Page 42 of Come As You Are

“I cannot begin to tell you the number of things wrong with that sentence coming out of your mouth.” Starting with the fact that it’s a confirmation. I didn’t even know a part of me was holding on to the thought that he might tell me this was a total misunderstanding and it was actually Matt she was fooling around with, or the underwear under his pillow was some weird prank. But there it is. Confirmed.

Okay then. That’s fine. I’m fine. What’s there not to be fine about? Salem is hooking up with Jenna, and he’s happy, and they’re happy, and Salem and I aren’t as close as I thought. Cool cool cool.

“What do you want me to say, Skeevy? I gave Matt shitfor being a slut and now here I am, doing the same thing. It’s embarrassing.”

“You have to know hooking up with a single girl doesn’t make you a slut, but even if you were, so what?” I demand. “Matt’s not hurting anybody. He’s not pretending to be anything he isn’t. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, or an almost-girlfriend, and he isn’t telling girls he loves them and then sleeping with their sisters. Every girl at this school who hooks up with Matt Haley knows what she’s getting and she doesn’t care, because she wants the same thing. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Those are some awfully specific examples.”

God, of course he would pick up on that. “I’m just trying to make a point. There’s nothing inherently slutty about hooking up, and there’s nothing inherently evil in being slutty anyway, so maybe you could ease the hell up and realize your roommate is actually a pretty freaking nice guy.” Frankly, I’d kill to have a roommate who cared as much about me as Matt clearly cares about Salem.

Salem narrows his eyes. “Please tell me you are not hooking up with Matt.”

“Jesus,Salem, no, I’m not, and you are missing the point.” I open my mouth to continue the tirade, but Salem holds up a hand.

“I know, I know. You’re not wrong. He has been… nice,” Salem admits grudgingly. “And relatively considerate, considering our room—or at least our window—is a revolving door.”

“And?”

“And… you may have a point about the rest. I don’tknow. I didn’t exactly come here with a ton of experience.” His eyes drop to the desk, an unfurled paper clip I hadn’t even noticed in his hand scratching out anSin the scarred wood. “I might’ve been… jealous. A little. Of Matt.”

My eyebrows shoot to the sky. “I’ll be honest, I thought it would take atleastsix hours of physical torture to get that out of you.”

“It should’ve,” he mutters. “Anyway, feel better now?”

“No,” I say honestly, because I still don’t know how to trust him. Because I still couldn’t trust Isabel. Because even if Jenna just tripped and fell into Salem’s lap, I’m the one who brought her to his room for poker night, and I’m the room she stopped by on the way to his, I guess, and I’m the idiot who thought I was helping him with a hopeless crush on someone else entirely. But mostly, because I’m the one sitting here in clothes barely a step up from pajamas and hair a mess and no clue what I’m doing or whether I’ll ever be able to trust my instincts with guys again, while he’s turned himself around in no time at all. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my lab report.”

“You’re kidding me.”

I refuse to dignify that with even a meeting of the eyes, choosing instead to focus on the work he interrupted. “Nope. Why don’t you head off and do something brilliant like break out a crack pipe in Headmaster Gibbons’s office? Seems like you’re losing your edge.”

Okay, that might’ve taken things a bit far, and the angry sweep of his books back into his bag confirms it. I wait for the sound of him storming off, but instead, a shadow loomsover me and cool, minty breath dances over my cheek. “You wanna know something true, Skeevy? Something secret?” he whispers dangerously. “I got caught on purpose so I could give Sabrina an out because I could see she was dying being around Molly. Feel free to yank that one from your bitchy insult box.”

AndthenI get the storming off, but it’s not remotely satisfying.

In fact, I can’t even bring myself to let it stand. I jump up, leaving my books behind, and grab him by the wrist before he can leave the room, corded leather bracelets imprinting on my palm. “Wait, please. I’m sorry.”

He turns, slowly, but his mouth quirks up in the tiniest of smugly edged smiles, the kind you might see on a cat who’s spotted a mouse for dinner, and I know I’m forgiven. “Hold on, I wanna get that on a recording. Replay it a whole bunch of times on nights I’m having trouble sleeping.”

“Oh, shut up and accept the apology.”

The smile blooms into something slightly more whole, and he follows me to the table, spreading out his books. We work in much more (mostly) pleasant silence for a while, but by the time I finish my report, the feelings I buried for my apology have morphed into something that has me impatiently tapping my pen against the desk.

Finally, it clicks what I need. “I want a Bad Girl Day.”

He blinks in my direction, biting his lip against a laugh. “Excuse me?”

“Look at you.” I gesture at his cleaned-up appearance, his books splayed out in the library before 10:00A.M.“You’vealready achieved Good Boy status. You’ve done the thing. You’ve got basketball and Jenna and you look and smell like an actual human. But I still feel like… me.”

“Being you is not a bad thing, Skeevy,” Salem says, more seriously than I expect.

“Yeah, it is, trust me.” I can’t bring myself to tell him that he might not have been using me, but the girls I thought were my friends sure were, and so were the ones before that. I don’t want to be the girl people feel like they can do that to. I sure as hell don’t wanna be a girl who cares if and when it happens. And right now, I still care way, way too much.

He sighs and puts down his pen. “Okay, so what does a ‘Bad Girl Day’ entail?”

“You tell me.” I fold my arms on the table and rest my chin on them so I’m looking up at his pale face with its slashes of dark eyebrows, surrounded by equally dark hair that’s starting to curl at the ends with overgrowth. It makes him look the tiniest bit softer, which I’m sure he’d hate to hear. “What kinds of things have you gotten in trouble for in the past? I wanna do those. Well, other than smoking in the headmaster’s office; I’m not gonna do that. Or smoke at all, I don’t think. I don’t know. I’m still on the fence.”

“What would you even smoke?” he asks, amused. “You don’t have any weed.”

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