Page 42 of Wrong For Me

His eyebrows go up but he doesn’t respond. I push my chair back, no longer content to sit here with him staring at me, his expression all-knowing and shit. But Bodhi holds up a hand.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed. It just seems a little ironic, is all.” He waves at my chair. “Sit down. We can talk about this.”

“Nothing to talk about,” I mutter. “It sucks. It’s bad enough I have to share my duties—you know how crap I am at playing well with others.”

He coughs into his fist, the noise sounding a lot like the word “understatement,” and I ignore him.

“But this? Having to spend a bunch of time with this rich girl who thinks I’m trash?” My stomach clenches at my own words. “Sucks isn’t a strong enough descriptor.”

“Hang on.” He stands too, looking me in the eye. “Who said she thinks you’re trash?”

“She sent her daddy’s lawyer to our apartment half an hour after she left my bed. An assistant who tried topayme to sign an NDA. Pretty sure that’s a good indication of how she sees me.”

The real question is, why does that still upset me? Why am I twisting myself up in knots over some spoiled princess who doesn’t know the first thing about me? I’ve never cared about people judging me before—and there has been plenty for them to judge. My lack of money. My mom’s erratic behavior. The way we moved around so much with not much more than the clothes on our backs, sleeping out of our damn car half the time.

No wonder that girl thinks you’re trash,a cruel little voice whispers in my head. My mother’s voice. I push it down.

“You know what’s really fucked up?” I ask Bodhi. “She was acting all hurt today. Likeshewas the one who had a right to be upset. Like she did nothing wrong.”

He scrunches his forehead, deep in thought. “Have you considered talking to her about it?”

I snort out a laugh. Yeah, that’s a conversation I want to have.Hey, Rose—remember when you told me you wanted to see me again and then sent your dad’s lawyer to pay me off, instead? What was up with that?

“I’ll pass,” I tell Bodhi, then scrub my hands over my face, suddenly tired. The thought of an entire semester stretching on with this much tension is exhausting. “I’m going to go get started on my reading.”

“Dude,” he argues. “It’s the first day of classes. You can’t have homework yet.”

“They might go easy on you in the education department, but some of us want to get ahead.”

He snorts in derision. “Yeah, education is so easy. I’m going to be in charge of thirty ten-year-olds in less than a week. Do you have any idea how terrifying that is?” He grips my shoulder. “But I can spare a couple hours for a beer. If you want.”

This is one of those moments I never quite know how to deal with. My instinct is to push him off, assume he’s trying to get something from me. But I know that’s just the way I was conditioned as a kid. Still, I have so little practice with actually having friends—Bodhi is pretty much the only one. Even after six years, I can’t always shake the awkwardness that plagues me when it comes to the simplest, friendly gestures.

“Nah, man,” I manage, adding a bro back slap for good measure. “It’s cool. We both have early days tomorrow.”

He studies my face just long enough to make me squirm before he finally releases my shoulder. “Sure. Maybe this weekend. We can celebrate surviving the first week.”

“Sounds good.”

I breathe easier alone in my bedroom. Just like I always have. And I wonder, not for the first time, if I’m ever going to outgrow the shit my mom put in my head.

Speaking of my mother, I find a text notification from her as soon as I plug my phone into the charger. The damn thing refuses to keep a charge lately, meaning I can only really use it when I’m at home and can plug in—which kind of defeats the purpose of having a cell phone.

“One more thing I’m going to need to buy,” I mutter to myself as I open her text.

Mom:Hope the first day went well, sweetie. Call me tonight if you can.

I feel a familiar pang in my chest. Homesickness and guilt and frustration, all mixed up together. It’s been too long since I’ve seen her. I should have found the time to get out there last month, but money is always so tight, it’s hard to justify taking time off from my summer jobs.

Plus, it’s so much easier dealing with her over the phone.

Sighing, I sit down at my desk. I’ll get some work done before I call her. The last time I talked to my uncle, he said her moods were getting a little erratic. If I call her now and it doesn’t go well, it will be a lot harder for me to buckle down and focus on work after.

Excuses, that voice in my head whispers, but I ignore it as I open my laptop. I check my inbox first, finding an email from the dean of the department, informing us that applications for the Williamson Fellowship are due the first week of November. A thrum of anticipation goes through me. I already have the date circled on my desk calendar. This fellowship is a big deal. It would definitely add to my work load but that doesn’t matter—it also pays the winner’s full tuition for an entire semester. That would be life changing for me.

I’m mentally cycling through options for the research component when I click back to my inbox. Almost immediately all thoughts of the fellowship go out of my head when I see I have an email waiting from Rose. My heart rate picks up a little as I click on it, and I remind myself how completely pathetic that makes me.

The email is short and to the point.