Bend Me, Break Me (6 page)

I was in the communal bathroom on Sunday when another girl came in. I’d seen her around, so I knew she also lived on this floor.

“Hey,” she said, giving me a smile.

“Hey,” I said back, meeting her eyes in the mirror. She still had her pajamas on: a tank top with a strip of bacon on it and pants with the same pattern. Cute.

“I like your pajamas,” I said, in a freak moment of friendliness. She looked down at them and grinned.

“Thanks.” Figuring I should make a quick getaway, I gathered up my things in the basket I kept my bathroom items in and left before I could say anything else.

I wasn’t friend material.

Monday morning I woke up and just couldn’t get out of bed. My body ached and I had barely slept. Going to class was the last thing on my mind, so I decided to skip. This was the first time I’d done so, but I figured one day wasn’t going to matter. I’d just email my professors claiming some sort of bug and get my assignments sent to me.

Coen was going to be waiting for me, but I had no way to contact him to tell him I wouldn’t be there. Oh, well. Didn’t matter. He could drink my tea and give me the present on Wednesday.

The rest of the day I spent flipping through the channels on TV and eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon. I used to eat much better but now I forgot most of the time until I was absolutely starving and nearly to the point of passing out. Maybe I should go get some groceries.

Grabbing my coat, I slipped on some shoes and headed out to the parking lot where my car was. Yet another item that wasn’t mine. I was sure some of the other students were jealous that I got to drive a black BMW SUV, but they didn’t know the circumstances behind me having it.

The moment I opened the door of the car, I was assaulted by familiar smells and I almost slammed it shut and went back to my room. I breathed until the smell dissipated a little and then got in, gritting my teeth.

I drove the five minutes it took to get to the grocery store with my hands clamped on the steering wheel. I hated driving this thing. Why had I decided to do this?

As soon as I left the car, I could breathe again. Shaking myself, I walked toward the front of the store and grabbed a cart. The store had a surprisingly diverse vegan section, so I was able to find crackers, cookies, cereal and bread. I swung by the dairy section and got cashew milk before grabbing some more peanut butter, apples, oranges, carrot sticks, vegan jam and, on a whim, some protein powder.

I collapsed when I got back, not even bothering to unpack my grocery bags. Still, I needed to shower, so I got my stuff together and headed to the bathroom. The girl from the other day with the bacon pajamas was blow-drying her hair.

“Hey,” she said again. I said it back and walked toward the showers, but she said something else that made me stop. She clicked off the blow dryer.

“You live down the hall, right? In 406?” I stopped walking and wasn’t sure what to say.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, wondering if I should be friendly and use a smile on her.

“Cool, I’m Lacey. I’m in 410. You’ve got a single, right?” I nodded and she sighed.

“I’m so jealous. My roommate is nuts. Like, I think she’s watched too many shows about witches and has decided that she is one. I mean, I’m open minded, but when I wake up in the middle of the night and she’s standing over black candles and chanting, I have to draw the line.” She laughed and I decided to give her a smile.

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah.” Now it was my turn to introduce myself.

“Ingrid,” I said. She ran the brush through her long red hair. It shaded toward blonde and looked natural. She also had warm brown eyes and freckles across her nose.

“Nice to meet you, Ingrid. Let me know if you ever want to hang out or something. Although, we should probably do it in your room since mine is slowly being turned into coven or something.” She laughed.

“Yeah, sure.” I wasn’t going to take her up on it, but it was nice of her to offer. No one had offered to be my friend in a long time. I didn’t count Coen, because he had a reason. Even if I hadn’t figured it out yet.

“Cool, I’ll see you around.” She turned the blow dryer on again and went back to working on her hair and I headed for the shower.

Maybe now that I was friendly with Coen, I was putting out the vibe that made others want to be friends with me. Strange.

On Wednesday, I was apprehensive about economics. I didn’t know how Coen was going to react to me being gone on Monday.

When he saw me walking toward him, I thought for a second he was going to run forward and grab me up in his arms, as if we hadn’t seen each other in years.

