the lobby I pause, watching kids in BU sweatshirts studying in the chairs and couches in the common area. For a moment, I imagine myself in one of those chairs, or in one of the groups laughing by the elevators, before the thought is gone.
I ride the elevator to the twenty-third floor, confirming I wasn’t far off in my estimate. The doors ping open onto a carpeted and well-lit hallway. I’ve known that Dad pays for Lewis’s dorm and a good portion of his tuition—I didn’t know he’d sprung for this. I’ve hardly ever stayed in hotels this nice, not that I’m some experienced traveler. With mom’s single-parent salary from the university, we’ve only gone out of town once or twice in the past few years. In Maine, I liked the scenery but discovered I couldn’t keep lobster down. In New York, Lewis was busted for trying to push a penny over the edge of the Empire State Building. I don’t love family trips.
I step into the hall, my fingers reflexively finding my phone in my pocket. It’s instinct to worry how Mom’s doing, even though I only texted her twenty minutes ago. It’d be different if she weren’t on her own in the house, if she and my dad hadn’t divorced. But he decided to pack up for Canada when Lewis was in high school, before Mom took the test. The test that changed our lives forever.
Forcing my nerves to calm, I knock on the door of room 2303. I’m guessing Lewis is back now. It ended up taking three hours to get from Tilton to Boston and onto the MBTA bus, not counting the delay of returning home after my original departure. I don’t think college exams extend this late into the evening, though I guess I’d have no idea if they did.
The door opens. Instead of Lewis or one of his roommates, it’s a girl.
Wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt.
I blink. I know I’m blushing, and for a moment I wonder if I went to the wrong room. Or if I dozed off before my bus careened into the river, and heaven is a Boston University dorm populated with hot girls.
“You’re not Becky,” she says, betraying no consciousness of the series of complex emotions sending my blood roaring in my ears. “You didn’t happen to see a short blonde girl with a physics book, did you? I am seriously screwed for the exam if—” She stops, something like recognition entering her eyes. “Fitz?”
None of the unique words in my vocabulary is helping me form a coherent sentence. Now I feel like the girl definitely notices, because her lips begin to curve upward. Her criminally pouty lips. I might be socially inept, but I’m not blind. And I am a teenage boy. I force my eyes not to glance down to her smooth brown thighs peeking out from under the shirt’s hem.
Instead, I focus on her face and realize she looks familiar. I know her from Lewis’s Instagram. It’s the purple-stone nose piercing that helps me make the connection. Hers is the face in the selfie from Lewis’s summer trip to Miami and in the photo from a couple months ago Lewis captioned, “Regatta.”
“Wait,” I hear myself say before I’ve thought it through, “you’re Lewis’s ex.” For a horrible moment, I wonder if she’s gotten with one of his roommates in the weeks since Lewis called home and mentioned the breakup.
The girl only laughs, throwing her long black hair behind her back. It’s as stupidly perfect a laugh as everything about her. She’s objectively gorgeous, with her black nail polish, her wrist tattoo, the stone in her piercing glittering in the light.
“Did Lewis tell you we broke up?” she asks. She speaks with the hint of an Indian accent, unlike Lewis, who was adopted from Bengaluru before he could talk. When he got to college, he got involved in Indian and South Asian clubs and organizations, or so I gathered from his Facebook. I think he mentioned Prisha running one of them.
I open my mouth, unsure what to say.
“To be fair, we did break up,” I hear my brother’s voice from inside. The girl opens the door wider, revealing Lewis walking into the room. He’s wearing