“Yes. Before the fall festival at the school. He also came by the booth I was at and said hello.”
“He did?” Ty and I said at the same time.
Mom laughed. “He did.”
“What did he say?” I realized how overeager I sounded when Dad’s assessing gaze switched to me.
“Can’t stand each other, huh?” Dad asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“Of course.” Dad nodded, draped his suit jacket over a chair back, and joined us on the floor.
“What did he say, Mom?” I asked again.
“Nothing, sweetie. He just said hello and hoped I was enjoying the festival.”
“And what did you say?”
Mom laughed again. “Jack, it’s obvious you really like him. I think you should try to get him talking again.”
Try to get him talking? That wasn’t the problem anymore. Now, Cal said there wasnothingto talk about.
We finished tracing the turkeys, my hand cramping after cutting them out, and then I spent the rest of the night in my room alternating homework with pacing and passing a soccer ball foot to foot. I didn’t want to keep pushing a brick wall, but I needed more from Cal thannothing. He could at least tell me, to my face, that our kiss was nothing. He could tell me he hadn’t been hard in his jeans, and the velvet of his tongue had been my imagination. He could tell me he didn’t like how hot it got between us and deny he loved how aggressive we both were.
Nothing to fucking talk about? Okay, Calvin Winters, I’ll give you nothing to fucking talk about.
I’dbethefirstto admit I didn’t always make the best decisions. Dodging Sasha’s kiss at Homecoming? Good. Doing it in front of everyone? Not so good. Dating her in the first place? Bad.
By the time the game had ended Friday night, I’d had a thousand messages from her, ranging in emotions from hatred to devastation. I’d ruined her life. I’d betrayed her.
I’d deleted most without reading them.
Then Jack had texted me, and sure, my fault for hoping it’d be something to take my mind off Sasha. It hadn’t been, and yet another bad decision was made. I shouldn’t have taken my frustration out on him.
In spite of that, we’d managed a friendly-adjacent conversation during our session with Trent. Then I’d taken a dump on it. I shouldn’t have told him there was nothing to talk about.
No matter how empty that hallway had seemed, ears were everywhere. Especially Trent’s. He’d probably had his pressed against the door, listening to every word, hoping he could call usout for actually getting along due to his influence.
It had hurt, okay? Jack’s snub at the festival on Thursday, then his second snub through texting as if everything was as right as rain. It wasn’t right. It so fucking wasn’t.
Bad decisions could be made on the best of days, and thesedays? Well, they weren’t great.
And when bad decisions got worse, apparently, they were called Tuesday.
Jack and I had two classes together, and you’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to control ourselves for them.
You’d be wrong.
I walked into our shared first period. He sat at his usual desk, arms crossed, closed off and pissy. Jack glanced at me, and in those stupidly short seconds as I made my way to my own desk, I conveyed what was in my head.
Like I said, new level of bad decision.
I agreed with him. We needed to talk. Even if that talk only admitted we’d been frustrated and the emotional outburst got slammed in the wrong direction. Or you know, admit it’d been insanely hot and I’d be down for a do-over that didn’t end with a punch to the gut.
So, yeah, too much to pack into a three-second eye-to-eye glare down, and I probably screamed serial killer instead of “Down to talk when you are.”
When my three seconds were up, Jack blinked his indifferent mask toward his go-to window, and I stumbled the last step, falling into my seat without his steady attention keeping me upright.
