yourself now?” she spat at me.

“You have completely lost yourself in this war you insist on waging against my libido. When you can find the decent, self-controlled human being I began this relationship with, then and only then, can you call me.” I turned and left.

It was around four in the morning. I had left the library about an hour ago. I didn’t know where to turn, so I walked back to the library.

#

I was woken rather roughly around 9 am by campus security.

“If you’re not here to study, then it would be best if you went home,” said a gruff voice by my side, a hand on my shoulder.

I woke groggy and confused about why this person was in my room until I remembered I was in the library, the memory of a few hours earlier resurging. I got up and headed toward the elevators. I didn’t have class for another couple of hours, so I headed down in the elevator. It stopped a couple of floors below, and I hoped security had already walked through them. I went to a book shelf, pulled some books out and placed them on a table. I laid my head down for some more sleep.

I awoke two hours later to the sound of voices and laughter, books being plopped on tables. I sat up and checked my phone for the time. I had class in five minute across campus then another class right after, consuming three hours of my day. Heaving myself up out of the chair, I walked toward the elevators.

I’m not even sure why I bothered to trudge to class. I hadn’t slept enough, and my mind was not up for following what the teacher was saying, even if I had slept. I contemplated leaving class and going back to the library but knew it wouldn’t fix anything. While staring blindly toward the projector screen the teacher was using for the lecture, I knew I only had two options. I could call Noah, or I could call Summer. Calling Noah would be the smarter choice, the choice to not selfishly involve someone who was already hurting due to a mess I kept her circling around simply to make myself feel better. But I hadn’t been feeling particularly smart as of late. I knew to call Noah would mean a discussion about how I had shut him out of the most recent decline of my relationship, and I felt guilty. I knew I would call Summer even as I ran the list of reasons I shouldn’t through my head.

After I was released from the second class, I called Summer. It was the first time I had spoken to her since we parted ways earlier in the month, about three weeks ago. For Summer and me, this was a comparatively short amount of time to go without speaking to each other.

Summer answered on the second ring.

“Hello?” Her voice was higher than normal, strained.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked, my eyebrows coming together in concern.

“What do you mean? You called me,” she said, her voice struggling to return to normal.

“You sound strange—tense. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything is fine. What’s up with you?”

“I need a place to stay,” I blurted out, not wanting to talk about the fight, just wanting the situation to go away.

“You what?” Summer asked as I heard a loud clatter followed by laughter from the back ground.

“What was that?”

“I fell out of bed.”

“If you were in bed, then who was laughing?”

All noise on Summer’s end of the line stopped.

“Hello?” I said, irritated and feeling jealous on top of everything else.

“Yeah?”

“What is going on?” I questioned, my voice clipped.

“Nothing,” she answered, her voice too short to be normal.

A realization dropped into the pit of my stomach.

“Are you with someone right now?”

“I told you this was going to happen. You knew very well this was a possibility,” she explained calmly, seemingly bored with the conversation.

“I thought you were just saying it to make me jealous.”

“Well, if saying it made you jealous, I knew actually doing it might bring you to your senses.”

In the background I heard a female voice ask, “Is that her?”

“Shut up,” Summer said in answer to her question.

“How could you? I needed you, and now you’ve blown that apart too!” I cried, my voice straining and faltering.

I began to feel the prickle of tears in my eyes, the day kept getting worse and worse.

“I’m sorry,” Summer began, the gravity of the situation finally reaching her. “Listen, it’s just my roommate. She came in to bring me the laundry, and you happened to call at the same time. What I did was childish, and I’m sorry.”

“That’s really not cool,” I said fighting off my tears.

“I know, I’m sorry. I thought it was just a social call,” she said.

I sucked it up. I knew what she did wasn’t right, but she was the lesser of two evils right now.

“I need a place to stay,” I said again.

“Why? What happened?”

“I’ll tell you, just say I can come there.”

“Of course you can, is that even a question?”