Chapter 24

TWENTY-FOUR

The next few weeks are calm.

I mean, objectively, they’re not. It’s the last few weeks of school, so I’m buried in books and dealing with finals and writing papers and handing those same papers in.

Quinn gives me a week off. I spend most of that week in the library.

Early mornings.

Late nights.

Forgotten meals and abusing the vending machine.

Pulling all-nighters left and right.

I’m sleep deprived, and I make stupid mistakes.

I get Sutton’s car towed one afternoon after he throws me the keys so I can drive myself to school after I sleep in. He finds it funny rather than annoying, for some reason, even though getting it back is a bitch and wastes a fuckload of his time.

I drop coffee on my laptop late one night and freak the fuck out, then watch Sutton expertly and efficiently unplug it and dry everything with a mountain of paper towels before he opens it up to remove the battery, hard drive, CPU, and RAM, all the while calmly keeping up a steady stream of reassurance. And he takes all of it so seriously. It’s technically my problem, but in Sutton’s capable hands it becomes our problem, which he then solves.

Coji is in the back-on phase of their relationship—useless as ever, the both of them—so I give up and do all the work myself while swearing up a storm. Sutton proofreads the paper for me. I get butterflies.

Don’t get me wrong, I still loathe Coji with everything I have in me, but that’s more like a background noise.

Because there’s Sutton.

And once I’m done with finals, we spend the whole weekend in bed, talking and fucking and only leaving occasionally to shower or cover my shift at the pool. If it weren’t for those few obligations, we probably wouldn’t leave the bed at all. We’re both in our underwear, stuffing our faces with pizza and getting crumbs everywhere while watching shitty movies. We take naps in the early summer afternoon sunshine that pours in through the open windows and warms our naked bodies. Sweaty skin gets stuck on sweaty skin where we’re pressed together, but it doesn’t matter at all, and neither of us is willing to move away anyway.

So, yes. Everything is calm.

Calm.

Calm.

Calm.