Page 57 of Night Shift

My lecture on Shakespeare is long and offensively dry—to the point where I stop listening to the professor and start making a bullet point list in my head about why this class is a waste of my tuition dollars and no one should ever be required to study Shakespeare to get a bachelor’s degree ever again. But eventually I run out of reasons to be mad about Anglocentrism and androcentrism, and I start a new list in my head: ways to apologize to Vincent Knight.

When class lets out, I join the herd of tired students migrating outside. It should, in theory, be golden hour. Campus should be kissed purple and orange. But instead, the skies overhead are heavy and gray, and everything is dim and dark and moody.

I love it.

I have an entire Spotify playlist dedicated to this kind of weather. I pull it up on my phone and reach one arm around to fish my headphones out of my backpack.

After a few moments of awkward grasping at the outer pocket, I accept that my headphones aren’t where I usually shove them. I stop at a bench along the path and plop down with a heavy sigh, annoyed with myself for letting my backpack become such a disordered mess—which feels like an on-the-nose metaphor for the rest of my life right now. If I’ve lost them, I’m either going to have to fork over the money for another pair or I’m going to have to join Harper and Nina and the rest of this godforsaken country in buying AirPods, which are completely out of my budget and which I will inevitably lose within a week.

“Fuck you, Steve Jobs,” I mutter.

The wooden planks underneath me creak and dip. I still, lift my head, and find Jabari Henderson sitting on the other end of the bench.

“Hey, Kendall.”

I’m immediately on guard.

“Can I help you?”

He lets out a low whistle. “God, you and Vincent are alike.”

It aches like a prodded bruise. I narrow my eyes at Jabari—because glaring feels way more badass than turning into a puddle of tears—and yank at the zippers of my backpack, abandoning the search for my headphones in favor of getting out of here as quickly as possible.

“I have to be somewhere. Sorry. You’ll have to let Vincent know you failed . . . whatever you were trying to do here.”

There’s a dare in my voice. Own up, it says. Tell me this is all a scheme, or a joke, or a bet. Tell me I’m not the villain in my own story. But Jabari flinches too, and the showmanship of his smile falls into a solemn frown.

“He doesn’t know I’m here.”

I arch an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Just—please, hear me out. I really fucked this up.”

Jabari has brown eyes, like Vincent. They’re wide and honest and imploring. It’s sobering, and maybe a little disconcerting, to see someone who’s always laughing and smiling look so serious.

“Five minutes,” I relent.

Jabari nods and wipes his palms on the front of his jeans like he’s readying himself. I brace myself for hard truths, reality checks, and some point-blank shots at my pride.

Instead, Jabari says, “Vincent’s never had a girlfriend.”

“I know.” My face flushes. “I wasn’t expecting him to commit to me or anything—”

“No, no. I don’t think you understand me. It’s not that he doesn’t want to date you. It’s that he has no fucking clue how to.”

“But he’s been with girls, though? Right?” It’s a silly question. There’s no way a boy would know how to eat a girl out like that without some prior experience. I wince at the thought.

“Sleeping with someone is different from dating them,” Jabari says.

“What’s his problem, then?”

“He’s . . . shy.”

I laugh in his face. “Fuck off.”

“I’m serious,” Jabari says, laughing a little too. “He knows how to be an asshole when he needs to show out on the court, but listen—I’ve never seen him like this. We had to hype him up the morning before he met with you at Starbucks. The kid was so fucking nervous. I don’t know how he sat through class. And then I got a call from him while he was running across campus—”

“He was late.”

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