“Sorry,” he says after a minute. “It’s just… this isn’t exactly my area.”
“Oh? Boy trouble isn’t your area?You don’t say.” I glare at him. “Forget I said anything.”
I flop back on my bed and pick up my phone in an effort to ignore him.
“No! No.” He looks pained. “Not the guy thing. Just…anyof it. The dating thing. Or whatever.”
He fiddles with the zipper on his bookbag, and suddenly, he looks way more like a little kid than a huge college jock.
Oh. I mean, I’m surprised because… well,lookat him. But also, oh.
He looks bashful and awkward, and… actually, he reminds me a little of Caleb right now.
Huh.
“You know what?” I say, “I think your take might be helpful here.”
He looks up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
So I tell him everything that happened. And he listens, quietly, but giving me his full attention. And when I'm done, I ask what I really want to know.
“So. Is he just not interested?”
Gavin considers. “I don't think that's how you act when you're not interested.”
I let out a humorless chuckle. “It's definitely not how you act when youareinterested.”
I feel like fleeing the scene pretty much screams “I don’t want this.” Of course, I don’t run away from anything. I just rush in headlong, whether it’s a good idea or not.
“Except,” Gavin says slowly, like he’s thinking it throughas he speaks, “maybe it’s exactly what you do if you feel like you have no freaking clue what you're doing.”
I blink at him. Because that actually makes a lot of sense.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
The thought settles over both of us, I think, and we're quiet for a minute. Then I ask, “What do you think I should do?”
“I don't know. What do you think he would want?”
CHAPTER 11
CALEB
I knowexactly what I want.
I want a time machine so I can go back to that kiss and not freak out like the walking (running) disaster I am.
No, actually. If I had a time machine, I’d go back to that first day and not be a total dork when I met Dash.
Except Iama disaster and a dork, so what I really want is to go back and never go to the rink in the first place that day. Or ever. In fact, as long as I’m righting past missteps, I might as well just go to a different college altogether. Or no college. Maybe I could get my degree from a correspondence school. Do those still exist? Whatever, degrees are overrated anyway.
I squeeze my eyes shut and let out a frustrated groan.
“Huh?” My roommate, Patrick, pulls an earbud from one ear and looks over from his desk. “Did you say something?”
“No. Sorry. Nothing.” I sigh.
