The Replacement

HAZEL

Please don't let this be about the video. Please.

I round the corner and stop so abruptly that my heels nearly skid across the polished floor.

It's him.

The tattooed man from that night on campus sits casually on one of the cream couches beside my mother.

Black tattoos disappear beneath the collar of his dark shirt, silver rings flashing as he lazily taps ash from a cigarette into an