Page 33 of Across His Line

Tessa

He doesn’t go to the kitchen.

I watch the doorway after he walks out of it, waiting for the faucet at the end of the hall, for the sound of the water bottle filling, for the thing he came out here to do. I only know because I saw the empty bottle and heard the way it echoed when he placed it on the table. His footsteps go the other way, straight back up the hall, fast and heavy, and three doors down from mine, his door sticks, and he yanks it, and it slams so hard I feel it in the table.

He came out for water. He went back without it.

I sit there with a strip of tape stuck to the side of my hand and look at my things. The scarf. The Levi’s. The wallet. The little wooden box, sitting crooked where he put it down, the latch still open from when he clicked it. Fifty dollars. He said fifty, and I argued with him, and the whole time I was arguing, I was already redoing the math in my head, because he was right.

I can’t believe that I asked Rafferty Waleska what he’d price it at, like he has any clue. Like he has an opinion I care about. No.

His eyes stayed green the whole time. They didn’t darken once, not even at the end. He smelled like the same Trident winter mint and the same cologne he’s always worn, and I smelled it before he was all the way through the door. He leaned on the back of that chair like somebody had invited him to. And for a few minutes, it felt okay.

Little Tessa. You’re getting careless.

He isn’t wrong. That’s what makes me want to put my face down on the table between the mailers. I came down here. I knew this lounge was thirty feet from his door, and I carried my whole box of stuff down the hall anyway, because the table’s big and the light is good, and I’d decided I wasn’t going to live like that anymore. And the first time he walked past, I forgot everything I know about him.

I tape the last mailer. I stack them. I put the jewelry box back in with the lid still open. I don’t change the price. I carry everything back down the hall and past his door without looking at it.

If I can’t trust myself to stay on the right side of the line, I’ll draw the line where neither of us can miss it. No more common rooms. No more stopping in doorways. No more arguments about who walked into whose space. No more you stopped first. I’m going to take every gray area between us and turn it back to black and white, and then there won’t be anything left to argue about.

I turn to a clean page in my notebook and write it all out. Micro, Monday and Wednesday, eleven to eleven-fifty. Lab, Wednesday, eight. Stats, Tuesday and Thursday, nine-thirty. Writing seminar, Tuesday and Thursday, one. The dining hall by the library, twelve-fifteen to twelve-forty-five most days, and five-thirty for dinner. The library, third floor, two to five, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. The bus to Route 9, every other Wednesday, two-forty. I put it in a grid. I make the lines straight with the edge of my student ID.

Then I sit there and look at it.

It’s my whole life on one page. Every place I’ll be, every hour, laid out like a map for somebody who wants to find me. It’s the opposite of everything I’ve ever done to stay safe. And I’m about to hand it to the one person I’ve spent four years making sure couldn’t.

But that’s the point. If he has it, he can’t say I’m in his way. If he has it and he still shows up, then it’s on him, and we both know it, and there’s nowhere left for him to hide.

I take a picture of it.

I could email it because that’s where he asked. That’s the polite, impersonal, paper-trail way to do it, and it would keep him exactly as far away as I want him.

Instead, I open my contacts, and I scroll to W, and there he is.

Rafferty Waleska.

I’ve had his number since sophomore year. There was a group project in history, four of us, and the teacher made us start a group chat, and he never once typed a word in it. Not one. The other two did all the talking, and I did all the work, and he showed up the day we presented, read off a note card I’d written, and got the same grade I did. When the project was over, the other two left the chat. I didn’t. And I never deleted his number.

Not because I wanted it. I kept it because it was information. I kept it just in case.

I send the picture via text.

Me: This is my schedule.

Three dots appear almost immediately. They go away. They come back.

Rafferty Waleska: You have my number.

Of course. Of course that’s the first thing. Not the schedule. Not thanks. My stomach drops all the way to the floor, and I sit there holding the phone like it’s hot.

Me: Yes.

Rafferty Waleska: Since when.

Me: High school.

Nothing. The dots don’t even come up. I picture him three doors down, sitting on his bed with his jaw doing that thing it does, reading those two words over and over. I feel sick, and I feel something else that’s worse than sick, which is almost satisfied.