"I keyed Clay's truck," Bella informs me on Saturday afternoon as we're in a coffee house right off of campus drinking coffee on this little couch in the corner of the room. It's our favorite place to go because it's so calm and cozy and the coffee is amazing. They also have the best handmade cinnamon rolls.

"Did you write anything?"

"Slut," She says after taking another drink from her coffee mug. "He hasn't texted me about it yet so I'm not sure if he found it or not but I assume he'll be angry."

"He does love his truck," I nod in confirmation. "Nobody saw you do it, I hope."

"No witnesses," She assures me. "What he deserves is me driving his truck into a fucking lake, but that's too much work so he's lucky that this is all I'm doing. Every time that I think about it, I just get angry again and I don't know how you haven't combusted yet with rage."

"I've done my fair share of raging," I admit to her. "But it's not really going to get us anywhere so I'm trying my very best to contain it."

"I know that I should support you and your maturity but I'm still going to go ape shit on him," She warns me. "But if you don't want to be a part of it, that's fine, I'll just keep you posted."

"That sounds good," I say with a small laugh and take another drink of my hot coffee. "And if it's okay with you, I'm not really feeling like going to that party tonight. I'm just tired."

"That's fine," Bella nods. "You know, the first few months of school there's at least three ragers every weekend so I'll drag you to one eventually."

"That's fine, just-"

"Wren!" I hear somebody yell my name and Bella and I both turn toward the voice to see Kelsey standing at the entrance to the coffee shop—her red hair in a tangled mess, her face streaked with smeared mascara and eye liner, her face paler than usual. She storms over to us, hiccupping and sobbing like a mess.

"What happened to you?" Bella asks before I can say anything. I have a pretty good idea of what happened.

"Jesse broke up with me," She mumbles out under her snotty sobs. "Wren, you have to talk to him for me. Please?"

"Kelsey, I shouldn't get involved," I tell her with an apologetic frown. I hate that she feels so sad, but I think that thinking that their relationship just didn't work out is better than knowing the truth—that he never truly loved her at all. "I can't tell Jesse what to do."

"But if he just knows how much I care about him and love him, maybe he'll rethink this," She explains, joining Bella and I by sitting in the arm chair across from the couch that we're sitting on. "I can't breathe without him, I have to get him back."

"No," I shake my head at her. "You can do better. Honestly, he's an asshole."

"I can't," She shakes her head at me. "He's the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me."

"He doesn't love you," I tell her and I know that I don't sound sympathetic but maybe if I just pound it into her that she should just move on, maybe it could help. "And I know that it hurts to hear but you'll hurt a lot less if you just move on."

"It'd save some dignity too," Bella adds. "Don't grovel for a guy who isn't even worth your time."

"Do you have something to do with this?" Kelsey demands, glaring at Bella, who has been overheard talking about how hot Jesse is and how she's been waiting for the two of them to break up so she could make her move. "Oh my god, you slept with him, didn't you?"

Bella holds her hands up in surrender. "No way. I'm not a homewrecker. Jesse is just being an asshole."

"But he isn't an asshole. He's sweet and he's charming and he's beautiful and he was so understanding when I told him that I'm waiting until marriage. I mean, how many college guys are okay with not having sex? He was so amazing and I couldn't ask for anybody more perfect for me," She wails hysterically.

I didn't know that they had decided to wait until marriage to have sex, Jesse never told me that, but it sure does make it easier for him to not sleep with her. He's obviously not okay with not having sex, he's just okay with not having sex with her. I could tell Kelsey that he's been cheating on her for their entire relationship because that'd definitely get her to stop pining over him and I want him to feel her wrath. I want her to be angry at him and I want her to hate him.

But if she knows that their relationship was a lie for literally their entire relationship, it would kill her. I will not use Kelsey's emotions just to get back at Jesse. 

"Kelsey, honestly, he is stupid," I say to her. "And he is messy and gross and he's a liar. He's scarily good at lying. He just uses people and I know that he's my brother but I am being completely honest with you, I think that he's an asshole and I genuinely think that you can do better than him."

