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?”

  • the same college, you need to drop this loser immediately. I’m not playing

  • classroom went deadly

  • intense interest in their textbooks while obviously straining to

  • Chapter 16

  • a laugh that contained zero humor,

  • Sid’s

  • narrowed

  • decide where I sit.”

  • away, but he grabbed my wrist, yanking me toward him with familiar

  • roughness.

  • his

  • I’d felt in the bathroom returned

  • of humiliation and

  • “Excuse me.”

  • knuckle taps

  • in

  • there with perfect posture, head slightly tilted as he regarded Zephyr with what appeared

  • AP Physics section. Are

  • “AP Physics” with just enough emphasis to make his

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

  • pointed to the clock on

  • here in approximately twenty seconds. He’s very strict about non–enrolled students disrupting his

  • he spat out a string of obscenities, shoving Sid aside

  • turned to me, concern in his eyes.

  • 42

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