TWENTY-SEVEN

Lexi 

‘EVERYONE HAVE A nice Christmas?’ 

I ignore Shannen as I reach into my bag for my notes on RuBisCO, as does Tom.

Just need to get through an hour or so of this project and then I get to see Luc for lunch. Just the thought of it makes me restless with excitement.

It’s only lunch, I remind myself. 

Drew picks up the slack. ‘Yeah. Good.’ He slaps a wad of his own research notes onto the table before turning to look at her. ‘You?’

Shannen beams. ‘It was amazing! I love Christmas. Parents bought me a brand new car.’

She pauses, waiting for our envious reactions. The three of us exchange glances.

‘Cool,’ Tom says eventually. ‘Exams were a bitch, though.’ 

Shannen’s face falls. She picks her phone up instead.

‘Yeah. Fucking plant fossils,’ Drew mutters, sorting through his notes. 

‘Plant fossils?’ I ask, carefully unclipping my own notes from the folder they’re in. 

Drew looks up. ‘Yeah. Palaeobotany module.’

‘Oh. I didn’t take that one.’ 

Shannen sniffs, scrolling through whatever she’s looking at on her phone. ‘Thought it was compulsory?’

I shake my head. ‘I did bioinformatics instead.’

Tom recoils in faux horror. ‘That sounds even worse!’

I can’t help laughing at his reaction. ‘It wasn’t so bad.’ I hope. 

‘Fair,’ says Drew, nodding. ‘OK, so I thought we could—’ 

‘Ooh Lexi, you’re mentioned in this article,’ Shannen interrupts. 

Drew pauses. ‘What?’

‘Look.’ She holds her phone out to us so we can all see the photo of me with Luc. ‘Shall I read it?’ she says. 

Please no. I’ve been trying to avoid all this stuff. I don’t want to know what they’re saying about me. It’s easier to not care if you don’t know. I take a deep breath. ‘Uh, I’d really rather we ju—’ 

‘“Luc and his new squeeze Lexi stepped out on the red carpet this weekend in London at the fundraiser for cystic fibrosis,”’ she starts loudly, regardless. ‘“The raven-haired student wore a tight crimson dress, reminiscent of the outfit worn by Luc’s ex-girlfriend Hayley the last time the two were seen in public together last summer.”’ 

Shannen pauses, and the three of them look at me.

I open my mouth to say something, but there are no words.

They think I’m trying to imitate Hayley.

My stomach turns as Shannen looks back at the article, her lips curling into a smile. ‘Look! There’s even a photo here comparing you both.’ She holds out the phone again, and there I am, side by side with Luc’s petite ex, who is also wearing a tight red dress. ‘Think hers was Prada or something though,’ Shannen adds. ‘Not some high street thing.’

The silence after her words only lasts for a second or two, but it feels like an hour.

I avoid Shannen’s probing gaze.

‘Who cares?’ Tom says. ‘It’s just a dress.’ 

‘Who the fuck would even remember what someone’s ex-girlfriend wore last year anyway?’ Drew adds. 

I worry my lower lip. Maybe Luc. 

‘Still though!’ Shannen protests. She looks at me. ‘Still weird of you to copy her like that.’ 

I frown, remembering why I wore the dress. ‘I didn’t.’

‘You can’t deny it. The evidence is right here,’ she says, putting her phone face-up on the table, the photo still visible on its screen. ‘Of all the colours and styles you could have chosen, too.’ 

Defensively, I respond before thinking. ‘I didn’t choose it—he asked me to wear it.’

Shannen’s expression is unbearably smug. ‘He asked you to look like his ex-girlfriend?’ She says the words slowly, like I’m a clueless child who needs help understanding.

‘No! Just the dress. I was wearing it when we met.’ 

‘Oh. Maybe that’s what attracted him to you. That you dress like his ex, I mean,’ she says, like she’s solved some epic fucking mystery. 

For the first time in my entire life, I want to smack someone. My hands squeeze into fists and I have to consciously relax them. I take a slow, controlled breath.

‘For fuck’s sake, it’s just a dress,’ Tom mutters. He takes the phone and shrugs. ‘It looks good. And all sexy dresses are black or red or whatever.’ He slides the phone back to Shannen and looks at me. ‘It’s probably just coincidence.’ 

But I have a black dress, I think. Why didn’t he ask for that one so I wouldn’t look like a fucking idiot to the entire world? 

‘If he wanted to be with his ex, that’s where he’d be,’ Drew adds, distracting me from my thoughts. ‘Now can we sort this fucking presentation out, please?’ 

I nod, looking down, concentrating on getting my notes in order.

I’m not going to let this get under my skin.

It’s me he’s meeting for lunch, not Hayley.

It’s just a dress.

It means nothing.

Like the handholding and the sex and his teasing.

He just likes hanging out with me and pretending to people that I’m his girlfriend and dressing me up like his fucking ex.

Shannen picks up her phone, smirking.