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The bell attached to the door chimed, and I watched him stride inside from across the room, a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth.
My heart immediately dove into a chaotic rhythm, somehow climbing its way up my throat and threatening to strangle me at the same time—no, literally strangle me. To death.
Because he wasn’t alone.
No.He was with someone.
A girl, for the record.
Neil was here, at Inkcafé… with some girl, and it looked like they were—my stomach flipped over on itself, acid rising up my throat. I couldn’t even think it, but the thought (and the actual, physical image of it) slapped me across the face anyway.
Neil was here on a date.
Chapter 22
W.T.F.
What the fuck?What the fuck?“What the fuck?” I said under my breath for the third time. To no one but myself. But—what the fuck?
My heart was racing, my throat definitely closing in on itself. The mortifying sting behind my eyes was threatening to embarrass me in front of everyone at Inkcafé. But somehow, Neil still hadn’t seen me. He pointed to a table by the front windows, throwing the girl an easy smile, and I shrank back, sinking down in my seat and hiding behind my book. (When really, all I wanted to do was chuck it across the room and make the noise inside Inkcafé feel as loud as the chaos going on inside my head right now.)
Neil. Here. With some girl.
My brain was having a hard time computing. Trying to make sense of the picture before me.
They sat down together at the table Neil had pointed at and exchanged a few more nauseating smiles. My grasp on the book tightened, my fingers aching from the grip.
My first thoughts about her?Wholesome—pretty.
She was wearing a lacy, knee-length dress and boots, her long, blond hair was curled and pulled back, and she was twisting a silver cross that hung from her necklace between her fingers.
My stomach roiled. Because my next thought was that she looked exactly like the kind of girl Neil should be with. The kind of girl his parents would approve of in a heartbeat.
I kind of wanted to throw up.
Butshouldwas the imperative word here, right? I looked down at myself—baggy sweater, ripped jeans, and chipped nail polish.
Neil was clearly attracted to these things, too, right?
What the hell was hedoing?
Besides the obvious fact that he was on a date, of course.
I promised my mom I would help her with something tomorrow.Isn’t that what his text had said?What a joke.What a freaking joke.
My emotions were going off the rails, filling every crevice inside me with feelings I didn’t want to be feeling.
I swallowed down the mess of them.
I had to figure out how the hell to get out of here without him seeing me. Because that would just be mortifying on too many levels. But of course,of course,he chose that moment to somehow sense my presence and look in my direction.
His face immediately fell when he saw me, and my heart dropped back down into the pit of my stomach.
He looked…embarrassed.Guilty. Ashamed.
Because of me or because of her, I had no clue. Maybe it was a little bit of both, because he was clearly on a date with some girl while his ex (not so much an ex, I guess) was sitting across the room from him, and I could see the regret written all over his face.
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he half-heartedly listened to her, and I wanted to claw at my eyes to rid myself of the image of them sitting there together.