“Nah, bud.” His tone is light and there’s a faint smile on his lips, but his eyes are full of certainty. “It’s a promise.”
I’m antsy at work, my skin crawling as I watch the clock on my screen. It’s ten-fifteen. Ten-fifteen on Tuesday. Connor has fifteen minutes left of art history.
Nine minutes.
Eight.
Five.
I’m not going to go to Crema today. Obviously, I’m not going to go. I don’t need to. Aside from the fact that I ever thought I needed to be there is questionable as hell, I’m going to see Connor at home tonight.
There’s no plausible reason to go tearing across campus to catch a glimpse of him. None at all.
Bev wheels her chair back suddenly and the movement startles me. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Loverboy?”
It’s clear she’s talking to me because she’s looking directly at me, but I’m confused. “Um, pardon?”
She glances down at her wrist. “You’re always out of here like a rocket on Tuesday mornings. Figured you were meeting someone.”
Oh shit.
“Uh, n-no.”
Just my luck, Bev has managed to draw Anna’s attention. She pushes her chair back too, eyes lighting up. “Do you have a crush on someone, Lennon? Ohmigod,spill.”
“No!” I say firmly. “I do not have a crush on anyone.”
Bev and Anna both tilt their heads to the side. They look at me for a beat and then at each other. There’s something knowing about the exchange that I find worrying.
“But then where do you go every Tuesday?” asks Anna, righting her head in a way that makes her blonde ponytail flick like a tail behind her.
It quickly dawns on me that being forced to answer that question is worse than owning up to a crush I don’t have. Way worse, and a million times more difficult to answer. Not to mention incriminating as hell.
That reminds me, I’ve been meaning to google how illegal stalking is, but with everything that’s been going on in my life, it keeps slipping my mind. I’ll have to add it to my to-do list.
“Fine.” There’s a hint of a quiver in my voice as I attempt to walk things back. “You got me. I might have averyslight crush on someone, but it’s no big deal, and honestly, I’m already mostly over it. We really don’t need to get into it.”
“Aw,” says Anna, clutching her hands to her chest, “did you hear that, B? Lennon has a crush. Isn’t that sweet?”
Blake looks up from his screen. His eyes are leaden and track slowly as they make their way toward me. He grimaces, showing a hint of gums, as he tries to work out what the workplace-appropriate, nonhomicidal response is.
“Get well soon, I guess,” he says after a long pause.
Anna and Bev screech as though it’s the funniest shit they’ve ever heard.
Fuck, I hate it here.
After being unceremoniously shooed out of the office by Anna and Bev, I trot briskly to Crema against my better judgment. My anxiety is soaring at unprecedented heights. In addition to everything else, I now have to add paranoia to my long list of problems because I can’t go more than a few paces without stopping and looking back to make sure they aren’t following me.
I know it’s a stretch, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Especially not Anna.
The irony of being concerned about my privacy is far from lost on me. Still, I take a different, longer route than usual, and spend a few minutes hiding behind a conifer to make sure the coast is clear when I get close enough to Crema to see people coming in and out.
Obviously, I don’t go inside. There’s no way I can. Connor knows me now. I’ve lost my anonymity, and there’s no way I can feasibly run into him, especially not every single fucking Tuesday, without raising an abundance of massive red flags.
No. I can’t keep doing this.
I have to stop.
