I snatched the bag and flowers out of his hands just to avoid raising any doubts. I stared down into the fragrant roses. They were bright and beautiful.
“I’m only taking these to avoid her questions. She knows we broke up, but she doesn’t know what happened,” I replied, confirming that his false reputation as a fine young man had not been compromised.
Jared sighed again, and then his eyes slowly caressed my body, top to bottom. I stiffened in discomfort. I wasn’t wearing anything special. I had no makeup on, and my hair was in its usual disorder. As far as I was concerned, I was at peak frumpiness.
“How do you look so beautiful even after such a serious accident?” he asked, a poignant sort of melancholy in his voice.
He drew closer to me, one small step at a time, until he had completely closed the distance between us.
I remained motionless and wary, but my stiffness didn’t stop him from reaching out with one hand to move a hank of hair off my forehead. He stared at my scar for several moments. Jared’s eyes traveled from my scar down to my eyes, and I immediately stepped back to make sure he knew not to cross the line.
“I hope you’ll give me the chance to be in your life. I promise, all I want is to be your friend,” he said, waiting for my reaction.
Him and me? Friends?
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.” I pushed him back and then glanced over my shoulder. My mom was stirring hot chocolate and smiling down at her phone, maybe because of a message she’d gotten. I was glad she was distracted and hadn’t noticed anything. Later, I would need to find out why she had such a dreamy expression on her face, but in that moment, I was focused on Jared and our conversation.
“What’s the problem? Neil the jealous type?” he asked contemptuously. Jared shook his head, realizing he’d let his wounded pride do the talking. “Sorry, that’s none of my business,” he said, taking a breath. It was suddenly very clear to me that he hadn’t remotely processed what had happened to us.
“You should go,” I said simply, because the last thing I wanted to do was talk about Neil and what was—or, rather, wasn’t—between us.
“Sure, yeah.” He headed for the door, where he paused to take one last look at me. “Tell your mother thanks from me for the hot chocolate. Tell her I got an urgent call from my dad.”
Jared left, and after suppressing the urge to throw them immediately in the garbage, I put his flowers in a vase and sat down on the sofa. I opened the bag he’d given me and pulled out a large package of…
“Pop Rocks,” I said softly to myself. They were my favorite candy, little crackling granules that released their delightful flavor as soon as they came in contact with your tongue. I had them for the first time from a vending machine at the library, where I often went to study or check out books. The same library where, a few months before that, I had met Jared.
“It’s just cotton candy,” I added, saddened.
Jared knew my tastes. He knew a lot about me, actually, and an inexplicable sorrow squeezed my chest at that thought.
Still, I didn’t regret my choices.
Neil wasn’t just me giving into temptation; he was the best mistake I’d ever made. I’d felt something novel, something indescribable, when I was with him. Sure, he’d also made me suffer, but that wasn’t as important. Hisactions, sometimes infuriating and other times indecipherable, could never erase what I felt with him.
For him.
“Where’s Jared? Why did he leave?” My mother came back into the room with two steaming mugs on a tray. I gave her a nervous smile, readying myself to lie to her.
“He got an urgent call from his dad, and he had to go,” I said convincingly. My mother bent to put the tray on the low table in front of us before sitting down next to me and glancing at my favorite candy.
“That was nice of him,” she commented, staring at the packet. I knew she would have thought differently if I told her what he’d done to me in the park that fateful evening. But I didn’t tell her that; instead, I just smiled and tried to look like I agreed.
“Yes, it was,” I answered thoughtfully. I stretched out my legs and fingered the package of candy, pulling out an individual packet. I could have finished the whole thing in a few hours, I was certain. I would have eaten them all to release some of my tension. To cling to anything other than my rising paranoia or the constant thoughts I had of Neil and all the things I still couldn’t explain.
“How are you feeling?” my mother asked me for the umpteenth time, maybe mistaking my thoughtful silence for discomfort. She brushed back my hair, and I lifted my face to look at her.
“Better. Now go on, you should take a hot bath. You need to relax.” She had been so afraid these days of leaving me alone even for a few minutes, but there really was no reason for that.
“You sure?” She hesitated, leaning forward to grab the tray and take it back to the kitchen.
“I’m very sure, Mom,” I answered wryly. In reality, my headache had come back. Maybe focusing on Jared had been more wearing than I’d thought, and perhaps I wasn’t yet ready to put my brain through that kind of stress. But I didn’t tell any of that to my mother.
Instead, I wanted to reassure her. I wanted her to take some time for herself after the long day.
“All right. I’ll be right back, though. Give me fifteen minutes.” Sheleft quickly, not because she couldn’t wait to get started, but because she couldn’t wait to get back to me. We had plans later to watch a movie and eat some high-calorie junk food.
I smiled, and my forehead wrinkled when my phone vibrated with a new text. I took it out of my sweater and read the display.
