My phone vibrated from underneath my pillow. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Instinctively, half asleep with my eyes closed, I felt around for my phone.

Buzz. Buzz.

I peeked an eye open to see who it was.

Jett. My eyes popped open. It was 4:32 in the morning. What did he want? Was he okay?

Buzz.

Biting my lip, I thought about the possibilities that he was injured and needed my help. Regardless of whether we were going to be committed to each other, I still wanted to be his friend and wouldn’t refuse to help him if he needed me. I clicked accept.

“Hello?” I kept my voice low, looking over at Marsha asleep in her bed. After she berated me for being an ungrateful bitch to Troy, she’d put her headphones on and watched something on her laptop. I left her alone and turned away from her, facing my wall until she fell asleep.

Marsha had been a great roommate. She had seemed nice and friendly. That is until I questioned whether I wanted to be in a relationship with the love of her life, Troy. All of it seemed so odd and twisted to me. If I really liked someone, it would kill me to see him with someone else. I couldn’t be like Marsha who actively encouraged another girl to go out with Troy, selflessly just for the quiet satisfaction that he would be happy even if it was with someone else.

“Laney,” Jett sighed into the phone. Silence filled the space between us. I put my head down on my pillow, holding my phone to my ear and turning towards the wall, hugging my pillow to my chest. “I get it now.”

“You get what?” I asked. Marsha had fallen asleep with her lamp still on. The light outlined a soft shadow of my body on the white wall. I traced it with my finger and waited for him to continue.

He took his time as he talked. Allowing himself to pause, I guessed, to mull over the words he wanted to say to me. His words felt slow and leaden tugging at his voice and dragging it to a lumbering tempo, “I get that you don’t like me. I accept that you never will,” His voice cracked. It sounded like he was crumbling.

“Jett, I...” I tried to say.

He cut me off. “No, Laney. It’s okay. I like you more than any girl I’ve ever met, but I get it.” He laughed. The laugh came out resentfully. I let him continue on without interruption. “I’m going to leave you alone, Laney. From now on, you won’t have to worry about me.”

My heart sank. I gripped the pillow even tighter to quell the ache. “Jett…” I said.

But, he still wouldn’t let me talk. His deliberate tirade continued. “When we’re in class, I won’t even talk to you, sit next to you, or even look at you. I’ll ignore you as if we had never met.”

“Jett!” I said to stop him. I couldn’t let him keep going. What he was saying hurt me. Ignore me? Never talk to me again? Pretend we’d never met? My chest throbbed with pain. “I won’t be happy with that,” I uttered into the phone. “That’s not what I want.”

There was another silence on the phone. I barely breathed. The silence was so dense and heavy; I checked the iPhone screen to make sure he hadn’t hung up. He was still there, but I felt I was losing him.

I pressed my left ear down into the pillow and the phone to my right. I listened, waiting, hoping that ignoring each other wasn’t the answer.

Finally, Jett said, “Laney, do you want to be with me?”

I let his question hang in the muffled air. That was a question I couldn’t answer just yet. I had my own questions that needed to be answered. “Are all those stories true?” I asked.

It was his turn to handle a difficult question. I heard shuffling. There wasn’t silence this time, but the light scuffle of cloth. I imagined Jett had pulled his sheets over his head or bunched up his comforter in his hands in frustration.

A few moments passed. A crinkle of paper. Another shuffle of linen. A deep weighted sigh. Finally, he answered, “Yes. Those stories are mostly true. I haven’t been a nice guy to a lot of girls.”

I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, hearing his answer. I thought of the girls I’d met that night: Sadie, Samantha, Teresa, and Jane. All beautiful girls with bright futures, attending one of the best institutions in the world. I imagined myself as one of those girls. In truth, I was one of the girls.

I shuddered, thinking about lying with Jett on the bed in the guestroom. I'd almost gotten too caught up in the moment. He had his hands on me: rubbing and fondling the most sensitive parts of my body. I felt myself unraveling under his touch. that moment, I wanted him.

What if that guy hadn’t interrupted us? We could have had sex. Who knows if Jett would have dropped me right there at the party afterward? Or if he’d ignore my texts the next day? Or maybe not ever talk to me again?

Jett interrupted my thoughts that were spinning out of control. “Until you came along, Laney, I can’t deny what an asshole I’ve been. But, I’m done trying to prove to you I’ll never hurt you that way and that you are truly special to me. I’m done.”

A sob burgeoned deep down my throat. I swallowed it back down. I couldn’t cry just yet.

What does that mean, he’s done?

I gripped my iPhone, pushing it against my ear hard. I wanted to hear every word he had to say, every sound from his mouth, in case, it was the last time we ever spoke.

“If you want to be with Troy, you should go for him. He is literally crazy about you.” Jett sputtered out a weak laugh. “I won’t stand in your way.”

Glancing over to Marsha’s bed, I checked to see if she was still asleep. Her eyes were closed, and her breath was even and calm. Just in case, I whispered loudly into my phone, “No! I don’t want to be with Troy. I like you, Jett! I’m just afraid of getting hurt.”

Marsha stirred, but then just turned over in her bed. I sighed in relief. The last thing I needed was Marsha waking up and throwing a fit that I was on the phone with Jett and not Troy.

Jett’s voice strained as he said, “I can’t imagine ever hurting you. If I hurt you, it would hurt me too.” I could hear indecipherable noises: movement in the background. It sounded like Jett was walking or maybe pacing. His speech quickened. “I’ve become so attached to you. Hurting you would kill me. I wish you’d believe me.”

He sounded genuine. I could sense the urgency in his voice. He blurted, “Laney, can I come get you? Will you stay the night with me? I’m dying to see you.”

I wanted to say yes, but I knew what staying the night with him would lead to. Earlier that night, I came close to sleeping with Jett, and we were in a stranger’s house at a party. Could I trust myself to be alone with him again, only this time in his apartment?

There were too many unknowns. It would be a reckless mistake to see him now. “I don’t…”

“Laney, please?” he begged with a long sigh.

But, I wanted to see him. Despite everything I knew about him and the horrible stories of what he’d done to those girls, I wanted to see him.

What did that say about the type of person I was? Could Marsha be right? Was I just interested in a bad boy for all the wrong reasons?

With regret, I said, “I can’t, Jett.”

“Don’t you want to see me?” he asked softly.

“I do.” I really did. Badly.

“Then let me come get you,” he pleaded.

I hesitated, afraid to say yes and terrified to say no. What the girls said to me echoed in my head. “No. I can’t, Jett. I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” I heard Jett exhale loudly. I could hear the cracks again in his shaky voice. “I won’t bother you anymore, Laney. Take care of yourself.”

There was heavy full silence again. I waited for him to say more. After a few more moments of hearing nothing, I looked at my phone screen. He had hung up.

Devastation hit me in the mouth. He hung up.

My eyes welled with tears. I blinked them away still staring at my phone. A teardrop fell onto my screen into a big fat clear splotch. My hands were shaking, making the water splotch spread out onto other parts of the screen. My phone’s wallpaper, a photograph of my mom and me in front of an old historic church in Gainesville, blurred. Water streaked right onto my mouth in the photograph turning my smile into a hazy smear.

Jett was done with me…