“What makes you think that?”Micah said.
“Because Cadence doesn’t sit with us.The guys claimed her, and yet, here she is.”
I gave her a bitter smile.“I just wanted a change for a day.”
“More like room to breathe,” Lillian challenged.She shoved half her sandwich in her mouth.
“If you choke, I’m not helping you,” Hazel said.
Lillian shrugged and washed the food down with water.“So?”She raised an eyebrow.“Which one messed up?”The question sounded like she was half-joking and half ready to murder.
Micah leaned forward, conspiratorial.“I say we start with the tall one.”
“Bryan?”I coughed and shook my head.
“Oh, so not him.Well, we eliminated one of them,” Micah said.
“And we know it isn’t that hunky chocolate of a man,” Lillian said.
“Hey!”I glowered at her.
She rolled her eyes.“You know you’ve been tempted to bite him.We always want to bite the people we like.”
“Can confirm,” Micah said, eyeing Hazel who simply smirked as she grabbed one of the apple slices.
“So not Bryan or Seth,” Lillian said.
“And Toby is too bubbly.He’s way too happy so either he doesn’t know he’s in trouble or he doesn’t care,” Hazel said.“But I also know he cares a lot.So it isn’t him.”
“Paxon,” Lillian said.
I froze from taking a drink.All three focused on me.
“Oh shit, really?The family man.He’s like a golden retriever.”
“What the fuck did he do?”Micah asked, looking like he was about to get up.He only stopped because Hazel grabbed his arm.
“How about we do the reasonable thing,” Hazel said.“And get her to eat more than one apple.Feelings and an empty stomach never go together.”
Lillian rolled her eyes.“Fine.Food now, revenge later.”
Another small laugh slipped out of me.We sat there, trading small talk and jokes.There was comfort in their ordinary nonsense.Hazel gave us commentary on other students’ yearbook poses, and Lillian suddenly wondered which teacher would survive the zombie apocalypse.Nothing about the conversation was solving anything.It wasn’t a fix to last night.But it tethered me somewhere human for a little while instead of in the endless void that I felt like I’d been floating in all morning.
When the bell rang, I tucked my tray away and stood.Hazel grabbed my sleeve.“Hey, don’t disappear, okay?Text me if you need me.”Her eyes were soft, no trace of teasing now.
“Okay,” I said and actually felt like the word was the truth for once.
I rounded the corner toward my locker and froze.Paxon was there, leaning against the row of lockers like he’d been glued to it.He looked like someone hunting for courage and coming up empty.When our eyes met, his mouth opened and closed once, like he was trying to fish out a sentence.
Something inside of me tightened, an old instinct to stop everything and wait for the right moment, to forgive as a reflex.But the memory of last night, of trying to get the fight to end, letting him leave, it all hovered in my chest like a warning.
I couldn’t do it.Not today.
I stepped around him without looking back.
Once he realized I was walking by him instead of stopping, his shoulders sagged like something was taken from him.I kept walking until the hallway thinned and the rain-washed parking lot swallowed me up.
In the car, I sat for a minute with my hands tight on the steering wheel, listening to the sound of the drizzle hitting the glass.Then I started the engine and drove home with the radio off, not caring that I was skipping the rest of my classes for the afternoon.Fuck physics.
