Hughie raises a brow and nods, never once glancing up at us. “Yeah, he’s texted him like five fucking times daily since last weekend.”
That sentence lands like a minor impact in my chest and I look over at Hughie becausefive times daily?Really? I can barely respond to half my own texts in under a week, and this guy is out there perseverating like it’s spring training and someone stole his bat.
“Oh and I had to save Jake from Danny’s line of questioning in the training arena,” Mack continues on and despite the fact that I’m not looking at him I can feel his eyes on me.
Hughie looks up at me from his phone, eyes sliding over my expression with that quiet knowing gaze that always manages to make me feel seen. “Save him how?”
Mack doesn’t hear the tension but I do. Mack’s response has Hugh relaxing, “Oh nothing major. He was just attempting to get Jake to say there was someone else or some shit.”
I quickly turn my head out the window like the landscape suddenly became the most riveting thing to exist in human history.
Mack, blissfully unaware that he’s cornered my emotional state like an overly excited fucking puppy, goes right on.
“I’m not always into dudes,” he announces, absurdly loud, “but watching those two grind on each other was the perfect foreplay for me.”
Hughie lets out this exaggerated, fake gag. “Dude, come on. That’s my brother.”
“Step brother,” Mack corrects immediately, whispering so loudly that half the bus could’ve heard. “He’s hot.”
I can feel Hughie’s eyes on me again, his gaze steady and uncompromising, like he’s quietly gauging whether I’m dying on the inside.
But he doesn’t say anything to me about the likely constupated expression I’m sporting. Instead, he answers Mack with this calm, factual tone.
“He’s a good guy.”
I have to turn away from both of them because it feels like this entire conversation was meant to rile me up. It feels like Mack was pushing my buttons to see if Jake was the mystery guy I’m crushing on and it most definitely feels like Griffin knows more than he fucking should.
So instead of engaging further I just end up staring out the window at the blur of road and sky, trying my best to organize my thoughts into something remotely coherent, but goddamn it if I’m not still painfully aware of the entire fucking bus and where Jacob is sitting on it and whether or not he looked at mewhen everyone was gossiping about him and Danny and how in the hell I’m supposed to act like this is all fine and ordinary.
I tune them out and pull out my phone to check social media as if that will stop my brain from spiraling.
And there it is: a string of missed messages from Sabrina.
Of all fucking people.
I sigh and choke back an annoyed groan.
So seeing her messages now is like stepping in dog shit barefoot.
Sabrina: I cannot believe you cheated on me and now you think you can ignore me.
Sabrina:It was one kiss. I can forgive you.
Sabrina:Do you even want me to forgive you or is this your way of breaking up with me for good?
Sabrina:I’ve given you all of my time and love and you are just going to leave me.
Sabrina:I’m so disappointed in you.
I exhale slow and attempt to reign in my annoyance. I lean my head against the cool window, bracing myself against the reality that this is now.
I didn’t tell her who I kissed.
Not because I’m embarrassed but because I canliterallyimagine her dragging Jacob’s name through the mud the second she hears it. I’m not okay with that. Not okay with him being weaponized against me in an argument, not okay with the idea of her using his name like ammunition to hurt me, and definitely not okay with him being hurt at all by her shitty words or actions.
So I lied by omission.
Which, if we’re being fucking honest, is humiliating in its own way but at least it’s not weaponizing someone who doesn’t deserve to be in the middle of this drama.
