As soon as nine p.m. arrived Monday night, I grabbed my purse from the backroom and clocked out. Tim had his head in some inventory papers all evening, thankfully not commenting on my less than stellar customer service.
“I’ll see you Wednesday.”
He glanced up, a pen hanging from his mouth and another between his fingers. “Oh.” He spat the pen out, and I made a mental note to use my own from now on. “Right, right. Can you ask Pippa if she can work on Thursday afternoon? I can’t remember if she has class, but Sara’s gone home. Family emergency.”
“Sure. I hope Sara’s okay?” I’d never met the girl. She only worked a few shifts a week like I did, and we never worked on the same day. The parlor wasn’t busy enough to warrant more than two people working the same shift.
“She’s fine. Between you and me, I think she just needs a break from school.” His mustache curled on one side, his mouth tilting grimly. “It can get a bit overwhelming for some. Especially those who’ve come a long way from home.”
Nodding, I said, “Most definitely.” Then waved goodbye.
The Halloween decorations twirled and shimmered in the dimly lit storefronts and on the street. The weekend was sure to bring enough Halloween parties that people would struggle to pick which one to attend. I pulled my cardigan tighter over my chest, wishing I’d brought something warmer. Fishing out my phone from my bag, I fired off a quick text to Pippa, letting her know that Tim wanted her to work on Thursday, then put it away.
As the weather grew even colder, the streets emptied earlier each night. Passing a couple who were laughing and cozied up on a bench, I had the fleeting thought of them being lovers, meeting out in the dark under the cover of stars. The moon and a few strangers their only witnesses.
Shaking my head, I tried not to laugh at myself. Just because I’d turned into some kind of boyfriend stealing hypocrite didn’t mean everyone else deserved my suspicion.
Would it make me feel better if I knew of all the people out there betraying and hurting one another? No, I didn’t think it would. But I could admit that it’d feel good, just a little, to have someone to empathize with.
To not feel so alone in this.
Funny how emotions and lust could blind you and make your focus narrow to only right then. Right now. Forget what could happen after.
It’d only been a few days. A few miserable days since I felt like everything slipped back into place. Like I might be able to finally breathe easily again.
But regardless of his reasons, a few days was a long time to be left abandoned after you’d risked so much. All the minutes, all the hours. Waiting, wanting, wondering. The thinking. The constant fucking thinking. Overanalyzing every damn thing.
There really were no winners when it came to games of the heart. Unless you count your miseries as victories.
Did I regret what happened? No. Though I was starting to feel like an idiot. Blindly trusting and thinking everything would work out, I couldn’t regret anything that had to do with Quinn. But I could regret the way we went about it, and how it had only seemed to make me feel worse. Like maybe I was a mistake.
Walking upstairs to our room, my head was so full of questions that I didn’t even hear the murmuring, the quiet laughter and gasps, until I’d almost reached the door. Only then did I notice them. And only then, as I saw the already open door, then glanced around, did I realize all the buzzing activity on our floor was because of me.
“Oh, my God, what a hussy.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty messed up, though.”
What was messed up? My stomach filled with dread, heavy and sickening as though I’d swallowed a cup full of cement. I pushed the door open farther, and the sight that met my eyes had my heart plummeting to the carpet. I could almost see it there, thrashing, beating on the ground, getting tangled in the coarse fibers and grit as it tried to decide if all this was really worth it.
My side of the room was trashed.
My clothes were flung all over the floor, some of them shredded with scissors that I saw lying discarded next to what looked like ripped paintings. Tears flooded my vision, and I stepped inside slowly, my blurry eyes darting over the destruction, unable to stick to any one thing.
The picture of Quinn and Spud, torn up into tiny pieces on my bed, had a sob breaking free of my mouth. My hand crept up, covering it as I saw all my art supplies. Paint, brushes, pens, trays, stencils—everything—scattered throughout the room.
