The Ruined Bride of Velvet Nights by Brick Moving Ant

Chapter 49

  • Chapter 16

  • The crushing workload of senior year AP classes hit like a freight train.

  • Sid and I both attacked it with a kind of obsessive focus. We discovered we were intellectual kindred spirits—both genuinely energized by learning rather than exhausted by it.

  • We devoured new concepts, already thinking ahead to college coursework.

  • We fell into an easy rhythm of swapping notes, talking through difficult concepts, and challenging each other with extra problems neither teacher had assigned.

  • Days blurred together in a productive bubble that felt safely distant from my old life.

  • After midterms, during evening study hall, I heard the chair beside me scrape against the floor.

  • Without looking up from my calculus proofs, I slid over a container of sliced apples and

  • strawberries.

  • “My mom’s on a health kick again. She sent enough for both of us, Sid.”

  • “How much longer are you planning to keep up this bullshit, Phoebe?” My head snapped up.

  • Zephyr was lounging in Sid’s seat.

  • He had positioned himself to block me into the corner, one arm stretched across the back of my

  • chair.

  • “So you ghosted me, switched to AP without saying a word, and now you’re playing house with this preppy little bitch to make me jealous? Who the fuck said you could do that?”

  • carefully–if you’re still hoping we end up at the same college, you need to drop this loser

  • went

  • an intense interest in their textbooks while obviously straining

  • Chapter 16

  • let out a laugh that contained zero humor,

  • Sid’s

  • narrowed dangerously.

  • I decide where

  • pushing him away, but he grabbed my wrist, yanking me

  • roughness.

  • grip was bruising, his physical advantage obvious.

  • powerlessness I’d felt in the

  • of humiliation and

  • “Excuse me.”

  • knuckle taps on Zephyr’s

  • in my assigned

  • he regarded Zephyr with what

  • recognize you from our AP Physics section. Are

  • just enough emphasis to make his point without

  • with rage, launching to his feet to grab Sid’s collar. “Say that to my face again, you

  • calmly pointed to the clock on the back wall.

  • twenty seconds. He’s very strict about non–enrolled students disrupting

  • string of obscenities, shoving Sid aside as he stormed

  • reclaimed his seat, he turned to me,

  • 42

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