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Piper
What A Loser
It was my first time prepping for an event without Adam. Which was weird. No one was there to tease me about my Top 40 playlist or grab the flyers away from me to staple downstairs. I had to do all the work myself.
I staggered up the stairs with two chairs from the lounge below and pushed against the door. When was the last time I even touched one of those chairs? Ugh. And to think, it would be totally different next year.
Next year.
After the first of May, I wouldn’t have the linebacker as part of my schedule. Maybe. I didn’t know. Everything was so up in the air and the semester was barreling by faster than I would’ve thought possible. And once the semester ended, maybe there went my weird thing with Adam Russell. I’d be saying goodbye to the boy who could kiss like nothing else I’d ever dreamed of.
My heart squeezed in my chest. Painfully.
“Piper!” a voice called down from the top and June stuck her head through the stairwell up top.
I grinned and picked up the pace. “June!”
Every day, she looked better and better. Less of the girl who’d been devastated from the breakup and more herself. Not quite to the residential leader and homecoming committee and busy, busy, busy popular queen bee but it was good just to see her better. She propped open the door for me.
“I’m here to make this a little less painful.” June smiled and grabbed one of the chairs. “But I’m only here for twenty minutes. I am so tired of meetings.”
“Oh…?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Housing meetings,” she said. “I’m still AWOL with everybody. Because somehow Xavier's part of everything I ever signed for—but I still want to keep my house—so here we are.”
I shuffled into my room. “Aw, June—”
“Did you know your phone’s been going off? Like, off-off.”
The moment she mentioned it, I could hear it. My phone buzzing again, stuck in the cushions of my couch. I fished for it and saw all the thousands of notifications, zooming across the top of my phone—oh, god. What did Adam do now? And then—of course—the phone call. I stared at the phone and my lips curled.
THOMAS SULLENDER
MOBILE
“What a loser,” slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Oh my god. Did I just say that?
I froze, staring down at my phone. It’d been such a slip of the tongue. I didn’t even mean to say it and it felt like I’d just spoken a fact instead of an annoying observation. And those were…Adam’s words.
“Who’s the loser?” June asked, bringing in another chair.
“I—I think…I think I just called my ex a loser?” I said incredulously. “Wow. I just did that. Me. I said that!”
“Way to go, babe.”
I flew back on the couch and pumped my fist in the air. “Because he is a loser!”
“He’s a rat-faced motherfucker,” June agreed.
“That too! Just like Xavier!”
I winced before the words flew out of my mouth. Oh my god. Couldn’t I keep it cool for five seconds? When I’d broken up with Thomas, I didn’t even want to hear his name. But the amused smile on June’s face told me otherwise.
“Oh, you’re fine.” She waved away the concern. “I can’t get mad at you. Especially after what you two did to the Clemenza.”
I went slack-jawed while June lined chairs together.
