Page 19 of The Consequence of Loving Me

I like her already.

“Veronica,” I respond, taking a moment to take in her outfit of choice.

She’s wearing a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of checkered Vans on her feet. A purse almost identical to my own is perched on one of her shoulders. Her dark hair—a few shades darker than Maverick’s—falls all the way down past her boobs. I have the urge to ask her what products she uses because I can see how shiny her hair is, even from a few feet away.

But Lily looks over to Maverick and Selma; they’re busy having a hushed conversation between themselves.

My Apple watch buzzes on my wrist, alerting me to a missed text. When I notice what time it is, I realize I need to be huffing it across campus if I’m going to make it to my discussion class on time.

“It was cool to meet you, Lily,” I begin, backing away from our small group. “But I need to get to my next class.”

Selma and Maverick seem too deep in conversation to even notice that I’m about to leave, but I do get a quick goodbye from Lily, with her telling me we’ll talk later when she comes over.

The group is almost out of sight when Maverick yells across the quad, “Bye, Veronica! Save Princess Cupcake from My Little Pony for me!”

I roll my eyes and flip him the bird. I’m positive he just rattled off a bunch of random objects to create a fictional name, and now everyone within earshot thinks I’m just as obsessed with My Little Pony as our professor is.

11

Veronica

A few hours after my last class, I’m sitting on my bed scrolling through Instagram. My favorite face mask is seeping into my pores when my bedroom door flies open. I’m two seconds from throwing my phone across the room and shouting Aspen’s name when I realize he isn’t the culprit.

No, this culprit is barely five feet tall and has the biggest grin on her face.

“Hi, Veronica!” Lily says, helping herself in as she looks around my room.

I sit there with my mouth wide open as she takes in her surroundings. Apparently, she likes what she sees because she closes the door behind her and waltzes right in.

As soon as I got home from my classes, I finished unpacking the rest of my stuff. It took me almost three hours, and I had barely rested for fifteen minutes before she came barging on in.

Out of instinct, I want to shove her tiny body right back out the door when she has the audacity to sit down on my white comforter in front of me. I’ve gotten so used to this knee-jerk reaction to people—whether I like them or not—it’s now my norm.

“Can I help you?” I ask, not bothering to hide the irritation in my voice.

“Yes, you can, actually,” Lily replies, pulling at a split end of her hair. She tosses the strand of hair back down and focuses on me. “Selma and Maverick are locked alone in their room, which is gross,” she explains, “and Aspen is boring me to death since he’s all caught up in his video game. So, I figured I’d come down here and get to know my new friend a little better.”

“Who said we were friends?” If I didn’t have a face mask on that hinders me from showing any emotion, my eyebrows would be raised all the way to my hairline.

I met this girl six hours ago and suddenly we’re friends?

I want to laugh. I don’t have very many friends, and I certainly don’t make them that fast. If we were friends, she’d know that.

Lily sighs, but a smile pulls at the corners of her lips. “Oh, we are friends, Veronica. You’ll find that it’s easier to agree with me than to try to put up a fight.”

I think about her response for a moment. There’s a small part of me that perks up inside at the prospect of having a new friend. It’s unwelcome, but it’s there.

I’ve alienated myself from all the friends I grew up with, and I don’t regret it for a second. It’s an after effect of deciding you’re done with attachments. An aftershock. But that doesn’t mean that every now and then I don’t wish I had someone to tell dumb things to, or maybe help me pick out jeans that don’t make my ass look huge.

“We’ll see.” My response must satisfy her, because she drops the topic.

Instead of continuing to fill the silence, she hops off my bed and starts to take inventory of my room. She picks something up from my bedside table.

It’s one of my pieces of art.

I used oil paints to portray the deep green eyes. Even though most people would focus on those, the reason I painted it in the first place was to showcase the eyebrows. Over the left eye sits a scar that runs completely through the honey brown eyebrow.

An imperfection.

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