Noise rises around me like water, engulfing me. Voices and rustling. I lower my hands. Class dismissed. Crap, I spaced out and missed the end of the lesson. Shooting to my feet, I grab the hand of a girl I’ve talked to a couple of times. Tattoos peek over her neckline.
“Dakota?” I say breathlessly.
She lifts a dark brow. “Yeah?”
“Can I borrow your notes? I’ll just make a copy and give them back real quick. Please?”
Hefting her black backpack on one shoulder, she bites into her bottom lip and glances toward the classroom exit. “Right… Aren’t you Zane’s friend? The one living with him?”
I nod, at a loss. “Yeah.”
“The one who kicked Asher out to the curb.”
Holy crapola. Is this how I will be known from now on? The bitch who kicked Asher while he was down? Not that it’s totally unfair, though. I take a step back. “Never mind. I’ll ask someone else.”
That brow lifts again, and this time her lips tip into a smile. “No, it’s fine. Take them. I’ll walk with you.”
“Thanks.” I try not to get whiplash from her mood changes. I grab my stuff, and we stroll out of class together, heading to the photocopy center of the campus. “I thought you were pissed with me,” I say before I can control my damn mouth. “Because of the Asher business.”
Dakota takes her time to reply. She takes a pack of chewing gum out of her bag and pops one into her mouth. She gestures for me to help myself to one, but I shake my head.
Blowing and popping bubbles, she says nothing until we enter the copy center, and I get a machine. She hands me her notes, written in a tight, barely legible script, and leans back against another machine, watching me.
“I’m not pissed with you,” she finally declares.
“Really.” Because the way she’d asked the question earlier could have fooled me. “You’re friends with Ash.”
“No. With Audrey.”
I wince. “Right.”
She shrugs and picks at her sleeve. “I barely know Asher. He seems like a decent guy. And I barely know you. I thought, I don’t know. Maybe you had your reasons for what you did.”
“Maybe.” Bad reasons, all of them.
“We all have our reasons for what we do,” she says, and it sounds somehow ominous.
“Like your reasons for helping me out now?” I don’t mean it seriously, but her blue eyes narrow and she shifts from foot to foot.
Oh, I see. She isn’t doing this out of the goodness of her heart. Why should it surprise me? I go on copying the notes, waiting for her to say her piece.
“You, um.” She gives me a sidelong look. “You’re good friends with Zane.”
It’s not a question, so I wait some more. I finish up, gather her notes and hand them back to her.
“Do you think you could get a word in for me?”
“To Zane?”
“Yeah. I’ve tried and tried, but he just won’t do it.” She throws her hands into the air, her eyes flashing with frustration.
“Do what? Go out with you?”
Her face flushes. It’s a slow process, pink and then red spreading from the roots of her hair and her neck up to color her cheeks. “For a tattoo.”
I pause and let this sink in. “You want me to put a word in for Zane to ink you?”
“Yes!” She jumps up and down. “He knows the tattoo I want, and only he can do it. But he won’t.”
“You’ve already asked him, then. And he said no.”
She calms down and nods.
“Maybe he has his reasons, too.”
She flinches. “Maybe he’s mistaken.” She lifts her chin.
Her meaning is clear. It’s a challenge. She thinks Zane is mistaken, like I was. She wants me to fix one wrong to balance another.
Or maybe I’m the one seeing it as a challenge. Make this right, if you think you can, Erin. Go on. Do your best.
I huff a sigh. This is crazy thinking.
Stuffing the photocopies into my bag, I head toward the door. “I’ll see what I can do.”
***
On my way to my car, I almost plow into someone. A high-pitched squeal alerts me to the fact it’s a girl, and then I get another clue when she says, “Hey, Erin! How was your weekend?”
Tessa. She’s dressed smart, as always, in a designer gray dress and high black boots, a fine charcoal woolen coat wrapped around her. “Fine. Came back this morning.”
“Jax okay?”
“He’s fine.”
“Needed you to hold his hand again? Have you told him he acts like a three-year-old?” Tessa snickers. “Men. Always so childish.”
I say nothing to that, and she grabs my arm and drags me away from the parking lot, toward one of the campus cafes.