The Accidental Plus One

A Joke

That's what this had to be. A joke.

"What the f**k?" The voice came from somewhere to my left, someone else's phone lighting up with the same headline mine had just handed me. Around me, the lecture hall kept moving like nothing had happened — chairs scraping, bags unzipping — while I sat frozen in the middle of it, a stone in a river that refused to stop.

"Alright, settle down, everyone," the professor said, stepping in from the hall. "Let's begin."

He started calling out quiz numbers. I heard my name somewhere in the list. My hand moved to take the paper on autopilot, but my mind had already left the room — it was back with Robert, replaying every "I love you" he'd ever said like it was evidence in a trial I was losing. My chest felt sealed shut. I stared at the questions in front of me and they might as well have been written in a language I'd never learned. I couldn't move. I couldn't think. I wasn't sure my heart was still beating, or if it had simply given up somewhere between the headline and now.

"Hey." Ann's elbow found my ribs. "You okay?"

I nodded, because it was easier than the truth. I picked up my pen and made myself write something — anything — just to look like a person who was still functioning.

The bell rang like it was cutting me loose. I turned in my quiz and got up before I could think twice, weaving through the crowd with one thought looping through my head: just get to the gate.

Almost there, I told myself, forcing one foot in front of the other. When I finally passed through it, I stopped and let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding since the moment I saw that photo.

I flagged down a cab and gave my address in a voice that didn't sound like mine. Just a little longer, I thought, watching the campus shrink behind me. My dorm had never felt so far away.

By the time I got upstairs and shut the door behind me, the scream I'd been swallowing for the last hour finally broke loose — except I clapped my hand over my mouth before it could escape, muffling it into something small and pathetic and private. I sank down against the door, my chest heaving like I couldn't get enough air into it no matter how hard I tried.

Do I really deserve this?

What did I do?

Was I never enough?

I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and opened my gallery. Robert smiled back at me in photo after photo — a hundred small, stupid, perfect moments I used to believe meant something. I selected every one of them without letting myself look too closely, and pressed delete before I could change my mind.

The door opened a minute later.

"Where were you?" Ann stepped in, breathless. "I looked everywhere."

She pulled off her jacket and shook her hair loose from the bun she'd twisted it into that morning, blonde strands falling around her face as she crossed the room and dropped down beside me.

"I'm sorry," I gasped, my voice cracking somewhere in the middle of it.

"You need to put yourself together," she said, tucking a loose strand of my hair behind my ear like she'd done it a hundred times before. "You are so hot, and so f*****g beautiful, and he doesn't get to make you forget that."

"And he still left me." I laughed, but it came out more like a sob dressed up as one.

She studied me for a second, her jaw tight. "His loss, then." She took both my hands in hers, holding on like she could physically anchor me to the room. "They're throwing an engagement party. Five days from now. I need you to walk in there and show them — show him — that they don't mean a single thing to you anymore. Screw them. Okay?"

"But she was my best friend." My voice cracked. "How could she do this to me? That bitch."

"Freya's always been a jealous little thing," Ann said, "but this — this is low, even for her."

"Five days." I let the words settle over me, heavy as a stone. "That's too sudden."

"At least two horrible people found each other," Ann said, nudging my shoulder with hers, trying — and almost succeeding — to coax a real smile out of me. "Don't you think?"

"Indeed," I said, and forced my mouth into something that resembled one.

She wiped my cheeks dry with the pad of her thumb, gentler now.

"Wait." I stopped. "What's today's date?"

"The sixteenth." She frowned. "Why?"

I looked down at my hands, feeling something cold settle in my stomach that had nothing to do with Robert,

or Freya, or any headline.

"My period is late," I whispered.