CHAPTER 5: Day Of Shame

Ellie

When I made it to my first class Monday morning, I already knew something was completely wrong. From the way two girls from my chem lab went quiet when I walked past them in the hallway, their eyes flicking to me and then to each other. It was in the way a guy I barely recognized from Nathan’s dorm building did a double take when he passed me on the stairs, like he was trying to place my face.

I told myself I was imagining it. I was still exhausted, still hungover from everything and that painful headache, headachy way that made everything feel a little unreal, and my brain was clearly still spinning from the events of Friday night and the hockey game, Kyle. Lisa. Nathan. It was enough to make anyone paranoid.

I was just imagining things, no one cared that I hooked up with Nathan, he hooked up with everyone, it's college everyone was having sex.

But then I sat down in the dining hall for breakfast, and I heard it.

“—I’m telling you, someone saw a girl leaving Nathan Black’s room Sunday morning,” a girl at the next table was saying, not even bothering to lower her voice. “Like, walk-of-shame leaving. Smudged makeup, the whole thing, I heard she looked like she got run over by a truck.”

“That’s not exactly breaking news,” her friend said, rolling her eyes. “Girls leave his room every weekend.”

“Yeah, but apparently this one wasn’t one of his usual girls. Someone said she looked upset. Like she’d been crying, and a little like a nerd.”

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

I kept my eyes on my tray, pushing my scrambled eggs around with my fork like they’d suddenly become the most interesting thing in the world. My hands had gone cold. I hadn’t cried in front of anyone that morning I was sure of that much, my eyes were a bit puffy but I wasn't crying, but I hadn’t exactly been in top form either, stumbling out of his dorm with my hair a mess and my makeup from the night before still smeared under my eyes.

Someone had seen me. Or seen enough of me to start wondering.

“Ellie?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. Judy dropped into the seat across from me, her tray clattering down a little too hard, and I forced my face into something neutral.

“Hey,” I said. “You’re up early.”

“I had a nine a.m., unfortunately,” she said, stabbing at her yogurt. Then she paused, and I watched something shift behind her eyes, a hesitation that didn’t belong to Judy, who always just said whatever she was thinking the second she thought it. “So, um. Weird question.”

My pulse spiked. “Okay.”

“Were you at Nathan Black’s place Saturday night?”

I laughed. It came out too fast, too high, entirely unconvincing even to my own ears.

“What? No. Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know, it’s just—” Judy glanced around like she was making sure no one else could hear, which only made it worse, because now I was sure everyone could hear. “There’s this whole thing going around. Someone said they saw a girl matching your description leaving his dorm Friday morning. Dark hair, two ponytails, and you came home late and you looked like a wreck when we saw you.”

“There are a hundred girls on this campus with dark hair,” I said, and that part, at least, was true.

“Yeah, but how many of them have your ponytails?” Judy’s voice had an edge to it now.

“Ellie, if something happened, you can tell me. I’m not going to be weird about it. I just I

thought we told each other stuff.”

I stared at my eggs. I thought about Judy’s face outside the dining hall yesterday, lit up and giddy just from being near Nathan for thirty seconds. I thought about all the nights she’d spent watching his highlight reels, memorizing his stats, defending him to anyone who called him a player like it was a personal insult to her.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell her the truth not with Kyle’s betrayal still raw, not with the way Nathan’s eyes had looked right before I left his room, not with the shame sitting heavy and hot in my chest at the idea of anyone finding out I’d slept with a virtual stranger for revenge.

“I came home,” I said quietly. “After the party I went to clear my head at a bar because of what happened to Kyle and I came home, I told you that already.”

Judy studied me for a second too long, and something in her expression cracked not quite anger, more like disappointment, like I’d confirmed something she didn’t want confirmed. “Right,” she said. “Okay. Sorry, I just never mind.”

She went back to her yogurt, and neither of us said anything else, and the silence between us felt worse than any argument could have.

I felt Judy's eyes on me the entire walk back to the dorm that afternoon.

She hadn’t said a word about the rumors hadn’t even brought them up, which somehow felt more unsettling than if she had. Judy wasn’t the type to pry. She usually kept her nose in a book and let the world do whatever chaotic thing it wanted to do around her. But today she kept glancing at me sideways, over the top of her paperback, like she was cataloging something.

“What?” I finally snapped, when we reached our building.

“Nothing,” Joslyn said, far too evenly. She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear, and for just a second, her gaze dropped to my throat, then away again, like she was looking for something specific and hadn’t quite found it. “You just smell different, a more attractive perfume.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” she said again, and this time there was something almost amused in it, dry and knowing, the kind of look she got when she already had the answer to a question she hadn’t asked yet. “Forget I said anything.”

I didn’t forget. I thought about it the rest of the day, the strange weight of her attention, the way she’d looked at me like I was a puzzle missing a piece she could already see.

By evening, I told myself the whole thing would blow over. Rumors always did. People would get bored, find something else to talk about, and in a week no one would even remember there’d been a rumor about a girl leaving Nathan Black’s dorm.

I almost believed it.

Judy insisted we grab dinner at the campus grill before her study group, and I went along mostly to smooth things over after the awkwardness at breakfast. We were laughing about something stupid, Judy doing an exaggerated impression of our chem professor when we rounded the corner near the student union, and I heard my own name, and my whole body went rigid.

“Ellie!”

I turned, and there he was. Nathan, in a gray hoodie with his hockey bag slung over one shoulder, stopping mid-stride like he hadn’t expected to see me either, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my stomach flip.

Beside me, Judy went utterly still.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​