Savannah giggled next to her and held her hand out, catching a few flakes on her palm. They immediately dissolved into water droplets and her smile just grew.
“Come on. Let’s go catch some!” she said, pulling Liz toward the Pit, where a cluster of other students were milling around and staring up at the sky.
“Um . . . snow and I do not get along,” Liz told her. She was already shivering with the cold sinking into her clothes. She hadn’t even brought a waterproof jacket and she was in heels, as usual. This was not going to be a fun walk home.
“Why would you wear heels today?” Savannah asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t look at the weather.”
“Well, we’re supposed to get six inches by tonight, and then it’s supposed to ice over. Of course, this only ever happens on the weekend.”
Liz shuddered. Last winter there had been less than six inches of snow in Chapel Hill and they had closed school for three days, because the roads were impassable. It was a huge problem when the town only had a handful of snowplows.
“Of course, and now I have to walk home in this,” Liz groaned.
“Do you want me to give you a ride?” Savannah offered. “I have a parking spot on campus, and the roads won’t be bad for a couple hours.”
“Oh my God, I would love you forever!”
“It’s kind of a walk, but I was just happy I got one,” Savannah said, setting off across campus.
Then the thought caught up with her. “Wait, you’re a freshman. How did you get a parking spot?”
She wasn’t sure why she even asked. It was pretty obvious. Savannah had an influential family, so she probably got whatever she wanted. Just like Brady. Ugh! Liz didn’t even want to think about him or Erin Edwards right now.
“Um . . . the chancellor and my father are old friends.”
“Ah . . .”
Liz wasn’t going to argue with their favoritism today. Today she was just glad that she didn’t have to walk home.
They reached the parking deck and Savannah located her small black BMW. Liz tried not to sigh. She wasn’t surprised that Savannah had one. Brady had a brand-new Lexus. She assumed Clay drove a sports car; it just felt like Clay.
God, why could she not escape Brady? She was surrounded by his family and he was constantly on the news. Just when she was moving past what had happened, he cropped right back up. And she just f**king wanted to know if he was dating that girl. She didn’t even care how stupid it was. It made her want to dial his number and demand to know . . . even though she knew she never could.
Liz didn’t live too far away. It would have been a bad walk, but it was an easy drive. The snow was coming down harder when Savannah pulled up in front of Liz’s house.
“Thanks a lot,” Liz told her.
“Anytime. Hopefully this sticks and we don’t have school next week, but otherwise I’ll see you on Monday.”
Liz popped the door open and turned to go, but thought better of it. “I hope you don’t think that I’d actually publish anything you tell me, Savannah. I take my job seriously, and unless you’re telling me something because you want it in the paper, it would never end up there.”
“Yeah. I know. I guess I just clam up when people ask me about my family. I’ve done it my whole life. It’s hard to rewire,” Savannah told her. “And it’s stupid, really, I mean, why should it matter who Brady is dating?”
Liz could have hugged Savannah Maxwell, if she weren’t so pissed at Brady at the mention of the word dating. She just tried to keep that feeling under wraps. “He’s in the public eye. I think a lot of people feel like they have the right to know his business.”
“Yeah, I think a lot more people want to know than really should know. It’ll all come out eventually. It always does, but it’s not even an interesting story. I mean, Brady was in the North Carolina legislature with her father. They met up at Christmas and started dating. Kind of boring, really.”
Liz froze in place. She didn’t care that the car door was still open and her right side was freezing cold from the snow. And she didn’t care that she was staring at Savannah. She knew that she shouldn’t care that Brady was dating someone, or that Erin was from a political family and she would make Brady look good, or anything about it at all.
She was happy with Hayden. Things were going well with their relationship. Brady shouldn’t have even been a thought.
Liz took a deep breath, trying to recover. “I’m sure journalists will find a way to make it interesting.”
Savannah laughed. “Yeah, that’s kind of our job, right?”
“Yeah, it is,” Liz said.
“I just feel a little bad for him. All the girls that the media claimed he was dating during the election being held over his head, and then starting his new job in Congress all at the same time as he starts a new relationship.”
Relationship. That word felt like a knife wound.
“That must be tough,” Liz said, not able to keep the bite out of her voice.
Yes. It must be soooo difficult to have a new dream job and a new dream girlfriend. Liz couldn’t imagine how he would ever survive.
“Thanks for the ride again, Savannah,” she said quickly. She could see Savannah trying to figure out why Liz was so pissy all of a sudden.
“Sure,” Savannah said softly as Liz hopped out of the car. She hoisted her bag on her shoulder and waved at Savannah before rushing for the door. She could not believe that she had almost lost her cool like that. It was so unprofessional. She didn’t want anyone to know that she and Brady had been together, and then she had gone and snapped at Savannah when she had said he was dating someone else.
Of course, he had every right. He deserved to move on and be blissfully happy. She had left him, after all.
But it didn’t keep her from being angry.
It certainly didn’t keep her from feeling like an idiot for holding on to those feelings, forestalling her relationship with Hayden, and putting up a barricade at the thought of sex. Brady had moved on, so why shouldn’t she? Why did she have to let him make her feel like this before she realized how stupid it was to hold on so fiercely to something that was long gone?
That thought pushing her forward, she quickly changed into warmer clothes and dashed back out to her car. She wanted to get to Hayden’s before the snow closed in around her.
Liz arrived at Hayden’s house fifteen minutes later. Traffic had been puttering along at twenty miles per hour, because Southern drivers were terrified of the snow. Someone had ended up in a ditch. She assumed that all of the grocery stores were out of water, bread, and milk, as if people thought they weren’t ever leaving their houses again. Did these people normally not have shit in their houses? Were they afraid that snow would bring the zombie apocalypse? What the hell was wrong with them?