Something yellow caught my eye, and I looked at the wall beside my bed. There was a clumsily painted black daisy there, with the stigma painted yellow. And beside it was three words. Is a slut.
Daisy is a slut.
The paint was still drying, tiny globs dripping down the wall.
But that wasn’t the worst part of it, I realized, as my gaze finally landed on the rest of the paper that littered my bed. My sketchpads. The covers lay strewn near my pillow, all my artwork in pieces below it.
Holy shit.
No.
Air, I needed air.
Rushing to the window, I pushed it open. It wouldn’t budge at first, but my panic and hysteria wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally, with a creaking groan of the old wood, it went up enough for me to stick my head in the crack. My lungs were greedy. My heart was still somewhere on the floor in the chaos of the room. Tears dried on my face as the biting breeze slithered into the room, filling my mouth.
“You okay?” asked a voice I didn’t recognize.
I didn’t know how long I’d been there, but I must’ve looked pretty crazy.
Moving off the edge of the bed, I took in a short girl with red hair. “Yeah,” I whispered, feeling anything but okay.
She eyed me up and down, then looked around the room. I noticed then that Alexis was careful not to disturb Pippa’s side of the room.
I was thankful for that much at least.
“Want me to call someone for you?” she asked.
I was about to say no, but another sweep of the room had the words stuck in my throat. I swallowed. “Uh, that’s okay.” Grabbing my bag off my shoulder, I got my phone out. “I’ll just call my roommate. Ask if she’ll come home.”
Pippa was probably with Toby, which only made me feel worse, but I needed someone.
The girl nodded, looking back out the door. “They all seem to be over it. I’m down the hall, first door at the stairs, if you need anything.”
With that, she left, and I was both thankful and incredibly sad. That out of a dorm full of girls, most of them would prefer to watch someone’s world get rocked upside down instead of asking if they were okay.
Hitting call, I brought the phone to my ear. It went to voicemail, and I sniffed, calling again.
“Daisy?” Toby answered. “What’s up? Pip’s in the shower.”
Closing my eyes, I drew in a sharp breath. “Um, can you maybe ask her to come home? When she’s done.”
“Sure, is everything—”
With trembling fingers, I hung up before he could ask anything else. I was sure this news would be all over campus by morning. The last thing I wanted was Quinn finding out when it was clear he was already struggling with something that had kept him from seeing me since the weekend.
A part of me was desperate to run to him, ask him what the hell had happened, and to just have him hold me. Make all this disappear. I’d already made too many mistakes when it came to him, though. And right then, I couldn’t decide if doing so would only be another.
Closing the door, I looked around the room once again, my shoulders heaving.
Trying not to collapse, I grabbed a plastic bag and started gathering the pieces of paper off the floor. Picking up a piece that had half of Quinn’s hazel eye on it, I dropped it, gave in, and let myself curl into a ball on the floor. Tears fell from my eyes, each one gathering more speed than the one before until I couldn’t see. My chest hurt, and my breathing became labored sobs that I tried to keep quiet.
But I couldn’t.
She’d destroyed everything that mattered to me.
And rightfully deserved or not, I needed to let it hurt.
“Holy motherfucking fuck on a shit sundae of asshole dick.”
Opening my eyes, I sat up and leaned against the bed, taking off my glasses and rubbing my eyes. “Got any tissues?”
Pippa closed the door, grabbing a box from her dresser and bringing them over to where I was sitting on the floor. She squatted down in front of me, taking both my cheeks in her hands. “You didn’t see this coming, did you?”
Her raised brow made me laugh, and then cry. “No.”
“Oh, my lovely Daisy.” She sat, gathering my head to her shoulder and smoothing back the loose bits of hair that had escaped my messy bun. “This is absolute bullshit. How did she even get in here?”
She knew who did it then. “No idea,” I mumbled. “I guess you’ve only gotta sweet talk Cherry downstairs.”
