“Dean McKinnon asked me to talk to you about your student activity requirement since some campus groups begin recruiting members the first week of school. See any you like?” I’d completely forgotten about that part of the program. Nick spots the look on my face and hides a smirk behind his palm. “Do you even know what a student group is?”

“I can guess,” I growl. “Clubs. Professional degree orgs for pre-med kids or pre-law kids. I dunno… fraternities and sororities?”

“Mostly right,” he says, “except EC kids can’t join frats or sororities. Minors in environments notorious for partying and drinking? That’s a no-go. What parent would send their precious underage baby to UNC if they thought we were studying organic chem during the day and doing keg stands at night?”

“Well, which one did you join? So I know which one to avoid.”

“A second sidestepped question. Cricket Club.”

“Cricket. Club. In basketball and football country?”

He shrugs. “I knew it would piss my dad off.”

Something twists in my heart, tight and sharp. “Oh?”

“My dad’s an alum. A psychology professor here.”

“And he wants you to do something other than cricket?”

“Yep.” Nick tips his head backward and watches the tree limbs as we pass under them. “Follow in his footsteps.”

“But you’re not going to do that something else?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

He drops his gaze to mine. “Because I don’t do things just because my father wants me to.”

Suddenly, irrationally, the twist in my chest transforms into something more aggressive. “He just wants a connection.”

Nick scoffs. “I’m sure he does, but I don’t care.”

I stop on the pathway and turn to him. “You should care.”

Nick stops walking. Uses my earlier response against me. “Oh?”

“Yes,” I challenge.

We lock eyes, brown to blue, and something unexpected passes between us. A tug of friendship, a dropper full of humor.

“You’re pushy,” he observes, and smiles.

I don’t know what to say to that, so I start walking again.

Old East appears ahead of us, beige-yellow brick and unremarkable identical windows running in rows down its sides. You’d never guess it had been standing for almost two hundred and thirty years—the oldest state university building in the country.

I don’t know why it bugs me that Nick doesn’t want to connect with his father. We’ve only just met, we barely know each other, and he doesn’t owe me any details about his life. It shouldn’t irritate me.

But it does.

Contempt and jealousy intertwine and slice through my stomach like jagged claws. I want to aim them at this Nick so that he can feel what I think of his wasted luxury: a parent who’s still alive for reconciliation. I turn to him, the words on my tongue, when I catch a flash of unearthly light in the distance, just over his shoulder.