But that’s when my bedroom door pops open, too. Rickie is standing there, blinking sleep out of his eyes.
My mother’s confusion doubles. “Will someone start breakfast? I guess it doesn’t matter who.”
“Sure,” Rickie grunts.
“I’m sorry I fell asleep on your bed,” I stammer.
He shrugs. “No problem. Yours was available.”
“The bacon is defrosted,” my mother says. “I’ll be back in an hour.” She turns around and marches back down the hallway toward the staircase.
Rickie and I spend a long moment just watching each other. I have a hangover, but not from alcohol. It’s the vulnerability. I hate looking weak, and last night I just spewed all my poor life choices at Mr. Hot and Broody.
“Sorry,” I mutter again.
He just shrugs.
“Now she’s going to imagine that we’re...” I clear my throat.
“S’okay.” He yawns. “I imagine it every day, too. So we’ll have that in common.”
Then he slips past me and nabs the bathroom before I can get in there.
Figures.
Lucky for me, Reardon doesn’t try to call me again. He doesn’t text, either. But now I’m always on edge. Every time my phone lights up with an incoming message, I have a moment of panic.
But as the days pass, I start to relax. Rickie and I don’t speak of it again. He knows I don’t want to. Although I have to admit that spilling my guts has made me feel a little calmer. It makes me feel less crazy to hear someone else’s thoughts about it. Threats are his only move, Rickie had said. And I appreciate this logic.
It doesn’t stop me from worrying, though. And it doesn’t stop me from feeling deeply embarrassed. I told Rickie about the academic land mine I’d created. But that’s not the only thing that Reardon destroyed.
He took my self-esteem, too. It’s just gone. When I started dating him, I thought I was smart and maybe even sexy. Now I’m just a dumb girl who screwed a liar. Oldest story in the book.
When Wednesday arrives again, Audrey sends us off to Burlington with another shipment of applejack for two new restaurants.
This time, there’s a holdup at the first one—nobody is there to receive it. And we burn fifteen minutes trying to call the phone number on the manifest, until finally someone shows up at the restaurant and takes the delivery.
“I’m going to be late for work,” I complain, eyeing the clock on the dash.
“Nah, it’s fine,” Rickie says. “I’ll drop you off, go to my class, and then make the delivery afterward.”
“Really? Could you?” The desperation in my voice is evident.
“Uh huh. Because I can tell the idea of being late to your second day at a new job is making all your good girl sensors ping like crazy.”
He’s not wrong. “Someday you’re going to be an excellent shrink.”
“Aw, careful, Daphne. I think you just paid me a compliment. I might get cocky.”
“Too late,” I snap. But there’s no bite in it. I watch the red bricks of the Moo U campus approach, and I wonder how it came to this. I’m actually starting to like Rickie. And that’s dangerous.
He pulls up in front of the School of Public Health a couple minutes later. I reach into the back seat for a box of pastries that Audrey sent with me this morning. For your new friends at work, she’d said. I was testing blueberry recipes.
“Whoa, what are those?” he asks.
“Just bribing my coworkers so they’ll like me. It’s what you do at a new job.” Thank God for Audrey’s social impulses. I’m well aware that I was frosty last week. It’s almost like Reardon Halsey has made me forget how to feel optimistic about people.
Rickie rolls down the window so he can talk to me after I shut the door. “Don’t forget we’re stopping for ice cream on the way home.”
“Again?” I turn around on the sidewalk to wave goodbye to him.
“It’s what we do, babe. It’s our thing. Don’t mess with tradition.”
“Fine. Later.”
“Later!”
I turn around, only to find Karim holding the door for me. “Good morning,” he says.
“Morning.”
“Rickie Ralls is your boyfriend?”
I laugh. “Not exactly. We live together.” That came out wrong, but it’s accurate. “Like roommates.”
“Oh. Cool.” He shrugs as I follow him through the lobby and into our office space. “Sorry. It just made sense to me. Like all the attractive, super intelligent people should really end up together.”
I think Karim just called me super intelligent. And attractive.
Weird.
“Last year I was a TA. For a cognitive psych class. And the