Bella flashes me a curious look, because I've never spoken about Jesse like that before. "You need to get angry. Do you want to key his car?"

"No," I say quickly. "I mean, you can go avenge Kelsey but his car is my car."

"Do you think that will make me feel better?" Kelsey sniffles as Bella stands and uses a hair tie on her wrist to tie Kelsey's red hair in a ponytail so that it's out of her face.

"Absolutely," She confirms with a nod and then looks over at me. "Come on, Wren, you wanna come?"

"I'm okay," I assure her. "You two go, please don't fuck up my apartment."

"We'll see what we can do," Bella assures me as she wraps her arm around Kelsey's shaking shoulders and they leave the café. I know that Kelsey has her own friends but Bella is incredibly comforting in a crisis, so Kelsey is definitely in good hands.

I'm not feeling vengeful, I'm just feeling tired of this all and that's why I decide to stay back. I take another drink of my coffee and then lean back on the couch to enjoy some quiet. There's a book shelf off to the side of the café so I decide to get something to read while I hang out here for the afternoon.

I leave my stuff on the couch and head over to the book shelf, looking for a short book to skim but I find a Food Network magazine that I decide to grab and as I turn around to head back to my stuff, I notice somebody sitting on the couch where I had been sitting.

I wouldn't mind that if the person sitting there was minding their business but he's got his hand in my purse. I don't want to make a scene and startle him so that he runs off with it so I casually walk back to the couch, making sure to get between the door and the couch to stop him from running.

As I get closer, I notice the tattoos on the thief's arm that look familiar and it takes me a short moment before I realize that it's the guy that was lying in the grass on Tuesday night that I had spoken to on my run. He's got the split lip and a fading bruise under his left eye too so even though it was dark and I can't recognize his face, I'm sure that it's him.

I step forward and quickly snatch my purse out of his grip. Still with my wallet in his hand, I am quick to grab that too.

"Asshole," I snap at him, putting the wallet back in my purse and I hang it over my shoulder to keep it safe from the thief. "One broken nose wasn't enough for you?"

Once he looks up and recognizes me, a surprised smirk pulls at his thin pale lips. "It wasn't broken."

With everything that's happened and now, adding a broken-hearted Kelsey, I'm just not in the mood for his bullshit—whoever the hell he is. And so I respond with, "It will be if you touch my shit again." An empty threat of course, I can't hit or fight worth shit and ironically, I had told him that, but I don't care. I'm irritated.

"I'm sorry, you're the girl that already told me that you wouldn't even be able to fight a toddler?" He raises his eyebrows at me and leans back in the couch. "I'm shaking in my boots."

"You're not even wearing boots," I make the dumbest comeback ever and when he starts laughing I scoff and say, "Oh, whatever," And I turn to leave the café.

"You didn't finish your coffee," He says from behind me.

The café is busy considering it's a Saturday and there's nowhere else to sit but he's right—I do have about half a mug of coffee left to drink and it's a ceramic mug from the café so I can't take it with me. And it's not like he can take my stuff if I have it strapped to me. I turn back around and sit down in the chair across from the couch. I grab the magazine and my coffee and I start reading, pretending like the handsome shitty criminal isn't even there.

"Are you sure we've met?" He wonders. "The girl I'm thinking of is much more talkative."

"Hard to forget someone who throws me into the grass covered in blood," I say in return but I don't look up from my food magazine. "You ruined my shirt."

"Should have left me alone."

"I'll remember that the next time I find a dead body."

"Wasn't dead."

"Could have been," I flip the page and I continue reading. Well, I'm pretending to read. The tattooed criminal is too distracting for me to actually read but I don't want him to think that he has any of my attention. "And you called me annoying when I talked too much, if I recall correctly. You know what's even more annoying than talking too much? Petty theft."

"You just left your purse here," He defends. "I was looking for an ID to see whose purse it was."

