E L E V E N
B R E N
My hand hovered over the message I'd written ten minutes ago.
She told me to text her if I was going to tutoring. I don't know why I was hesitating. It had nothing to do with whether or not I wanted to see Madie. In fact, when I'd gone to my first session, I half hoped that she would show up. Even after our awkward encounters from last week, I wanted to see her.
I kept telling myself I shouldn't. It wasn't just that Madie was hopelessly unattainable in the way that I wanted her, it was also that I was afraid. Terror reigned when I thought of the look on her face when I'd raised my hand to touch her hair.
I was scared of that moment—that moment when she'd so obviously thought the action was going to be dangerously different.
No one flinched like that unless at some point they'd had a real reason to or still did have a reason to. If the latter was true for Madie, I wasn't sure I was ready to be involved in that again.
I tried to be a hero once—a liberator for a woman. I failed. And now I had too many of my own demons to be anyone's savior.
But Madie Lenertz wasn't just anyone.
"Who's winning?"
Sitting on his bed, Beau didn't even lift his head from whatever he was looking at on his MacBook.
"What?" I never knew what Beau was talking about half the time.
"Who is winning that staring contest you're having over there? You or your phone?" His brows raised even as he continued to type, hunched over his keyboard.
I threw him a scowl, and he smirked, forever amused by annoying me. "Oh, shut up."
"Waiting for a text from Nessa?" he probed, drawing her name out like the intrigued gossiper he was.
"Yeah," I lied while simultaneously pressing send on my text to Madie.
I wasn't sure why I lied. I wasn't sure why I texted her.
Beau wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and by the time I looked back down, Madie had replied, saying she'd meet me later. I flung myself back on my bed and waited for later to come.
****
Madie walked into the tutoring center at three o'clock, and I was already getting a lecture from Mrs. White about executive functioning. This was apparently something that I didn't have—organization, planning, memory, attention.
I certainly wasn't paying attention to Mrs. White anymore, not with Madie's sudden appearance. Even though I knew she was coming, she still somehow stunned me. Today, another Oakland State football sweatshirt swallowed her whole, and I tried to ignore the irritation that ran through me at seeing it.
There was no way that Quinton deserved this girl.
She joined us at the table, a sunny smile plastered on her face again. It had been a few days since I'd seen that look—the one she'd worn when I first met her, before the mess with Nessa and the hallway conversations.
My mouth twitched, a smile slipping onto my own face.
I'd told Mrs. White that Madie would be coming, and she greeted her with her own warm smile before getting back to the topic at hand. It didn't take long for me to realize that having Madie here was not going to help me concentrate. Mrs. White's curly blond hair bounced as her caked red lips smacked animatedly, going on about the importance of organization and the best apps to use for it.
I wondered how much help Madie really needed with this kind of thing because her attention didn't waver once. With an impressive amount of diligence, she listened to Mrs. White as the woman spewed. Madie nodded, smiled, and asked questions.
I was the one who should be paying attention that closely. I failed my last statistics quiz. After Caroline had taken me out to breakfast that morning, I hurried to class only to fail just like I knew I would.
Doubt still permeated my presence here. I had little hope that coming to the tutoring center would really help me. After all, there weren't a lot of people who understood how my brain worked. But at least if I came, Caroline couldn't yell at me about it.
And I could see Madie. Right now she was looking at her phone, her nose practically touching the damn screen like she needed help seeing it clearly.
"Bren, are you listening?"
Jerking my gaze away from Madie's knowing gaze, I glanced at Mrs. White. Her sharp eyes flicked between me and my phone sitting on the table.
"Are you going to download this app?"
"Oh yeah," I said, sliding open to my home page and going to the app store. I shook my head, trying to narrow my focus.
It worked, but barely. For most of the meeting, I sifted through my thoughts, trying to catch snippets of Mrs. White's advice. But her words melted together, occasionally interrupted by Madie's bright voice, pulling me back into the conversation.
I was grateful when the session ended but also reluctant to leave. I'd been hoping there would be a chance to talk to Madie more.
"Do you have any other homework tonight?" I asked as we stepped out beneath the gloomy afternoon sky.
Madie threw her hoodie up and over her messy bun before biting her lip, thinking. "Yeah, I have some reading and an assignment to do for my lit class."
I nodded. "I have a paper to write for civics. Do you want to hit up a coffee shop and get some stuff done before heading back to the dorms?"
At some point, I'd made up my mind. I don't know how; some decisions just came to you. But I couldn't walk away from Madie without knowing more, not without trying to figure out what she was hiding. And Quinton was less likely to interrupt our conversation if we stayed off-campus.
"I really don't think I should," she said, looking at the Birkenstocks on her feet.
Usually, this would be where I'd bow out, not wanting to push it. But I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere with this girl if I didn't push a little.
"Madie, if you're saying that because you just really don't want to study, I'll drop it and walk you back to your dorm," I said, trying to keep my voice light and casual. Then I took one step toward her and made my push. "But if you're saying that because you're afraid that someone else thinks you shouldn't study with me, then I hope you'll reconsider."
She looked up at me with wide eyes, her brows furrowing a little.
I shrugged, trying not to make it a big deal. I tried to ignore the way something inside me clenched when her blue eyes hit me. I tried to ignore her beauty, even though she tried to hide it away, stuffing herself into Quinton's clothes.
"I'm just tired of staring at the same whitewashed walls while working on homework," I said. "I need to change it up a little bit. I know there's a place just across the street over there." I pointed in the direction of the cafe I'd passed the other day when I was out with Caroline.
Madie tilted her head to the side. "A change of pace would be nice." After a quick check at the threatening sky, she smiled slightly. "And it's the perfect day for sitting in a coffee shop."
"So, you're down?" I asked, not really letting myself believe my luck.
Her smile grew. "Sure."
Grinning back, I waited for her to take the first step and followed in her wake as soon as she did.
Being constantly surrounded by people at college was confusing. Despite the overwhelming company, there was also this pervasive loneliness that just hit sometimes. Physically present but mentally detached, I was learning how to navigate the hidden side of this life that no one told me about.
Or maybe it was just me. Perhaps it was a consequence of my past, pulling me under every time I tried to resurface.
I didn't know what it was. But I knew that there was something about Madie that kept me anchored to the moment. And damn, I needed that. For some reason, she wouldn't let me slip away.
And now I had to make sure that she didn't slip away either.
When we were across the street from the cafe, Madie stopped abruptly.
"What?" I asked, looking back at her.
She stared ahead, past me, at the coffee shop.
"Madie?"
Clearing her throat with a funny expression, she lifted her arm and pointed to something in my background. I swiveled, following her finger.
"Shit," I muttered lowly.
This was not a complication I needed.
🖤
Thanks for reading Chapter Eleven! What do you think Madie was pointing at?
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