The Boyfriend's Clause

Zuri Mom's voice was still looping in my head twenty minutes after I'd hung up on her that bright, wounded tone she used when she thought she was helping. I picked at a loose thread on my comforter until it came apart in my fingers. "You're being ridiculous," I said out loud, to nobody, and it didn't help any more than thinking it had. So I got up instead. I told myself I just needed air, twenty minutes to remember how to breathe like a person who had her life together. I had no idea, pulling the door shut behind me, that this was the last ordinary walk I'd ever take before my name stopped being just mine. Forty-three notifications. That's how many it took to ruin my life, but I'm getting ahead of myself. It was another Friday night on campus, my favorite time of the week because everyone was either out partying or just outside, which meant the dorm was mine. Except tonight Nova was at her boyfriend's place for the third time this week and the room felt like it was shrinking around me, and the phone call I just hung up from wasn't helping. Mom meant well. She always meant well. "I just think it would be good for you to put yourself out there more," she said twenty minutes ago. "You're so pretty, Zuri. I don't understand why no boy has ever called asking for you." I told her I was busy and she told me I was always busy and I told her I loved her and hung up before my voice cracked because I refused to cry over something I heard a hundred times before. But here I was, sitting in a room that smelled like Nova's vanilla candle and my own bad mood, picking at a thread on my comforter with a half-finished essay on my laptop and thinking about all the ways my mother managed to say you're not enough without ever using those words. She didn't mean it like that. I knew she didn't mean it like that. It still landed like that. I closed the laptop because the essay wasn't happening tonight, pulled my dark curls up into a messy bun, and yanked on the oversized sweatpants hanging off my desk chair. My fingers found the orange prescription bottle in my nightstand drawer and I dropped it into my jacket pocket out of habit because just knowing it was there helped. I grabbed my keys, shoved my feet into my sneakers, and pulled the door shut behind me. The campus was quiet at this hour because it was September and most people were doing what people did on a Friday: parties, bars, someone's apartment, anywhere that wasn't alone. I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked faster while the cool air stung my face and I was grateful for it. The park sat at the far edge of campus near the athletic buildings and the lampposts along the path threw circles of yellow light across the benches. The place was mostly empty, which was exactly what I needed, somewhere to sit where nobody asked me why I wasn't at a party or told me I should smile more. Then I noticed somebody already sitting on the bench near the lights. For a second I considered turning around, but I didn't because that required admitting I cared and I was too tired to care about anything tonight. He was at the far end with a dark hoodie on and broad shoulders and a skate bag at his feet and a water bottle in one hand. Nice profile. Very nice profile. I blinked. Definitely a hot guy. I kept walking anyway because attractive people ignored me for twenty years and I stopped expecting that to change. I dropped onto the opposite end of the bench and tucked one leg beneath me and the wood creaked under my weight but he didn't react. A few years ago I checked my reflection first, maybe convinced myself I looked better than I actually did, but now I didn't bother. I caught a glimpse of myself in the dark screen of my phone - oversized glasses, dark curls already escaping the bun, same face I spent years wishing looked different. I inherited my mother's hazel eyes and absolutely nothing else useful, and I tucked a loose strand behind my ear out of pointless habit while he took a drink from the water bottle and set it down beside the skate bag. Neither of us spoke and I pulled my jacket tighter. Then he spoke. "Bad day?" I turned my head and his face was clearer now, strong jaw and dark hair that fell forward a little. "That obvious?" A corner of his mouth lifted. "A little." I laughed softly. "Then yeah." "Same." "School?" I asked. "Something like that." "Mine too." "Rough week?" "Rough twenty years." I laughed before I could stop myself. That earned a real laugh from him, short and surprised like he didn't plan on it, and I smiled before my chest did something inconvenient that I chose to ignore. The conversation died after that and neither of us seemed interested in forcing it, which was fine because it wasn't awkward just two strangers sitting in the same place for different reasons. I could live with that. Then a bright flash exploded from the trees to our left. I flinched hard enough to knock my phone off my lap and he shot to his feet before I even processed what happened. "What the hell?" A figure burst from behind a cluster of bushes with a camera and a black hoodie and he was already sprinting after them before I got off the bench. I scrambled after him but my lungs started burning almost immediately and he was faster, much faster, but the photographer hit the fence at the edge of the park and vaulted it and disappeared into the dark on the other side. He stopped at the fence and I caught up fifteen seconds later with both hands on my knees and my chest on fire. "Did you see who it was?" I managed between breaths. He shook his head. "No." The ridiculousness of the whole thing hit me and I straightened up because it had to be kids messing around and it wasn't worth the heart attack I nearly gave myself chasing after them. We walked back toward the bench together without deciding to and he picked up the skate bag while I picked up my phone from the grass where it landed. "I should go," I said. He nodded. "Yeah." Then: "Drive safe." "I walked." His mouth almost curved. "Walk safe, then." I laughed and he almost did and we went our separate ways without exchanging names. By the time I reached the dorm the whole thing already felt half-invented and unforgettable. It was a weird Friday night, a stranger on a bench I couldn't stop thinking about. A few hours passed as I forced myself to complete my essay and after that I just needed a good night sleep. I pulled out my phone from under the pillow to plug it in. The screen lit up and forty -three notifications popped up. Instagram. t****k. Campus gossip pages. Group chats people added me to without asking. Tags and mentions and comments, all of them attached to the same photograph, the one from the park, him and me on the bench caught mid-conversation in the lamplight, and I was smiling in it. My fingers went numb as a new notification appeared and then another and the numbers climbed faster than I could read them. One post already hit thousands of views and the comments were not kind. I opened the largest account and the photograph filled the screen. Below it, a single caption. "Who's Zuri-Mae Calloway?" The tagged account sat right beneath it. Kingston-Reign Ashford with 2.7 million followers. My stomach hit the floor.