“This is going to cost me my Gold,” she says. “No one in my sorority is a Silver, Sara. My life is ruined.”

Oh gosh.

“Your life is not ruined,” I say, as nicely as possible. I reach out to pat her on the head.

She just lets out another sob in reply.

“Let’s get you up.” I take her hand, but she doesn’t budge. “Maybe we could get some coffee? Or I could walk you home?”

“What’s the point?” She buries her face in her hands and continues to cry.

I look around, but no one else on the street has budged. Some girls are watching us from across the street, but don’t seem like they’re gonna help anytime soon.

A black Escalade stops at the curb in front of us. The back window rolls down and Braden peeks out. “Need a ride?” he asks.

I pause for a second. To be honest, I’m still kind of mad at him about the app thing. Since we became official boyfriend-girlfriend, we’ve barely talked.

I mean, I’ve barely talked. He texts me, and I send one-word replies. I just can’t get one of the messages I saw out of my head. A few days before the game, while I was home with my family and my mom was joking about how smitten I seemed with this boy I was texting, when I thought something real was forming between us, he was chatting with her. And he wrote, I heard that Smiths song again today, thought of you.

Like first of all, please. Braden doesn’t listen to The Smiths, he listens to Drake. Trying to be Fake Deep by saying he listens to old music—classic fuckboi.

And second... It was so emotional. I guess I would have expected something more purely physical. Knowing him, I would have guessed that before we were together, he’d been sending sleazy texts to girls. It’s seeing him send sweet things that hurts the most.

Also, he sent her a heart emoji. And not even the two small pink hearts that are more friendly. The red heart. The love heart.

From the sidewalk, Colleen lets out another sob.

“Yes.” I turn to Braden. “Yes, we would.”

Braden gets out to help get Colleen into the car and hands her a bottle of water. She cries during the entire ride, but we manage to get her back to the dorm and into her room.

“You should sleep,” Braden says.

Colleen sniffles and nods as she climbs into her twin extra long. Her room is neat, not as clean as mine, but good for a dorm. And she has all these prints of poems on her walls. I don’t know why I expected posters of pop songs or celebrities.

“Here.” Braden tucks her in. “I’m Postmating food for you, and Sara and I will wake you up when it comes. Just sleep for now.”