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?”

  • same college, you

  • went deadly quiet.

  • interest in their textbooks while obviously straining to

  • Chapter 16

  • contained zero humor, meeting his

  • Sid’s

  • narrowed

  • I decide where I sit.”

  • my wrist,

  • roughness.

  • was bruising, his

  • feeling of powerlessness I’d felt in the bathroom

  • of

  • “Excuse me.”

  • knuckle taps on

  • believe you’re in my

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

  • from our AP Physics

  • to make

  • Sid’s collar. “Say that to

  • to the

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

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

  • moment Sid reclaimed his seat, he turned to me, concern

  • 42

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