Nothing More by Anna Todd Page A

wince and fold the edges of the bags to close them. I’ll take it home and eat it later, when she’s not around to witness my gluttony.
    â€œHow have you been?” I ask her after a long stretch of silence. It’s like neither of us knows how to act when we aren’t dating. We’re acting as if we’re strangers. We were friends for years before we dated; our friendship grew as her brother and I became best friends. A chill runs down my spine and I wait for her to answer.
    â€œI’m okay.” She sighs. Her eyes close for a moment and I know she’s lying.
    I reach across the table and rest my hand next to hers. It wouldn’t be appropriate to touch her, but I want to, so badly. “You can tell me, you know.”
    She sighs again, refusing.
    â€œI’m your safe place, remember?” I remind her of her claim on me. The first time I found her crying on her front steps with blood in her hair, I promised that I would always keep her safe. Neither time nor a breakup would change that.
    That’s clearly not what she wanted to hear, and she pushes my hand away with a “don’t.”
    â€œI don’t need a safe place, Landon, I need . . . well, I don’t even know what I need because my life is fucking failing and I don’t know how to fix it.” Her eyes are dark now, waiting for my response.
    Her life is failing? What does that even mean?
    â€œHow so? Is it school?”
    â€œIt’s everything—literally every damn thing in my life.”
    I’m not following. That’s probably because she hasn’t given me any information to allow me to help her.
    When I was about fifteen, I realized that I would do anything to make sure she was okay. I’m the fixer, I’m the one who fixes everything for everyone, especially the curly-haired neighbor girl with an asshole for a father and a brother who could barely speak in his home without getting a bruise for the effort. Here we are, five years later, out of that slow, eroding town, away from that man, and some things really never change.
    â€œTell me something that I can go on.” My hand covers hers and she pulls away, just like I knew she would. I let her. I always have.
    â€œI didn’t get the part that I’ve been training and training and training for the last two months. I thought this role was mine. I even let my GPA drop because I spent so much time rehearsing for my audition.” She lets out a forced breath at the end and closes her eyes again.
    â€œWhat happened with the audition? Why didn’t you get it?” I need more pieces of the puzzle before I can form a solution.
    â€œBecause I’m not white.” She says it loud, certain.
    Her answer presses against the small bubble of anger that only holds things that I’m helpless over. I can fix a lot of shit, but I can’t fix ignorance, as much as I would love to.
    â€œThey said that?” I keep my voice down, even though I don’t want to. They couldn’t have possibly actually said that to a student?
    She shakes her head, huffing out a held-in breath.
    â€œNo, they didn’t have to. Every single lead they choose is white. I’m so tired of it.”
    I lean my back against the wooden chair and take the first sip of my coffee.
    â€œDid you speak to someone?” I ask timidly.
    We’ve had this talk before, a few times. Being biracial in the Midwest didn’t trouble anyone in our neighborhood, or hardly anyone at our school. The population of Saginaw is pretty even when it comes to race, and I lived in a predominantly black area. But still, there were a few times when someone would ask her or me why we were together.
    â€œWhy do you only date white guys?” her friends would ask her.
    â€œWhy don’t you date a white girl?” trashy girls with white eyeliner and gel pens shoved into their mock-designer Kmart bags would ask me. Nothing against Kmart, I