I muddle through the rest of the weekend, the week that follows, the next weekend…but it feels like I’m in a play about my life rather than actually living it. My lines are right, my smile perfect, my schoolwork flawless, but it’s all just acting and props. I miss Sebastian, then I feel weird about missing Sebastian, then I feel stupid for feeling weird about it, repeat, do it all while smiling and telling Sarah that yes, I got so much good dirt on the team for the New Recruits Week project, thank you!

It’s Wednesday before I crack and call the one person who can always talk me off an emotional ledge: My mom. I know it’s not particularly cool to call your mom for advice on guys, but my mom and I are pretty close. She was actually the one to suggest I not call her quite so much as I did the first few weeks of college, since I needed to spread my wings and meet new people. That’s right, folks: I was the one with empty nest syndrome.

Of course, I can’t very well tell her that my guy trouble surrounds the guy who killed her sister-in-law. But still, I know I can chat with her about generic emotional woe and get some sound advice.

“Are you getting enough sleep?” she asks as soon as I tell her that I’ve been feeling distracted and depressed and lonely, lately.

“I am— well, I’m trying to, anyway. I had four shifts at Papa Pig’s this week. I don’t know. I think there’s just too much going on in my head, right now. It’s like I need to stick my thoughts on a hard drive for a few hours just to get a break from them,” I sigh back at her. I’m lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and the dozens of tape marks where whomever lived here before me had posters stuck up right over her bed. I’d take them down, but they make a flawless tape-version of the Big Dipper, which I think is kind of cool.

“Maybe Papa Pig’s needs to be down an employee, for a while? Or maybe you can try to take only delivery shifts. Those are lower stress, you said,” Mom replies. She’s not wrong; with deliveries, I can sort of zone out on the drive. Unfortunately, deliveries now remind me of the night I met Sebastian. And working in the restaurant reminds me of the night we were together on the restaurant patio. And not working makes me sit around and think of how I want to see him, how I want him to touch me, to touch him, to feel him, to feel him in me—

Maybe I shouldn’t have called my mother about this, now that I think about it.

“Hey, question,” I say offhand, in my best changing-the-subject voice. “So, one of my roommates—“

“Which one?”

“Uh, Maddy,” I say swiftly. “Maddy is with this guy. She is totally in to him, but he’s not the sort of guy she’d normally date. He’s not the sort of guy the world would approve of her dating, either.”

“The world?” Mom asks skeptically.

“Well, her family, mostly. Anyway, she’s having a hard time— she feels badly for being with him, but she wants to be with him, and they seem to be pretty great together.”

“Is he dangerous? Is that why her family would object? Is he a crack dealer or something?”

“No. No crack.”

“Meth?”

“What? No! No meth. No drugs at all,” I say.

“Hookers?”

“Mom, be serious,” I say.

She laughs. “As long as he isn’t bad for her, then I think she shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks. If they’re great together, and they make each other better people…her family has to accept that. It’s hard, I know, when your kids start making their own decisions, especially when they’re not the decisions you would have made. But it’s also something that’s bound to happen sooner or later. Your family can’t pick your love for you.”

“I have a feeling she’ll say all that is easier said than done,” I answer, sighing.

“Maddy’s tough. She’ll manage. Also, have any of them gotten a tattoo yet? My bingo card is looking sad,” she says. I laugh, and from the sound my mom makes I can tell she’s relieved to hear the sound. My mom got a funny “so, your kid is moving to college” card from a friend that has BAD DECISION BINGO on the front. She’s been legitimately playing it for months, now, but is more or less stuck since as far as I know, we’re a tattoo-free apartment.

“Well, if I get this square here,” she says, and I can’t tell she’s pointing even though I can’t see it, “Change Major: Philosophy, then you’re going to have to convince one of them to get Tattoo: Chinese Symbol, because I’ll have bingo.”

“I’ll get on that,” I say.

* * *

At eight o’clock that evening, I’m working on putting together my notes for the student advocacy group. Last I checked, Emily and Becca were making ramen together in the kitchen, using vegetables stolen from a dining hall salad bar to class it up. Someone knocks at the door at such a fast clip that I assume my roommates have managed to botch ramen and ordered delivery Chinese instead.

But then I hear the voice.

“I’m here to see Ashlynn Sawyer. Does she live here?”

The voice is deep and powerful and carries through the walls, like the apartment itself wants to be certain it reaches my ears. I faintly hear Becca or Emily say something in reply, then, “Sure, thanks.”

It’s Sebastian. And, given the fact that I hear footsteps pittering my way, it sounds like he’s sent one of my roommates to fetch me. Becca flings open my bedroom door without knocking, her eyes wide and lips parted in a bright, eager grin. “Oh my god, Ashlynn—“

“Sebastian Slate,” I say, nodding, then rise.

“Uh, okay, so if you know Sebastian Slate is here to see you, why does your face look like that?” Becca hisses, pointing at my grim expression. “Does he want the jersey back, you think? Stall. Say you need help finding it. Is it in here? I’ll hide it—“ Becca says, and her eyes begin skirting around my floor.

“I— no, he’s not here for the jersey,” I say, walking toward her. “It’s complicated. Really complicated.”

“What’s so complicated?” Emily whispers, butting herself in between Becca and the doorframe. “What happened? I asked him if he wanted ramen but he said no and then I told him we added carrots to it like Sebastian Slate cares if there are carrots in his ramen and oh my god, Ashlynn, why are you making that face?”

“I asked the same thing!” Becca said.

“Look,” I interrupt their horrified expressions. “I’ll tell you more about it later, okay? Let me just…let me go handle this.” I’d sort of hoped I might ask one of them to send him away, but I know that a) that’s a cowardly thing to do and b) there’s no way they’re going to do that. I glance in the mirror— I’m wearing old jeans and a t-shirt, and I’m not wearing makeup. Becca and Emily notice this at the same second, and before I can do much about it, Becca is tearing a hairbrush through my hair and Emily is forcing lip tint onto my lips.

“That’ll have to do,” Emily says. “Go, hurry. Go.”

I take a deep breath and step out my door, then make my way down the hall. My stomach flips when I see Sebastian filling the doorframe, his shoulders nearly wide as the frame itself. He hears me coming, and his eyes flick up— those eyes. Dark and liquid and warm and perfect. I remember looking up at them while he was on top of me, staring down into them while I rode him for what felt like hours of bliss. I lick my lips at the memory, probably ruining Emily’s makeup handiwork, but I can’t help it.

“Ashlynn,” Sebastian says, voice stern.

“Hi,” I answer, flushing. I’m ashamed of how I left things with him, excited to see him, embarrassed that I’m thinking about how he looks undressed…I never really knew I was capable of experiencing so many emotions, so strongly, at the same moment.

“I needed to come see you.” His voice is clipped, almost angry.

I take the final few steps toward him, leaving a few feet between us. “I’m sorry about the way I left things.”

He nods slowly, and his eyes dart over my shoulder; I spin around and see Becca and Emily’s heads poking around the hall corner. They pretend to be studying the paint on the walls when they realize we’ve seen them. Slick, guys, I think, but it makes me laugh all the same. When I turn back to Sebastian, the laugh fades.

“I’d like to talk,” he says shortly.

“Here?”

“No,” he says, eyes flicking back to where my roommates are looming. “Someplace private.”

I force and exhale, but nod. “Yeah, just— let me get my shoes, okay?”