call it what you want

Chapter 2

Jackson

"I'm so tired," Adare mumbles as Wes holds the door open for her as we walk out of a Mexican food place we found a couple blocks away from the university.

"Me too, I'm wiped," I say as we start to walk back to campus.

I fake yawn, "it's exhausting kicking your ass in basketball," I say to Wes.

"Fuck off, you didn't even win."
I roll my eyes. "Oh whatever."

It's already 9:15pm and it's pretty much completely dark outside.
The orange street lights are the only brightness.

By the time we get back to campus, the boys dorm is at the front of campus.
Wes turns to Adare. "Come on I'll walk you guys back," talking to Adare and Ameeriah.
"It's fine, we're already at you guys' dorms. There's no reason for you to walk 10 minutes one way to drop us off," Adare says.

"Actually speaking of.." Adare trails off as she reaches for her phone and turns it on. "I've really gotta get back, I told my dad I would call him at 9:30 so I need to go do that. Ameeriah you ready to head back?"

"I need to go print my syllabuses, so I'm gonna head to the library for a bit to do that, I'll see guys later," she says with a soft smile and turns to walk in the other direction.

"In that case Wellsy, it's dark, you're not walking by yourself, let's go," Wes says as looks to Adare.

I don't hear what else is said because I'm already turning to see Ameeriah walking.
"Ameeriah, hey wait up," I say as I jog slightly to catch up to her.

She turns her head and a piece of her curly hair goes in front of her face as she places it back into place.
"Yeah?"

"The closest library is like a twenty minute walk from here," I say.
She scrunches her brows slightly. "Yeah.." She drifts off.

I look at her, dumbfounded. "It's dark Ameeriah."

She lets out a little laugh out of her nose. "Thank you for that new information, Jackson, we haven't gotten that far in my classes, I still don't know how to tell time."

I roll my eyes.
"You can't wait until tomorrow to do it?"
"I'm busy all day tomorrow with classes."

I sigh at her stubbornness.
"Then I'll come with you," I say as I start walking.
"You don't have to do that, dude, it's just the library."

Ignoring her, I keep walking and she follows soon after.

˖ ࣪✦

When we get to the library, there's only a couple people in there.

Ameeriah goes over to the printers and I follow.
She prints out five different syllabuses and the last one is printing when she looks past the bookshelves and then quickly ducks her head back over to the printers before she turns to be quickly.

"All done, we can go now," she says quickly as she starts to walk toward the exit in damn near a jog.
I scrunch my brows and look back to the printers.

"You're papers aren't even finished printing Ameeriah," I say, confused.
"No it's totally fine I'm good, I got most of them," she says without looking behind her.

I quickly grab the last two papers that printed and my quick strides catch up to her quickly.
"Ameeriah what was that?" I ask, trying to look down to find her eyes that are wide eyed with worry and looking straight ahead as she walks.

The cool night air hits us as we walk outside and she still hasn't answered me.
We're a couple steps outside of the library and she won't look at me.

"Ameeriah, stop," I say as I grab her arm to stop her walking, which forces her to actually look at me.
"What?" She replies back a little sharper than usual.

The worried look in her eyes and the lack of patience she has for this conversation right now shows me that she obviously doesn't want to talk about this.

"Just," I pause, "your papers," I say slightly lifting the last two pieces in my hand.

She looks down and grabs them.
"Thanks," she says, much softer this time.

What the fuck just happened with her?

She lets out the slightest sigh and turns straight ahead to start walking again, much slower this time.

We take a couple of steps in silence before I can't take it any longer.

"Clearly," I start by emphasizing the word, "you don't want to talk about what you saw in there," and before I continue, she turns her head to give me a look.

"But," I say defensively, "can you at least give me like even just a one word explanation to why the hell you ran out of there like you saw a ghost?"

She turns her head to give me a sorrowful look.
I gape my mouth open. "You saw a ghost?" I whisper with wide eyes.

She immediately scrunches her brows. "No you idiot!"
"Oh."

"I saw my ex."

I lose the concerned look on my face.
"Your ex?" I reply. "That's what got you so worked up? Fuck that guy."

I don't even know the guy but obviously he's a fucking idiot so, fuck him.

She kinda rolls her eyes slightly as we continue walking.
"Did it just end?" I ask her. I've known her for the last half of last semester and I never knew anything about a boyfriend.

"No," she pauses. "It was the summer after my senior year, so it's been nearly a year but he's constantly trying to reach out or contact me somehow and I just don't wanna deal with it," she replies, sounding like actually exhausted.

"That's what that was about? You want me to go kick his ass right now?" I say pointing my thumb back towards the library. I'm joking. Kinda.

"No," she replies back in a laugh.
Her dimples show as she holds her soft smile as we keep walking back to the dorms.

"What's his name?" I ask.
"Ryan."
"Bitch ass name."

She laughs again.

"How'd you guys meet?"
"We went to the same high school," she answers.
"Ah."

It goes silent for a bit but I can't help but keep asking about him.
Partly because this guy pisses me off and partly because I'm a nosy bitch.

"What happened between you guys?"
She's silent for a second."Just," she sighs, "it was a messy breakup and I'm over it but he keeps thinking that I'm gonna change my mind. I don't know really."

She stops when she gets to her dorm door.
"Oh my gosh," she says. "I didn't realize we had already passed up your dorm. Sorry you had to walk all the way over here."

"I don't mind," I say as I look at her.

"Anyways," she pauses, "yeah thanks for walking me."
She starts to unlock her door and takes a step in before she turns to me.

"See you later, Jackson."
"Night Ameeriah."

I turn around to walk back to my dorm when I'm replaying what Ameeriah said over in my head.
I stop in my tracks when I come up with the most incredible, groundbreaking, foolproof and best idea ever.

✧∘* ೃ ⋆｡˚.
Thanks for reading!
What's something that makes you so incredibly irrationally angry?

Mine are 18-wheelers. I literally don't even know why. I've never had a bad experience with one but I genuinely would like to scream every time I'm on the road with one