Noelle comes closer and places one of her hands on my chest. She gives me a light shove but my feet are squarely planted so I don’t budge even a centimeter.
She sighs. “Look, Aimee and I don’t have time to debate your man-whore status right now. We haven’t seen each other in a long time and we’re trying to catch up, so why don’t you scoot along and go annoy someone else?”
Ignoring Noelle’s hand on my chest, I turn to Aimee and ask, “So you and Noelle are old friends?”
Noelle doesn’t seem to care that the question wasn’t directed at her, and she’s answering before Aimee can even open her mouth. “Yes. She’s a year younger than me and we swam together back in high school. Are you satisfied, Cole?” She makes a shooing gesture. “Now be gone, pretty boy.”
I blink, my eyes narrowing in on Aimee’s blue irises. “You swam?”
“Yeah… I did, but not anymore.” Aimee nods slowly and crosses her arms protectively in front of her chest. I think she looks too small and fragile to be a swimmer. Maybe she got sick and that’s why she had to quit.
“She was All-State for the 200 yard medley and the 100 yard Butterfly her junior year,” Noelle tells me with a satisfied smile.
This surprises me and has my mind all over the place. All-State? That means that she was good. Very good. “If you were All-State, why did you quit?”
The two girls share a look and I notice the way that Aimee’s forehead compresses and how she unconsciously touches the scar on her neck. “Other things came up and it was a lot of pressure.”
“Huh.” I pause. “If you went to high school with Noelle then you must know Daniel Kearns because he went to the same school.”
She lifts her chin a fraction and her blue eyes boggle. “Daniel? You know Daniel Kearns?”
I bark out a laugh. “Yeah, of course I know Daniel. He’s one of my roommates and we run track together.” My gaze swings over Noelle to the sidewalk behind me where Daniel stopped to check out one of the tables. “He was right behind me. Should I get—”
Aimee cuts me off abruptly, her now panicked eyes darting to Noelle’s face. “I—I don’t understand. I thought he was on scholarship at Michigan.” She clenches her fingers and sucks in a ragged breath.
She seems ready to crawl out of her own skin and this awful sensation slithers over my shoulders. Does this girl have some sort of history with Daniel? Did they go out?
Noelle’s features contort into a grimace. “I don’t know what to say, Aimee. I would have warned you but I just assumed that you already knew. Daniel transferred here last fall after... well, you know. His mom was having an especially hard time and he wanted to be closer to home.”
I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I can tell that something is very wrong. Aimee’s face looks pained and her eyes are getting shiny like she might start to cry. I touch her arm gently and her warm skin spasms beneath my fingertips. “Aimee—”
She doesn’t wait for me to finish. In one fluid movement, she drops her hand, pushes away from us and takes off across the courtyard. Noelle and I are left staring and stuttering in her wake.
CHAPTER TWO
Aimee
Luckily, I haven’t had any more unfortunate run-ins with people from my past. Mara reminds me every morning that the university is huge. Chances are slim, she says and I’m starting to think that she’s right.
It’s the second day of classes. So far I like all of my professors and the course material seems mildly interesting. I’m even considering applying for a position as an office assistant in the English Department. This, I realize with vague surprise, is what it feels like to settle in—to begin believing that life can be okay again.
With an hour to waste before my next class starts, I turn left in front of the Liberal Arts building and find a patch of summer-green grass to sit down on. Above me, the spindly palm trees buffer me from the pounding rays of the sun. Their fronds whistle in the light morning breeze and fan out across the sky like a web of papery green veins.
The professor for my Media Literacy class emailed the course syllabus out yesterday, so I take my book out of my bag and start to read ahead, taking notes in between bites of the donut I brought on campus with me.
I wasn’t always the diligent student that I am now. The first three years of high school I was too busy looking for a good time to be bothered with essays and reading assignments. Admittedly, my best friend was usually the catalyst for those good times. I can almost hear her voice, giddily pushing me toward her open bedroom window while I groggily complained that it was one in the morning.