Ha! Melodramatic bullshit. I couldn’t lose my heart to some ex-junkie townie in one week.
I immediately felt guilty and disloyal for those thoughts. It wasn’t how I really thought of him; I was just trying to protect my heart, though I feared it was way too late for that.
I threw on my hoodie and yoga pants, kept my wet hair up in its bun, and made my way out to the hallway with my charges. The two girls Freddy taught moved over to his area. I waited for Andy to move to mine, but I couldn’t find him.
“Didn’t Andy come out with you?” I asked Freddy, ignoring Casey’s mother, who wanted to speak with me about her kid.
“Yeah, he did. He left with his brother right away. The brother said he’d get any instructions on Andy’s progress from you next time.”
Freddy, of course, had seen me with Lucas and Andy on our Saturday swim date. Now Freddy was shooting me a sympathetic look. “He seemed to be in a hurry, like he had to be somewhere,” he said, trying to be helpful.
He wasn’t helpful. The whole situation sucked. And it was official.
Lucas was totally blowing me off.
Chapter13
I couldn’t believeI did it, but I swam extra laps that night and took a ton of time in the locker room. Yeah, I was waiting for him to show, though I told myself I wasn’t.
Pathetic, and it didn’t even work. He didn’t show, and I wasn’t about to stay all night to see if he’d resume work on the steam room tiling job.
I did skim under the tape to peek in. It looked like most of the demo work had been done, with all the old, gross tile gone. It looked bare and lonely and very sterile.
Kind of like how I felt.
On the walk home from the women’s IM building, I resolved to shake this off, not let Lucas affect me this way. I was a hot freshman at an elite college, for Christ’s sake; some townie blowing me off was not going to derail my college experience.
And yet I walked slowly, listening for a souped-up car to pull up behind me.
One never did.
* * *
Jane was on her phone,fighting with her father, when I came into the room. It amazed me how little Joseph Stratton knew his daughter. I’d only known Jane a little over a month and I knew that she would indeed rather transfer to a community college, or work her way through college entirely on her own, than do that which she said she wouldn’t.
Jane would not make a good politician—absolutely no compromise in her.
Wanting to give Jane some privacy, though she motioned that it wasn’t necessary, I threw my backpack on my bed and made my way through our bathroom to the other side of our suite to see if Syd was around.
When we first moved in, Syd shared a room with Megan, a girl from Nebraska, also here on scholarship. Megan seemed all right, and we tried to include her in stuff, but after the first two weeks her mother died and she left school to go home to Nebraska. She said she was coming back, and the residence association didn’t put anyone else in with Syd, but we weren’t betting on Megan returning anytime soon.
She’d taken all her stuff and Syd now lived in a room that was completely decked out on one side and totally empty on the other. Jane had said Syd should spread her stuff out, but Syd said she’d feel weird if Megan just showed up and Syd had squatted all over her area.
At the very least, Jane had put a sheet, a blanket, and a pillow on Megan’s empty bed so we’d have somewhere to veg when we came over to Syd’s side of the suite.
Which is what I did now, flopping down on the bed opposite Syd where she was propped up, textbook open on her lap.
“Hey,” she said, pushing the book off her lap, curling her legs underneath her.
“Hey. I can leave if you want to study.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I need a break anyway.”
I toed my kicks off and curled up on my side, adjusting the pillow under my head.
“So, what did he have to say about not calling you Sunday or Monday? A good excuse, at least? Did you let him have it before you kissed and made up?” She was smiling, not at all thinking that the situation was unresolved.
“None of the above. He took Andy and left before I even got out of the locker room. I never even talked to him.” Stupid voice, cracking as I said the last.
