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I perked up. (Just the slightest, almost unnoticeable bit… don’t judge me.) “Sure. Okay.” I could practically see her lips curling up into a mischievous smirk it was so vivid in my mind. “You’re smiling, aren’t you?”
“Damn right I am.”
I wasn’t, for the record—finding a distraction. We’d gotten to the party, and my eyes had landed on the first hot guy I’d caught staring my way with any level of interest, and my stomach had immediately turned over on itself just thinking about it.
So, no. No distraction.
Unless you counted Sydney. Who was currently making out with Skater Boy in a mildly lewd, yet kind of hot grope-fest on the couch in Kyle’s living room. (Yes,thatKyle. From work. The ponderer of deep things while gazing into the vast sea of arcade games.) But I didn’t—count it. Because watching Sydney and her guy maul each other only made me miss Neil more.
Ugh. I swallowed a too big bite of pizza, smothering the thought. I was legit considering pouring some vodka—whiskey, rum, tequila, take your pick—straight down my throat, but I wasn’t in the mood for feeling worse than I already did.
As soon as I saw Jax walk into the party, I felt like I could breathe again. At least a little more than my lungs had been allowing these past few days.
“Come here, girl,” he said as soon as he saw me, and I was seriously a sad sack if he could spot my mess with one glance. His entire demeanor oozed with empathy, though, and I kind of loved him for that. I needed someone to feel sorry for me; it felt good to have my misery validated.
And obviously, Neil had already talked to him because he didn’t ask mewhatwas wrong. He just held me, like it was all I needed, and it kind of was right then.
I puffed out a breath into his arms, wondering how that conversation had gone down. How much Neil had told him. If he regretted his part in it. If he realized that his parents had probably screwed him up almost as much as mine had me.
No way in hell was I going to ask, though.
“I’m fine… I’m fine,” I lied when Jax eventually pulled away.
He did a full scan of my features. “Your lies are getting easier to spot, you know.”
“That’s because I’m not trying,” I sulked.
He smirked, a sympathetic smirk if that was even possible. “Seriously, though.” He stepped closer again, curling his hands over my shoulders. “You good?”
I forced a smile. “I will be.” Was it a lie? It felt like it.
It was the last Friday before winter break, and Neil and I still hadn’t said a word to each other. It had been—what? Five, six, seven days? I wasn’t sure anymore. It felt like forever.
At this point, all my weighted feelings were slowly being shoved aside by anger. It was an easier emotion to deal with, I guess. A simmering in my blood and in my chest, fueling itself by the thought that I had probably done the right thing in the end if he could go this long without talking to me. Or trying to work it out. Orwhatever.
I followed him out of sixth period like a stalker, pulling him back by the hand. I was over the waiting game. I wasn’t heading into a three-week break without knowing where the hell we stood. “You can’t ignore me forever.”
He looked at me with a softness in his eyes that threatened to break me. No,screw that.
“I’m sorry, okay?” I huffed. “I pushed you away when I shouldn’t have, and I already feel like an asshole for it, so you don’t have to make me feel worse about it.” It was barely an apology. But how else did I make him understand how I was feeling? I regretted it,clearly.He had to know I did. Right?“I’m sorry,”I said again. The emphasis I put on those words made me feel weak, but I meant them. It was a true, borderline desperate apology, and I didn’t care how it made me look. My anger had melted itself into something else in the thirty seconds I’d been standing in front of him, and I just…missed him.
“I miss you,” I forced out, gnawing at my cheek to force back the stupid sudden urge to cry. I did not cry.Especially not overboys. I was losing my mind. Except that the truth of those words—I miss you—resonated deep, somewhere dark and tainted by fear. Deeper than I wanted to comprehend. But Neil was, really, the closest connection I’d ever had with someone. He was the only person who saw the parts of me I kept hidden from everyone else.
And thatmeantsomething to me.
Did he get that?
“I’m sorry,” I repeated when he still hadn’t said anything. I didn’t know what my intention was. To try and fix things, or to just make sure he understood, or towhat…I didn’t know. “I don’t want you to hate me,” I whispered, my traitorous voice breaking on the last two words. But there it was. I didn’t want him to hate me even though I deserved his anger.
It was my own fault, I knew. I’d pushed him away because I found myself wanting more, even though I knewmorehadn’t been an option for either of us. We wanted different things, had different plans for our futures, andwewere too different from each other to actually last.
But something had changed for me. A switch had flipped in my brain and wanting more of Neil didn’t seem like such a ridiculous thing anymore. Terrifying—yes. Ridiculous, not so much.
But I knew he wouldn’t have given me more even if I’d asked for it. So, I went ahead and sabotaged it before it inevitably crashed and burned, essentiallymakingit crash and burn.
And I loathed myself for it.
I wanted to press rewind, go back to that day, to that stretch of time in his truck, and make a hundred different choices.