"Ugh." Cate spins into the dorm room, a whirlwind of blonde hair and willowy limbs as she collapses onto your bed. She groans into your pillow, perfectly manicured nails scrunching into her blankets. (She's taken to sleeping in your bed. One, because hers still smells like him—two because your arms around her are the only, untainted solace she has left.)

The sight of Cate slumped face-first in your blankets has been familiar, recently. Ever since Luke, it's been a constant rotation of binging shitty CW shows to diet ice-cream to coming to your dorm everyday to a new tale of Cate telling some sleazebag to stick a plunger up his ass. She's on the brink. She's also at the dorm a lot more than she used to be (and away from Andre's, which is an observation you decline on voicing out loud.)

"Why is Rufus such a fucking asshole?" Is what you can make out from the way her pillow muffles her words. Her shoulder blades are quavering, and you don't have to be a genius to note the raspy waver to her voice. You're well-qualified for handling Cate Dunlap's mourning slumps, now. Even if she doesn't exactly want to relay the fact that she just ordered Rufus to stand in the quad and swing a baseball bat into his nads with every scream of Jumanji. Or, maybe she does, and it's more she doesn't want to tell you what instigated it in the first place.

What some guys will do to get away from Cate.

Moping about it won't do her any good, and any time spent thinking about Rufus is time wasted. But she can't help that it's also launched her in a very fucking dangerous place and she doesn't have anyone to talk to that except for—oh—Luke's best friend who she incidentally cheated on him with. And that's skimming the surface on all the things she's guilty of.

Cate's chest pinches, throat closing against her will. It doesn't help that she can feel the blood vessels in her eyes welling, fracturing like little bolts of red lightning. She fucks everything up—and that's not something she can burrow away and hide from.