“Liar,” she seethed, rolling her eyes. “You love Jared. I don’t know why he’s practically stalking you, or why you won’t talk to him when it was so obvious today that you miss him…but I know that you love him. And he loves you!” she said, the pitch of her voice rising with each point.

“You don’t know as much as you think you do,” I grumbled.

“Jared looks miserable, Nina. Don’t you care?”

I closed my eyes. “Can we please not talk about this?” I begged.

Beth sat beside me on my bed, her voice quiet. “You need to talk to someone.”

“The only person I can talk to about it is Jared, and I can’t talk to him.”

“Says who?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

“Me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right. Because you’re saving him.”

I shook my head and looked at her. “Why are you pushing this? I thought you liked Ryan.”

“I do. But you belong with Jared. It’s your happiness that I’m worried about, and you’re not happy right now. You are the absolute opposite of happy,” she said, touching my arm.

“I’m doing the right thing,” I said, wiping the tears. “I am.”

“How can it be the right thing when you’re so sad?”

For me, the discussion was over. I walked across the room to pull a pair of pajamas from the drawer.

“Nina, no. You’re not going to sleep. You sleep all the time. You’ve got to find another way to cope. Or just quit coping…go to him.”

“Shut up, Beth.”

Beth’s attention was drawn to the knocking at our door. I walked over, pajamas in hand, and opened the door. Ryan’s hat was pulled low over his eyes so that all I could see was his perfect white smile and his deep dimple.

He thrust a small stack of papers at me and smiled. “I brought notes,” he said, pulling his hat up. “We have finals next week, you know.”

“Thanks,” I said, setting the papers on my desk.

“What are you up to this afternoon? You wanna go get some coffee?” he asked, his eyes fixating on the pajamas in my hand. “Oh, no. You’re not going to sleep.” With that, Ryan grabbed my pajamas from my hands and tossed them across the room.

“I’m tired. I didn’t sleep well last night,” I whined.

“You’re always tired. You need to get out in the sun. It’s a nice day. We could go hang out on the greens.”

I shook my head, trying to push away any memories that thought created.

Ryan’s eyes narrowed, and then his mouth broke into a smile. “That’s it. You and I are going downtown, waste time driving around, and then I’m taking you to dinner.”

“I don’t think….”