As if that had ever troubled me before.
Shutting my book, I grabbed my bag off the floor and began to shove my supplies inside. I barely paused to close the sticky zipper of my pencil case, contents clattering against each other inside.
“Hey, Lu, wait up. Where are you going?”
I continued to pack. I forced myself not to glance toward the voice across the table, laced with confusion.
Why should I act like he was even there?
He certainly hadn’t looked back at me today. Who knew what else he was doing behind my back after I took a chance to think he could be a good human being?
Ugh.There was the pitiful hurt again. I could hear it lacing my own traitorous thoughts. I shouldn’t care, yet I did.
I cared. One night with Ryan, and it’d sent three years of hate-filled walls crashing down.
“Luella.”
My full name made my eyes turn upward of their own accord. “Oh, Ryan, right?”
“Funny.” He looked me up and down.
I huffed. My hands braced on either side of my final two notebooks.
My one pen was still stuck between the pages of my book of shadows. I had to pause to carefully take it out so that ink wouldn’t get everywhere, slowing my retreat.
“I don’t get why you’re acting like this toward me.” Ryan stepped around the table.
I raised my eyebrows, finally getting my pen free and everything stacked up in a nice pile. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“Then, maybe you do need more than a tutor.”
He scoffed. “Can’t you just tell me what I did wrong?”
“You …”
It was going to sound so outrageous, coming out of my mouth, and I knew it. I’d told myself this for the past five minutes. Yet here we were. Another hysterical woman with her feelings hurt.
So be it.
“Have you been the one spreading the rumors?” I asked.
Understanding dawned on him. “Is that what’s bothering you?”
That wasn’t an answer.
“No, Lu. I’m not spreading rumors about you. People saw us, but I didn’t think that you’d care so much.”
“You didn’t say hello,” I said.
“I didn’t say …” Ryan cocked his head.
“You looked right at me today in the science building. I was with Vadika,” I reminded him, as if he’d forgotten that as well. “It was as if you had no idea who I was.”
“I didn’t think you’d want me to.”
Why wouldn’t I want that? A few good reasons popped to my mind immediately. Like the fact that I never talked to anyone in class unless there was a group project or I needed the notes from a day I’d missed. That was a reason. Still, it didn’t matter.