I stop looking at the magazine and get my wallet back out. When I open it, I look through my cash to see if he is telling the truth. My credit card, school ID, and state ID are still there but I'm missing a twenty. "Heavy on the petty," I say as I put my wallet back in my purse.

"No idea what you're talking about," He shrugs at me as he runs his hand over his short scruff.

I go back to my magazine and try to ignore him again. When I ran into him on Tuesday night, he was very quiet and seemed like he couldn't wait until I was out of his hair and now, it seems like it's the other way around. He just tried to steal my wallet so I think that it's pretty understandable that I'm not feeling too friendly.

In my peripheral vision, I can see him still sitting on the couch and he's watching me. This man who laid bloody in grass and ran from cops and stole money from wallets in coffee shops, who proved on Tuesday how easy it was for him to overpower me. He could be really dangerous and it's really stupid of me to sit here, knowing all of these things about him.

A week ago, I would have forfeited my coffee and left. But what the hell? I thought I was playing things safe for the longest time and still ended up getting crushed like a bug. 

When I look up at the tattooed stranger, he's burning a hole through me with deep brown eyes. I squirm a little bit with unease, but I sit in it instead of running. I don't really have anything to lose. "Why are you staring at me?" I ask him.

"I'm trying to figure out what your deal is," He explains to me.

"My deal?" I raise my eyebrows at him. "What exactly have you figured out so far?"

"Not sure. You go for a jog in the middle of the night to feel like you're really living on the edge, so I'd say you probably live a pretty tame life."

"Tame," I repeat slowly, trying not to let it show on my face that he's spot on.

He shrugs. "It's a nice way of saying boring."

"What's the point of saying it the nice way if you're going to say it the mean way right after?" I counter with my lips pursed. "And you're not very good at this game. I was running at night because I had a busy day, that's all."

I wish I was as good at lying as my brother. The stranger just chuckles at me with amusement, clearly not believing me for a second.

"So then what do you do to feel alive?" He asks looking so smug.

I think about it for a minute and then I have an answer but not one that I'm going to share with this stranger. If I was going to tell him the truth, then I would tell him that I do small things that nobody notices that remind me that I'm alive. I've always taken showers with the water just a little too hot. I wear a jacket that's a little bit too thin for the weather outside. Nobody has ever noticed that the bathroom gets too steamy when I shower, nobody has ever told me to put a coat on when it snows. Just little swallows of self harm that wake me up when things get too dull.

"Do you always try to psychoanalyze the people that you steal from?" I ask in order to avoid answering the question. It's none of his business anyway.

"Not always."

"I think I'd rather be boring than get the shit beat out of me on a Tuesday night," I counter harshly.

His eyes narrow at me but he's still smiling. "I told you that I won that fight."

"Didn't look like it."

"Alright. I have a very fragile sense of masculinity and you're really pissing me off right now," The stranger warns me, as if he could do anything to me in this crowded coffee shop. Granted, most people are students with their noses in text books or too occupied with their own conversations to notice what's going on over here. 

I laugh at how easy it was to get under his skin when just a moment ago, he was acting to tough and smug. "It really pisses me off that you stole twenty bucks from me."

"Okay, sure. You can stop flirting with me now, you've got a date," He tells me as he takes the magazine that I was reading and tears a little piece from the back page. He pulls a pen out of his pocket and starts writing on the scrap paper.

"I wasn't flirting," I am quick to argue and I start to go back over this weird conversation to try and think of what I could have said that might be interpreted as such.

"Tuesday. Nine o'clock."

After he finishes writing on the paper, he hands it to me and I see that it's an address. I also notice that the pen that he used to write with is my pen, the one that I keep in my purse. Asshole.

"Why would I show up to this?"

He gets up from the couch and I let him keep the pen. "Even rule-followers need to be exciting sometimes."

And I hate that he gets the last word but before I can say anything else, he's out the door of the café and I'm left speechless with an address and a date.