I didn’t realize I’d stalled in the hallway, classmates streaming around me like I was a stone in the river, and my eyes locked on Will as my chest burned with hurt and shame.
He looked up and saw me, his smile slipping away when our eyes met.
I sucked in a breath before I turned and bolted.
I wound my way through people, eyes blurring with tears, needing air, needing sky, needing out of the building where I felt like I’d be crushed and crumbled if I’d stayed.
I heard him behind me, but I didn’t stop, not until I was under the bleachers. I didn’t want him to see me cry, didn’t want him to see me at all, didn’t want him to know he’d hurt me. But it was no use.
His eyes were so sad when I turned to face him, the pain evident when he apologized. He wasn’t thinking when he asked me, he’d said. We would never work, he told me. He said it didn’t matter how much he liked me or how much I liked him — we were too different, from different worlds, and how could people who weren’t alike work out? Plus, he and Kenzie were both nominated for homecoming court and had a better chance of winning if they were together.
That moment was the first time I’d ever felt like I didn’t know him at all. So I looked up at him with my eyes full of tears and heart busted in a thousand pieces and told him he was right. That it was my mistake because I’d thought we were a lot more alike than we actually were.
He hugged me, whispering apologies before he kissed my hair and walked away.
For a long time, I sat under the bleachers and cried. I’d been stupid, so stupid and short-sighted. How could I have thought he’d really wanted to be with me? His words had been empty, meaningless, but I’d believed every one. I thought it was real, but I was a fool. He’d betrayed me. And for what?
I’d given him everything, and he took it with no intention of giving himself to me.
So with a broken heart, I sat there in the cool dirt under the shade of the bleachers and wrote a list of rules while I waited on my face to stop looking like a puffed up raspberry. And those rules were something I still lived by.
1) Know who you’re dealing with and put them on their shelf.
2) Don’t date anyone not on your shelf.
3) When something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
And follow the rules I did, even though following them meant that I was lonely. I went back to being friends with everyone and no one, not caring, or pretending not to care. I asked for a new lab partner and endured the year of classes with Will, doing my best not to meet his eyes when he would watch me from across the room. And every time I saw Will and Kenzie in the halls or the cafeteria, a little piece of me squeezed and hardened to bolster myself against the hurt.
By the time I went to college, I was solidly detached, dating guys from my shelf, and only from my shelf. Some were great guys, guys I could have been really happy with, but they weren’t it for me. I didn’t feel like it was a matter of trust, but who knows how it really was, because from the inside, I was likely too blind to see.
Tyler should be with someone like Adrienne, not someone like me. My guts twisted at the thought of him with her, and I realized it was the first time since I’d known him that he’d had a prospect I felt could be real. But my feelings for Tyler didn’t mean anything. I’d put them aside a thousand times if it meant he could be happy.
He’d meant the text message to be taken only as a friend — it all of a sudden seemed ludicrous I would have thought it would be any other way. That he would require my undivided friend attention for the day so we could talk shit and kid around. Not that he’d never say something like that to his guy friends like Kyle or he’d end up with a meaty fist in his pie hole.
No, I was just reading too much into it, that was all. Just thinking a little too far out of the box.
And as if I needed a sign, I looked up and found Adrienne and Sarah taking seats right in front of me.
“Hey,” I said, approaching the bar, willing my heart to slow as I tossing coasters in front of them. One said, Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why. - Kurt Vonnegut, and the other said, Every blessing ignored becomes a curse. - Paulo Coelho. “Didn’t expect to see you ladies again so soon.”
Adrienne smiled, her dark cheeks flushing. “Us either. We were actually at another bar but decided to swing by.” She glanced around hopefully. “Is, ah, Tyler here?”
She’s perfect for him. They’ll be perfect together. Now, take no mercy. I smiled, feeling better at the prospect of setting him up, certain I’d feel eve better than that once they were together and happy. “I think he’s coming up here in a bit. Let me hit him up. What are you ladies drinking?”
“Whiskey sour for me,” Adrienne said.
“Same,” Sarah added with a smile.
I poured quietly, composing my message to him in my head, and the first second I got, I shot off a text.
If you haven’t taken your bra off yet, you should come up here. Adrienne just showed up asking about you, and she looks amazing. Like, ah-maz-ing.
The dots bounced as he typed out a response. Too late. I’m already free and clear of all underwear. And then he sent a shrug emoji.
Come on. She came all the way down here looking for you. So hitch up your knickers and get down here, Knight.
Dots again. Then they stopped. A pause, then they started and stopped again for another pause. The next time they bounced, they didn’t stop.
Can’t leave a pretty girl at the bar all alone. Give me a bit and I’ll be over.
Did he mean me? I shook the thought away, almost laughing out loud, wondering what had gotten into me. Of course he didn’t mean me. He’d never mean me.