“Hello, Susan,” he said.

Susan couldn’t say anything. Her body couldn’t process the level of rage she’d ascended to.

“Is there a reason you were hitching a ride in the back of my van?”

“Your van?” That was what she was going to lead with? Apparently so.

McGraw shrugged. “Technically the van belongs to Allan Cho, a third-year Mechanical Engineering student whose uncle runs a roofing company and had some unused—”

“Ugh. Stop talking!” Susan clutched her head, trying to claw all this unwanted information from her brain.

“. . . good for a project I’m—”

“No! Not interested.”

“. . . said I could borrow the van while—”

“Stop!” In desperation, Susan lunged forward and slammed both hands across McGraw’s mouth. Startled, the two of them stared at each other for a second, frozen in a horrifying tableau, McGraw’s mustache strangely soft against her fingertips, his eyes no longer hinting at mirth so much as . . .

“Ugh.” Susan sprang back, wiping her hands on McGraw’s sleeve rather than contaminating her own clothes, ignoring the shape his muscles made under the material and the smell of metal shavings and sawdust and soap.

Turning her back, Susan stormed away as McGraw called after her, “You do know you’re in direct violation of Clause 4 of our contract?”

Her response was in direct violation of basic human decency.

There is nothing quite so unsatisfactory as finding your soul mate and her not even noticing you exist.

That had been what it was like in the pub. Whenever Esther tried to talk to Vectra Featherstone (even her surname was cool!), one of the other Lit students would join in, dominating the conversation. And on the rare occasions Vectra said anything, Esther had barely been able to hear her. Vectra’s throaty crackle was exactly the wrong frequency for a Friday night in a busy pub.

Every time Esther edged close enough to maybe say something, the group would shift, and she would find herself watching as someone else caught Vectra’s attention, her heavily kohled eyes turned in their direction as Vectra chewed disinterestedly on her straw.

Oh, for such disinterest to be directed at Esther . . .

They would be friends. Of this Esther was utterly, completely convinced. There was no one Esther had ever met who hadn’t warmed to her eventually, and she knew, deep in the chambers of her heart, that Vectra and she would be the best friends ever.

If only they talked to each other.

Stomping up the stairs, weighed down with creative writing ephemera and disappointment, Esther hoped that Daisy wouldn’t mind what had happened. After all, she’d had Susan for company, and she didn’t really need two of them to go with her to this club. It wasn’t as if Esther had abandoned her. She’d sent a message. She’d been to all the other clubs. And Daisy had said she was fine . . .