Back Come As You Are
Chapters (25)
  1. Copyright Notice
  2. Dedication
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Acknowledgments
  23. Also by Dahlia Adler
  24. About the Author
  25. Newsletter Sign-up

The ping of an incoming text spares us both, and she scoops up her phone and snorts.

“Your brother?” I just know he’s checking in to make sure I’m behaving myself.

“He’s such a moron.”

“And a loser,” I chime in, even though right at this moment, I feel slightly, mildly, a tiny bit friendly toward him. But Sabrina doesn’t need to know that.

“Hey—only I get to call my brother a loser,” Sabrina says as she taps back a text, but the corner of her mouth is curved up enough for me to know she’s only half-serious.

“Well tell the loser I said hi, then.”

She does, and thirty seconds later, she says, “He says this is a very sad idea of a cool night, and that you’ve downgraded Graysons. Hey! I think I’m offended.”

“Tell him I said to bite me.”

“With pleasure.”

She sends off a text, and the reply comes quickly and makes her snort. “I will spare you his reply. But also, I have got to get out of this room; I can’t look at these walls anymore. You wanna go up to the lounge? There’s gotta be something to do there.”

I shrug and together we head up to the third floor, which houses the dorm mom Mrs. Fletcher’s apartment, a computer room with exactly one desktop and printer, and a cozy lounge area full of couches arranged around a large coffee table and facing a TV. One wall holds a kitchenette, which is really just a long counter, a fridge crammed full of labeled food, a sink, and a microwave. There’s also a bookcase with a few scattered titles people have dumped here after reading, a couple of old board games, and a little gold-tone statue of a Camden cougar.

“God, this is so much cleaner than the Rumson lounge,” I observe as I walk over to the kitchenette and start opening up the cabinets, suddenly ravenous for the microwave popcorn I didn’t get to have at the Student Center tonight. “Boys are disgusting.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice.”

“Ah, got it!” I spot the box of popcorn and grab a plastic-wrapped packet. “So, as long as I’m staying, how about you tell me more about your girl drama.”

She rolls her eyes. “There’s nothing to tell. We broke up. Now Molly’s still at our old school with her new girlfriend, and I’m here with my brother.”

“And me,” I remind her with a sunny smile, unwrapping the popcorn and putting it in the microwave. “Don’t forget me.”

“I could never,” she says dryly.

“So is Molly why you came to Camden?”