“Seriously?” he asks, and I scrub my hands over my face.
“I can’t do this,” I say, and everything goes dead silent.
CHAPTERFORTY-TWO
GIDEON
These big municipalbuildings sound strange when there’s nothing to hear. Clicks and groans and sounds echoing from God knows where; sighs and the sound of vents shifting, the ghosts of sneakers scuffing on linoleum.
“What does that mean?” I ask her, twenty seconds later, in the cacophony of silence.
“This,” she waves an arm around as if that explains fuckinganything. “I can’t—look, I’m fucking it up, this is going so bad. I’m sorry. I just—sorry.”
It feels like there’s a bird trapped in my throat, all panicked fluttering, and I can’t get words out around it.
“Okay,” I say, even though it’s not. I can’t feel my fingertips. “Are you—?”
The bird panics harder, claws at my throat and I can’t bring myself to saybreaking up with me.Is this how it happens, then? You think something is good and then your family fucks it up and you get dumped in a high school?
“I’ll be fine,” she says, and my heart gives an ugly twist. “I just need some time.”
She’s bright red, her blue eyes pink around the rims, like she’s been trying not to cry and failing. Andi’s clenching her teeth and not quite looking at me, holding her shoulders back like she’s bracing herself.
“How much?” I ask. I’m still as a statue and I feel like one.
She blows out a breath and rubs her eyes, then grabs her hair with one hand. “Can you give me, like, ten minutes? I think if I just calm down a little—”
My brain feels like a car ignition that won’t turn over.
“Ten minutes?” I ask, just making sure I got it right.
“Yes,” she says, her voice still tight, and she snaps her eyes up to mine. “If we keep going like this I’m just going to shout at you more, and that’s obviously not helping shit.”
I stare at her for slightly too long again.
“Is that not cool, or did you really want to—”
“You’re not breaking up with me?”
Now Andi stares. We’re all staring. It’s a hell of a night.
“No?” she says, then frowns. “Are you… breaking up with me?”
“No,” I say, and it’s probably a little to forceful, because she goes a little more pink. “But you said—you couldn’t do this, and it was going bad, and I thought…”
Andi’s face is in her hands and she makes a noise that kind of reminds me of the mating call of certain members of the cervidae family.
“I meant this conversation,” she says, muffled. “Notus.”
“Oh,” I manage, and that syllable doesn’t go very far toward expressing the dizzying relief I feel, but it’ll have to do. “Good.”
“I’m gonna take a walk around the school,” she says, her face out of her hands. “I just need a minute. I’ll be back, okay?”
“Of course,” I say, because if there’s anything I’ve understood in my life, it’s needing a minute alone. “I’ll be… here?”
Andi doesn’t answer, just gives me a peck on the cheek and disappears around a corner.
* * *
