I'm Not Like Them

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Rania stayed behind.

It was her rhythm, her quiet rebellion against the chaos Avery and Chelsea dragged into their nights. When the two stormed out earlier, all glitter and perfume, Rania had simply shut the door, poured herself tea, and buried her head in her notes. She wasn’t lonely—she was content. Solitude never pressed on her like it did on others; it felt like air, a necessary space to breathe.

By two in the morning, the apartment was silent but for the soft buzz of the city bleeding through thin walls. Her eyelids grew heavy as she read the same line of text for the third time, when suddenly—a door slammed.

Rania flinched, her pencil rolling off the desk. Laughter echoed, sharp and off-kilter, spilling down the hallway like broken glass. Avery’s high-pitched giggle, Chelsea’s lower, breathless one—and beneath them, something unfamiliar. A man’s voice.

Rania pushed her chair back and slipped to the door, opening it just a crack.

They were there. Avery and Chelsea, heels in their hands, hair mussed from the wind, clutching each other as they half-carried, half-pulled a man between them. He was tall, lean, dressed in dark jeans and a fitted shirt, his frame steady despite their drunken imbalance. His head tilted slightly, dark hair falling across his forehead.

The man didn’t notice her. His attention belonged wholly to the two women clutching at him, laughing too loudly as they tugged him toward Avery’s room.

Rania’s frown deepened. Of course. Avery and Chelsea, reckless, flirty, dragging strangers home as though the apartment were an extension of their playground. She shouldn’t be surprised. Still, the sight left an unsettled weight in her chest.

The three of them stumbled into Avery’s room. The door shut behind them with a hard thud.

Rania exhaled, stepped out from her room, and stood in the hallway. For a long second, she stared at the closed door. Not to knock. Not to listen. She had no desire to hear the laughter that was already muffled behind the wood. But suspicion prickled at her anyway. Who was he? Why did they think it was harmless to bring a man back here—their shared space—without a thought?

She rolled her eyes, muttering under her breath, “Clarke and Harper: Vegas’ menace duo.”

Turning away, she padded back to her room. She didn’t care what they did behind that door—it wasn’t her business. But as she slipped beneath the glow of her desk lamp again, Rania couldn’t shake the faint irritation coiling at the back of her mind.

They were playgirls. Flirts. Yes. That, she expected. But bringing a man into the apartment?

That, she hadn’t.

And though she would never admit it aloud, something about the image of him—his calm frame, the way his presence had shifted the air—lodged itself stubbornly in her thoughts, breaking the clean silence she usually guarded so well.

Rania shut her door with more force than she intended, the faint click of the lock slicing through the hush of her room. She lingered against it for a moment, palms pressed to the cool wood, staring into the familiar dimness—the neat desk by the window, the stacks of books arranged like obedient soldiers, the soft amber glow of her lamp. This was her sanctuary. Her order. Her silence.

And now, it felt invaded.

Through the thin apartment walls, laughter rippled—bright, careless, a little shrill. Avery’s voice first, then Chelsea’s, rising and falling in messy waves. A man’s timbre threaded between theirs—lower, rougher, the sound of someone who didn’t belong here. Then came the clatter of something knocked over: a chair, a lamp, maybe a pair of heels tossed aside without care.