“Right, June?”
That bitch was right.
It wasn’t possible. My head was spinning. I couldn’t be agreeing with Taylor. Was a shot all it took?
I thought about it quickly, and concluded that Taylor was right.
Why live with the fear that the guy who liked me preferred someone other than me? If he wanted to make out with her, he would’ve already. Not to mention that I made out with Tiffany, and I was terrified to tell him because I didn’t want to make him angry.
“Go on, Will,” I whispered, swallowing my pride.
“Thank god it’s called seven minutes in heaven,” a guy clarified, noticing Ari’s and William’s solemn faces as they walked toward the closet.
In a second, Will did the gentlemanly thing and let her go first, then he shut the door. And I felt myself collapse. Seven minutes in heaven? More like seven minutes in hell.
23
Ari
William stared at me for a few moments.
He did that a lot at school, too, but his glances were often furtive and covertly stolen. But this time he was sitting in front of me, and it was impossible for me not to notice him. His charcoal-gray eyes peeked out from under a lock of blond hair that kept falling on his forehead despite him trying to fix it.
“How are you?” he asked, taking me by surprise.
Then he looked down, and I took advantage of that to let out a small sigh.
“Good. How about you, Will?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, even though William had nothing to do with my mood.
“Good,” he murmured, lifting his eyes to meet mine.
All it took was one look before we both decided to take our masks off.
“No, that’s not true, that everything is fine,” I admitted, looking down and to the side. William mimicked my gesture like a mirror image.
“Me neither,” he whispered quietly.
We stayed silent for a few moments. I played with the tip of my ponytail between my fingers until he started talking again. “Because of the girls or Brian?”
“All of them,” I admitted faintly.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
It was truly rare when someone was truly interested in me, especially if it was a guy. They usually only cared about my looks, and Will should have been no exception. I’d always looked down on him in the past. I thought he was immature.
Of course I would’ve never thought I’d end up spending the evening talking with him in Poppy’s closet.
We hadn’t spoken in years, but so many things had happened that night that I couldn’t hold it all in. Brian didn’t want anything to do with me anymore, and I sensed that I was about to lose Amelia and Poppy too. I had everything up until a month ago; now I had nothing. And I was used to living like this, caught between two worlds. James and Brian. Even though I knew I meant nothing to James and everything to Brian, I couldn’t make the choice that everyone thought was the right one.
“Is it really over with Brian?” asked William, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah.”
“And with James?”
“Yeah, he wanted to end it,” I admitted begrudgingly.
