“Are you okay?” Harper crouched next to him, and he slowly sat up.
He rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah … I think so.”
Harper looked him over just to be sure, and she was relieved that he was still wearing his boxers. His bare torso revealed several fresh scratches on his chest and shoulders. His lip was bleeding, too, but she wasn’t sure if that was from the fall or something that Liv had done.
“What don’t you understand about the words get out?” Liv asked, leaning over the edge of her bed to glare down at them.
Her eyes—which had seemed wide and innocent when Harper first met her—now appeared much darker and more calculating.
“I’m going,” the guy said. He got up quickly, wincing as he did, and picked his clothes up off the floor.
That’s when Harper finally discovered her missing chem book. It had been hidden underneath his jeans.
He didn’t even wait to get dressed before he left, preferring to walk out into the hall in his underwear rather than spend another minute in their dorm room. Not that Harper blamed him.
“Got my book,” Harper told Liv as she shoved the textbook into her backpack. “So I’ll be out of your hair.”
“You don’t have to rush out of here now that he’s gone.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Harper saw Liv jump down from her bed and land on the floor in one graceful movement. The honey had returned to her voice, but Harper wasn’t sure if she could trust it, so she turned around slowly. Liv’s blond hair fell in waves that landed just above her shoulders, and though she wasn’t as tall as Harper, her tanned legs appeared long, extending below her micro pajama shorts.
“I figured he’d want some privacy, you know?” Liv glanced back to wink at Harper, then grabbed a tank top out of her drawer.
“Yeah.” Harper forced a smile and tried to sound happy for her roommate. “He seemed … nice. Is he your boyfriend?”
Liv scoffed. “He wishes. I woke up thirsty and hungry, so I went down to the commons to get a soda out of the machine, and I picked him up, too.”
“Oh.” Harper leaned back against her desk. She thought about straightening up the mess she’d made, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off Liv. “Do you think you’ll see him again?”
“Just because I said you could stay doesn’t mean we have to talk,” Liv said, pulling her shirt on over her head.
Harper sighed and considered leaving, but she knew she’d have to talk to Liv eventually. She might as well get it out of the way now.
“Actually, um, I have been wanting to talk to you,” Harper said, plunging into the conversation.
Liv narrowed her eyes. “About what?”
“Just life.” Harper shrugged and tried to keep her tone casual. “I haven’t really been able to talk to you much, so I thought we could check in with each other.”
“Why? It’s not like we need to be besties or something.” Liv snickered.
“No, but you said that you wanted to be friends, and I thought we could be.”
Liv tilted her head, as if she had no idea what Harper was talking about. “Did I say that?”
“Yeah.” Harper nodded. “You said it a few times, actually.”
“Oh.” Liv sounded utterly bored with the conversation and picked at a loose thread on her pajama pants. “Was that last week? It seems like a lifetime ago.”
Liv turned back around to go through her dresser again. Harper could only gape at her, astounded by the change.
“Did something happen?” Harper asked, as Liv pulled a jean skirt out of a drawer.
“Why? What do you mean?” Liv kept her back to her as she slipped out of the pajama pants and pulled on the skirt.
“I don’t know. You just seem … different.”
When Liv turned back to her, Harper noticed that same darkness in her eyes, like a shadow had been pulled down to mask a new malevolence, and Liv smirked. “So that’s what this is about?”