Page 18 of Did They Break You

My heart flutters.

What is wrong with me?

“Yep,” she finally says. “I Know What You Did Last Summer, that’s my favorite movie.”

I glance at the cover again as she piles it on top of the books against her chest.

“What’s yours?” she asks softly, getting to her feet.

I stand, too, looking down at her.

She’s short and she has to tilt her head back to look up at me.

I smile, shrugging. “I don’t really watch movies. I like football.”

She laughs, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, shaking her head. “Yeah,” she says quietly, “I could’ve guessed that.”

“You come here a lot?” I ask her, looking around the park. It’s quiet, just after sunrise. I usually don’t see anyone here.

She bites her lip, averting her eyes for a second. “Not a lot,” she finally says. “I stopped by Thrifty’s and it’s just up the road. I only really come here when my stepdad is away.”

“You like spending time with him? A family girl, huh?” I realize belatedly that her mom died and maybe that was not the right thing to say.

And the look she gives me confirms that.

She takes a step back as she holds my gaze. “Something like that,” she mutters under her breath.

I feel like an idiot and I rake my hand through my hair before I drop it to my side. Grasping for something to change the subject, I ask, “Where you going with all those books?”

She glances down at her stack and for the first time, I notice a pen tucked behind her ear. “To the bench,” she answers me, jerking her chin just beyond us.

I know what bench she’s talking about.

I sit on it after my runs sometimes.

“Cool,” I tell her. I want to ask if she wants company, but she never really seems to want that, and she’s taking another step back from me. Toward the bench I was going to take a breath on.

“I’ll see ya around, Cort,” she says, and I smile when she calls me that. Like she knows me.

I nod once. “See ya, Rems.”

And just before she turns her head, I see it too. Her smile.

“Brinklin, Storm, Chase.”Maya flops back on my bed, holding her phone over her head, thumbs flying along her screen. Her chocolate brown hair is fanned out on my orange sheets. “They’re all gonna be there,” she continues, angling her phone further away, extending her arm as she purses her lips together. I see the screen flash across her oval face, watch her mouth pull into a smile as she posts the selfie to wherever she’s posting shit.

I don’t have social media.

After last year, I’ve done my best to stay off the internet altogether.

I run my hand through my hair, turning away from the mirror hung opposite my bed to face her. “Chase and Brinklin are?—”

“They drove up from ECU,” she says, shrugging with a smile on her face. As if this is the best news of the century. “And Ialready promised Storm he could watch me suck your dick if he comes.”

I stare at her. “Oh, did you?”

She laughs, tossing her phone beside her on the bed, planting her palms on my mattress and leaning back, arching her spine, spreading her thighs so I have a clear view of her thong as she hikes her dress up. “Calm down, babe,” she says with a pout. “You know this is just for you.” She runs one hand up her thigh, slipping her fingers beneath the hot pink of her underwear, rubbing herself with a soft moan.

My skin feels tight, watching her. Imagining Remi, bumping into her yesterday on my way to the student service’s building to make an appointment. To see a fucking therapist.

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