Page 14 of Trick Play

I scoffed. “Lo, there’s no truce. No agreement.”

“Then how have you two managed to stay away from each other for the past three years? There had to be some sort of set rules.”

I almost laughed. She was ridiculous. “I would have told you about it if there was.”

“You’re serious?” Her eyes widened. “Then how?”

“A strong mutual dislike?” I guessed. “I stuck to my circles, and he did the same.”

She slouched in her seat. “I always thought there was a post-breakup discussion. Like you laid out a map and drew a boundary.”

“Nope. We definitely never did that. We haven’t spoken to each other since the night he ended things.”

I would not think about that now.

“Huh. That’s impressive then.”

“Not really. We’re different majors. I don’t go to anything related to sports. I don’t go to frat parties. It wasn’t actually that hard.”

She pursed her lips. “Still, this school isn’t that big. You two should have run into each other at some point.”

“You’ve been with me when we’ve had to duck into classrooms or bathrooms because he was close.” Did Lauren really have this whole conspiracy made up in her mind?

“Yeah, but I thought you were in the no-no zone.”

I burst out laughing. “Stop it.”

She giggled. “What? I’m serious. I never asked because I didn’t want to poke at old wounds, but I figured there had to be something going on.”

“There didn’t have to be a discussion,” I finally admitted. “We knew each other well enough to know where the other would be.”

Her eyes reflected the sadness I felt. “I can’t imagine ever having that kind of connection with someone.”

Four years of spending nearly every day together would do that to you. It wasn’t something we planned on or even spoke about. We knew each other. Better than anyone else. We knew how the other thought. Anticipated their emotions. Predicted their reactions. I thought it was because we were soul mates.

I was so young and innocent and naive.

I know now soul mates are as real as mermaids and trolls and wizards with flying brooms. Another fairytale. A lie we pass down to each generation.

I fell for it.

Never again.

“Why don’t you tell the professor you can’t work together?”

“I already considered that, but he made the assignments, and we have an even number of students in the class. We can’t make someone else switch.”

“Sure you can.”

Sometimes I wished I had a bit of her boldness.

“Or you could do the project yourself and tell your professor he didn’t help at all. Let him fail.”

I pulled the syllabus from my notebook and turned it to the page about this project.

“There will be check-ins every other week with the professor to stay on track and address any issues, so he’ll know we aren’t working together and fix it before I could turn anything in.”

She poked at her chin while she thought. “What if you––”