Page 24 of Burn Bright
She blew out a breath so hard it rustled her blonde bangs. “He’s a fuckwad, that’s why.”
I pressed on because I couldn’t let it go. Not after what I’d just seen. “Why is he a fuckwad? What’d he do?”
“What are you Scooby Doo?” She frowned deeper, her scowl darkening. Maybe she was used to people just leaving her pissed-off face alone. Turning their backs. Walking away.
“I don’t know. Is this a mystery that needs to be solved, Harriet Fisher?”
She flinched, probably surprised I remembered her name. Then she lifted her chin higher to meet my gaze. “No mystery here, sorry to break your heart. Turner just got the wrong impression after we made an agreement.”An agreement?She crossed her arms. “And you do realize your brother Tom hates me?”
It always came back to Tom.
She added, “Pretty sure you’ll be disinvited to the next Cobalt soiree.”
“That’s actually impossible,” I told her. “I could piss off every sibling, and they’d still invite me and try to hold some elaborate family intervention.”
She nodded slowly. “Ruthless love.” She said it, not with distaste or jealousy, but how someone would appraise a foreign treasure. Unsure of the true value of something they’ve never held before. “But from where I’m standing, Cobalts don’t like strangers or interlopers.”
“I can be friends with who I want.”
“Since when are we friends?” Harriet asked.
We went on a tangent about the definition of friendship, similar to the one I had with her at the frat party. I told her that she was officially my only friend. She believed me about as much as she did at the Kappa Phi Delta house, but I wasn’t really lying. Right then, I would’ve deleted every contact in my phone to prove it.
I didn’t know her, but I knew I didn’t want to lose her.
She finally returned to the “agreement” she made with the professor. “Look, it’s not a big deal, dude. I gave Turner a blow job in exchange for a favor, and now he wants more than one blowie, so I’m fending off an ugly hammerhead shark.”
I couldn’t stop looking at her. My brain worked a mile a minute over what that meant.
She raised her brows at me. “Say something, Friend.”
“What favor is worth blowing a hammerhead shark?” I glared back at the door, wishing I could’ve laid my fucking hands on him. Wishing his face met thefuckingfloor. Ire bubbled in my blood, and my hand twitched at my side, dying to curl into a fist.
He was herprofessor.He was ateacher.And he took advantage of astudent.Ofher.
Harriet let it spill that the favor had been for Luna, who’d missed labs. Their professor apparently refused to let Luna finish the course off-campus, even though it’d been national news that my cousin was in the hospital after an assault.
Harriet bartered with Professor Turner to give my cousin take-home work, so that Luna could pass the course.
“Can you not tell Luna? Please?” Harriet pleaded. “She didn’t ask me to make the deal. I did this on my own accord because I felt bad she had to miss labs.”
Of all the favors…she didn’t even blow him for herself. It’d been for a girl that I’m sure Harriet just considered a college lab partner and not even a friend.
And she thinksI’munhinged.
“Again, not a big deal.” She made sure to say. “It meant nothing, and I’ve given blow jobs for less. It’s not like I got naked for the guy.”
We went back-and-forth on whether he should be reported, but I left it in her court and gave her my number in case she was ever in trouble again. She told me she was transferring to MVU in the fall. Pre-med, which I didn’t peg her for. She wasa mystery to me, and I thought I needed to be okay with never uncovering the answers or the stormy depths to Harriet Fisher. Having her phone number was enough.
So I let her go. I watched her walk down the hall. “See you around, Fisher.”
“See you, Birthday Boy.”
I rocked back. My heart stopped for a beat. Just dumbfounded. Not a single friend, not even one of the twenty that I ran into that morning on campus, wished me a happy birthday. Family, sure, but my friends…they either didn’t realize or they forgot. I didn’t make my birthday a big deal. I didn’t mention it. I didn’t seek out attention from it.
She walked backward, moving more slowly away from me. “I didn’t stalk you exactly. I was doing my homework on Tom a while back. For the drum audition. Your page was pretty small.” She squeezed her fingers together. “Where’s all the accolades?”
I smiled, one that spilled warmth into my body. “Siblings took them all.”
