Levi parked his truck out the front of the dorm building and checked his phone again. Still nothing from Reagan. What. The. Hell. She knew that he was counting on her help to get him through tomorrow's test. She had been putting him off for the entire week. How could she do this?
His heavy breathing had nothing to do with his quick steps as he raced indoors towards the elevator and made his way up to the dorm room.
He had already checked the library for the audio book, and even the movie just in case. Nothing. He had work in the morning and the test was immediately afterwards. He was running out of time.
Levi reached the door and knocked frantically. He allowed himself only one fleeting moment of hope that he might see Cathay before he focused himself on the task at hand. Reagan. No answer. Shit. He only stopped hammering after getting dirty looks from a group of girls walking past him down the hall. For once he didn't smile, instead sinking to the floor and running his hands in tight circles through his hair. He unzipped his backpack and pulled the book out.
"Come on" he muttered to himself "It's just a stupid book. You can do this". He looked at the cover. Two words. The Outsiders. Simple. He opened to the first page, took a deep breath and started to read. Something about sunshine, or was it darkness? Something about a house? Levi stopped, shook his head like he was clearing cobwebs from it and started again, saying each word slowly, out loud, to focus. "When. I. Stepped. Out. Into. The. Bright..."
It was no good. The words just jumbled around in his brain and he couldn't derive any meaning from them. He knew all the words individually, but they turned to fuzz when he tried to string them together. Again and again he tried, holding back the tears of frustration that were lurking just below the surface of his usually smiling face. He tried and tried, again and again until he threw the book against the wall opposite him in frustration. Another group of girls decided to glare at him. Or maybe it was the same group on their way back. He didn't know. He didn't care.
He had nowhere else to go, so he sat there, stupidly, waiting for Reagan. She had to show up. He needed her. She would come home soon. He tried not to think about all the times she spent the night away from her dorm. Levi had been waiting for her just like this two years ago, sitting cross-legged in the hall, all night long, when he had found out that she'd been cheating on him the first time. And the second. Please come home Reagan. Please. Please come home.
His heart rose into his throat when he saw to feet come to a shop in front of him through his fingers. Finally! He looked up, and for the first time in his life, felt a twinge of disappointment when he saw Cath. She didn't say anything, giving him a brief smile, a slight rising of the corners of her pink lips, that made him melt just a little, before letting him into the room and closed the door– another first.
"Is Reagan here?"Levi asked, knowing full well that she wasn't, but he was too worked up try and think of something to say that might impress her. Cath shook her head, telling him that she had left hours ago. He swore, trying to figure out what the hell to do next. She even asked him what was wrong, but he was too upset to relish the fact that the girl that he couldn't get out of his head was concerned about him.
He swallowed hard. He already knew the conversation they were going to have. Yes, he could read. Just not books. He wasn't lazy, and he wasn't stupid. Except it was hard not to feel stupid when she was looking at him like that. She frowned at him over the top of her glasses, and he had never felt more hurt. She had always been standoffish, wary, keeping her distance, but now she was just plain mean. Contempt was oozing out of every pore in her beautiful body. She didn't understand. She didn't even try to understand. In that moment, as she spat out some nonsense about Reagan being his girlfriend, he realized that he had lost the girl.
He knew that Cath had never really liked him, not the way he liked her, but now he was sure that she never would. Somehow that hurt more than the prospect of failing his class and being kicked out of his program. His dream. He looked around, realizing that he had already wrenched the door open and was standing in the doorway. She didn't get it. And he would never get her.
He walked away, letting the door close behind him. He had left the book sitting on Cath's bed. Fuck it. It's not like he could do anything with it anyway. He jabbed at the elevator button again and again, willing it to come quickly so he could walk away from this moment and forget it forever. But he could never forget the way those brown eyes looked at him. Green. Blue. Beautiful. Contemptuous. Whatever.