“God, that damn woman needs her ass fired already.” A gasp lifted her shoulders. “Is that…?” She got up and walked over to the bed. “So not only has she vandalized our fucking wall, she’s gone and wrecked all your artwork?” Her voice rose on the end of her question, full of disbelief as she picked up the torn-out pages and crumpled pieces of paper. “I’ll kill the bitch.”
“Pippa,” I said, a small smile on my face as I looked at her angry one. “What’s the point? I slept with her boyfriend.”
“He was yours first!”
I swiped a palm down my cheek. “God, how ridiculous. We sound like an episode of Days of Our Lives. One that wasn’t good enough to make the cut.”
She hummed the theme to the TV show, making my heart jump back into my chest and leaving me feeling a little lighter. “Stop it,” I sputtered with laughter.
She only hummed louder, shoving tubes of paint back into their case and carefully picking up my brushes. “Want me to wash these two?” She bent over, picking up the two Alexis had used to graffiti the wall.
“It’s evidence,” I joked, picking up my glasses and putting them back on.
Her eyes narrowed. “We don’t need evidence. We won’t be playing by the damn rules. Not anymore.”
She marched out of the room, and I carefully laid out all the bits of paper that made a puzzle of Quinn and Spud, as well as a few from my sketchpads and portfolios that broke my heart to see in ruins.
I was taping them together when Pippa walked back in. “You need them to air dry?”
I nodded, and she laid some tissues down on the window sill by my bed, placing the brushes on top of them. “Honey, you’re seriously doing that?”
Pausing with a string of tape over Spud’s ear, I glanced up. “What?”
Her lips pursed, her eyes filling with sympathy, and I got it. “Oh, no, no. I’m just putting them back together enough to take a photo.”
“Oh. So you can paint them again?”
“Maybe. I’d like to know the option is there at least.”
I wiped my nose on my sleeve and grabbed my phone when I was done to take a picture of them. Putting my phone away, I carefully gathered up the six hastily taped pieces of artwork from the bed and went to put them into a bag with the rest. I couldn’t do it, though. My hands shook, and my steps faltered halfway to the door.
“Here,” Pippa said softly, taking them from me. “You go clean up, and I’ll finish this.”
I was so grateful, but all I could do was nod my head robotically.
Sorting through the clothes Pippa had just folded, the ones that escaped Alexis’s wrath relatively unscathed, I found some leggings and an old t-shirt, then grabbed my toiletry kit and took a shower.
The halls and bathroom were thankfully abandoned, and I realized why when I returned to the room, putting my stuff away. It was just after midnight.
“Shit, you’ve got class at eight.”
Pippa waved a hand, picking up the last few pens and pencils off the floor and putting them in my nightstand drawer. “Don’t worry about me. I just … I can’t understand why someone would do this. She knows you. She knows how much all this meant to you.” She gestured to my ruined work. Now trashed.
That was exactly why she did it. And I couldn’t help but feel like even though Alexis had broken my heart twice now, she was the one hurting the most.
It made me sick, and a fresh wave of tears infiltrated my eyes. “She must be so upset. So mad. I wonder how she even found out.” If Alexis even felt half of what I felt for Quinn, she’d be devastated. It was kind of disturbing how you never knew just how selfish you could be until you came face to face with everything you’d ever wanted.
I grabbed a tissue, wiping my nose as I sat down on my cleared off bed.
Pippa’s dark brows tugged in. “Yeah, I get that. But this isn’t okay, Daisy. You might deserve her anger and the guilt she’s making you feel, but do not for one minute think you deserved this.”
Looking at all the bags piled up by the door, I wished I could feel that way.
I was angry, sure. But right now, the guilt outweighed the anger.
Pippa changed into her pajamas. “Get some sleep and we’ll clean the paint after class tomorrow.”
Waiting for sleep to arrive, I stared at the wall, at those cruelly painted words, and my thoughts strayed to Quinn again.
Where was he? And what had he said to her?