I’ve been drowning my sorrows in food, figuring it’s a better drug than speed and/or Ecstasy. Although if I ever did decide to switch my drug of choice to either one of those, I wouldn’t have a problem, since when I first got here, one of James’s friends asked me if I wanted to score. I thought he was propositioning me for sex, until James cleared it up later. That was before he had sex with Simone and dumped her. I’m currently not speaking to him. Neither is Jasmine. We’re all on asshole strike.

Drew knocks again. I leave the pants rolled down, deciding that exposed stomach is better than not, even if it’s um, slightly larger than usual. I shut the light off to compensate, figuring the darkness will mask my bloated body.

“Hey!” I say brightly, throwing open the door. My new, just-decided-upon plan of attack is to pretend like everything’s fine. I mean, really, who cares if I slept in his bed and then someone I thought was my good friend wrote something about how I secretly had a crush on him? I can be mature about this. I put on my best Katie Holmes in First Daughter face. “Where have you been?” I ask brilliantly, figuring it best to strike first, and make it out like he’s been avoiding me.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he says. He looks past me into the dark room. “Why’d you turn the light off?”

Shit. “Oh, uh, I was leaving the room,” I say. “So, you know, saving electricity.”

“Oh,” he says uncertainly. “Where are you going?”

“To the living room,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’m going to watch, um, a movie.” Duh.

“Oh, cool. Mind if I watch with you?”

“No.” Yes. No.

He follows me downstairs and into the living room. “So did you get the book?” Drew asks, sitting down next to me on the couch.

“Yeah. That was really nice of you.” I look down and play with a stray thread that’s popped free from the lining of the couch. I seriously cannot look at him for fear of my face revealing just how bad I want him. I think it’s that fucking cologne he wears. It does something to me and makes me confuse my lust for a scent with lust for him. “I was going to thank you, but I’ve just been so busy with midterms and everything. . . .”

“That’s okay. I just thought that maybe if you sold a picture or two, it might help your family come around and take this whole photography thing a little more seriously.”

“How’d you know my family is freaked out about it?” I ask, finally looking up.

“Jasmine told me. Since, you know, you haven’t really been around.”

“Oh.”