text, demanding I stay away from Hayley, he never sent another. I’d spent the whole night trying not to be mad at him, but I was. I felt stupid for falling for his bullshit again.
And now, here I was, standing twenty feet away from Mac and Hayley, watching them with equal parts interest and fire-breathing jealousy. And I wasn’t the only one. The two of them together had created a bit of a scene. I noticed quite a few people paying attention to their interaction, watching their every move like they were afraid to miss something good.
I had been walking from class toward the commissary for some coffee when Mac’s figure caught my eye. I knew it was him from just a glance, and I planned on continuing my quest for caffeine, but when I saw Hayley with him, I stopped walking and started watching. For such a big campus, it felt like some sort of sick sign for me to run into them like this. Almost like the universe had wanted me to see them together. I fought the urge to leave but felt rooted in place even though the scene was making me sick.
When her hands gripped his arms, I wanted to run over there and rip them off. My breath caught in my throat when Mac did it for me. He pulled out of her grasp and looked down at his arms like they were on fire. He flailed around like an animated figure, pointing and shaking his head at her. And each time she took a step toward him, he took a step back.
“Told you she had a plan.” Rocky suddenly appeared at my side, eating a banana and watching my nightmare unfold before our eyes.
“She makes me ragey,” I said, balling my hands into fists, wondering how Rocky had found me in the first place. This morning, I seemed to be running into everyone I normally never saw.
“She has that effect,” she said before finishing off the fruit and holding the peel with two fingers. “You should go over there.”
I whipped my head in her direction. “What? No way. Why would I do that?”
Rocky shrugged. “ ’Cause it would be fun to watch you put her in her place.”
After giving her a playful shove, I second-guessed myself the second she turned toward me with an unsure look in her eyes. I threw both hands in the air. “Sorry. I was just playing. Don’t shove me back,” I said, thinking that she might send me into the next zip code.
She laughed and was about to speak when a loud bang echoed out of nowhere, quickly followed by another. Rocky instantly fell to the ground, her hands covering the back of her head.
What the hell?
I frantically looked around, noticing everyone else in various states of alarm. Some people had started running, and others were searching for the location of the sound, seemingly frozen in place.
I was one of them. Frozen yet searching.
“Rocky?” I looked down at her and realized that she was shaking like crazy. “Rocky, are you okay?” I got nervous, wondering if she had gotten hurt somehow and I just hadn’t seen it.
She looked up at me, her eyes glossed over with unshed tears as she extended her hand. “What was that?”
Checking around once more, I saw that someone had kicked over a metal construction barricade. It was lying on its side, still reverberating from the impact. Reaching for her hand, I pointed in the direction of the downed piece of equipment just as two guys ran up to it and tried to get it to stand back upright.
She wiped at her eyes and tried to control her erratic breathing. “I thought it was a gun,” she said.
I realized in that moment that it had actually sounded like one. We unfortunately lived during a time when someone bringing a gun to school was an absolute possibility even if you never thought it would happen to you.
“Sunny? Rocky?” It was Mac. He yelled our names as he jogged across the pavement toward us. “That scared the shit out of me. Are you two all right?”
“It was just a barricade,” I said, trying to sound like it was no big deal. “You can go back to your ex-girlfriend.” I waved a hand toward Hayley, who was staring intently in our direction, looking like someone had pissed in her Cheerios.
“Fuck Hayley,” Mac said sharply. “Rocky, you good?”
He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to her feet.