“Hey,” he said, but his eyes darted all over me, as if he was looking for an injury.

“Hey, sorry about Monday. I wasn’t feeling good and I didn’t have a way to tell you. So.” He tried to blow it off, but I could tell he was upset about something. He hadn’t brought my tea this morning, but he did have a present that he handed to me as we sat down together.

A box of crayons.

“Sorry about the tea. I was a little distracted this morning.” He looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them.

“It’s okay,” I said, putting the crayons in my bag. “Sorry about Monday.” He waved that off.

“Hey, shit happens. It’s not a big deal at all. How are you feeling?” Our professor started talking.

“Fine,” I whispered.

Coen was off the rest of the week and I quickly figured out it had little to do with me. He was so out of it that I asked him if he wanted to study with me again on Saturday.

“Oh, yeah, sure. That sounds great. Um, maybe you’d like to come over to my place. You could meet Marty.” The fear must have shown on my face, because he laughed.

“Okay, okay. Never mind. The library.” I bit my lip and considered. I would meet his roommate eventually. And I was going to have to get closer to Coen if I was ever going to find out why he was trying to be friends with me. Maybe I could even look for clues in his room.

“No, that’s fine,” I said and it seemed to take him by surprise. He hid a grin and then nodded.

“Oh, and just so you can keep in touch with me,” he said, stopping and pulling one of his notebooks out of his bag. I watched as he tore off a piece of paper, wrote something on it and then handed it to me.

“That’s my cell number. You know, just in case plans change.” Oh. I looked down at it and realized that it was my turn to give him my number. I couldn’t remember the last time I actually used my phone to make a call or send a message. It was purely for distracting myself when I had moments alone.

With my hand shaking a little, I took the pen from him and did the same, writing my number on a piece of paper and handing it to him. He hid another smile.

“Great. So how about I meet you in front of the library and we can walk to the dorm,” he said.

“Sounds good,” I said, even though all I could think of were all the things that could go wrong. I slipped his number in my pocket and thought about using it to text him and call the whole thing off. But then he’d probably just ask the next weekend and the one after and it would happen anyway. Plus, there was always the chance that I could learn something useful about him.

I was so nervous as I walked down to the coffee shop the next day. It was cold, so I’d added gloves and a scarf along with my jacket. He was there, waiting for me, two paper cups in his hands.

“Hey,” he said, coming forward and handing me a cup. “I thought you might want something to warm up.”

I took the cup from him and it warmed my hands instantly.

“Thanks.” I sipped and the peppermint tea was just the right temperature. Not hot enough to burn my mouth, but hot enough to melt away the chill.

“So I should warn you about Marty,” he said as we walked in the opposite direction of my building.

“Oh?” I said, definitely regretting that I’d agreed to do this.

“He’s a little… friendly. Like, not in a bad way. But he treats everyone like they’re already friends. He’s also not a fan of keeping his voice down, so there’s that. And… well, you’ll see.” He laughed at my shocked face.

“It’ll be fine. He’s a great guy. We’ve only been friends since this summer, but I feel like we’ve known each other forever. You know?” I was about to say that I did, but kept my mouth shut and shook my head.

We both sipped our drinks as we walked back to his place. I hoped he wasn’t a slob. Not that I was a neat freak. It was easy to be clean when you barely had anything. Except now I had a lot more things, thanks to Coen.

He lived on the second floor of one of the older buildings on campus. We took the stairs and then walked down almost all the way to the end of the hall.

“Here we are,” he said, using his keycard to open the door.

It was almost exactly as I expected. Semi-messy. Cluttered. Very much like two guys lived in it.

“Hey, you must be Ingrid,” a black guy lounging on the other bed said, getting to his feet and coming over to shake my hand. He was tall. Taller than tall. I nearly had to break my neck in half to look up at him.

“Wow, aren’t you a tiny one,” he said with a laugh as his hand swallowed up mine.

“Uh, thank you?” I said as he let my hand go and flexed it a few times to get the feeling back. He hadn’t been gentle with the handshake.