“So that’s why,” he mused while scratching his jaw. I watched him think over the very embarrassing video before prodding him to continue.

“Why what?” I asked.

He smiled a bit as he wrapped his large, veiny hand around his drink. “Why you’re so anal.”

My nose scrunched up at that term. “I’m not anal,” I spat.

“No? You send me a daily email of everything I need to do at exactly seven in the morning. Even on the weekends.” I pursed my lips. He wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t mean I was anal. Did he not just see the awful video I’d shown him? “You also coordinate your purse to your outfits. You try really hard to look like you threw your clothes together, but we both know you have designer sneakers on with laces color-coordinated with your yoga pants.”

I didn’t have to look down at my Nike shoes to know that he was absolutely right. “So what’s your point then?”

“My point is, you were such a mess that you went in the extreme opposite direction. You must have really fucked up to have gone to such extremes, and something tells me it wasn’t this video that made you move across the country.”

My mouth dropped open. How did he know that I moved? The sly look on his face made me feel like I was a math problem he wanted to figure out, and I didn’t like it one bit. My father might have paid a lot of money to keep my discretions out of the media, but that didn’t mean they were impossible to find. Anyone at my old school would happily supply the evidence of what I’d done. I needed to deflect.

“I could say the same about you,” I began as he took another bite of his meal. His eyes remained trained on me as I spoke, and I had to pause and lick my lips.

“Oh?” he finally replied, with his mouth full of burger. He lost hot points when he spoke with his mouth full. Maybe I should just keep feeding him every time we were together. He was absolutely disgusting while stuffing his face, and it helped keep me sane and my panties dry.

“People don’t party as hard as you do unless they’re trying to escape something. I mean, yeah, it’s college and we’re all stressed to hell and want to drink the anxiety away, but you take it a step further. Why?”