A hot flush of guilt crawled up my neck. I glanced at the clock. We had time. I wasn’t that late. There was still another forty something minutes before the first bell. He’d probably been standing out there waiting like an idiot while I was busy losing every ounce of moral high ground I’d ever had.
“Shit.” I thumped the steering wheel once, hard. “Shit, shit, shit.”
I fumbled for my phone at the next red light, typing too fast.
Me:
On my way. So sorry. Got distracted.
It was the kind of excuse that could mean anything and did.
Mathieu:
No worries. I can grab a ride with Simon. See you soon?
Relief struck, almost too much relief. Where I’d been looking forward to seeing him before, today, I’d just—forgotten. Forgotten I was going to pick him up. Forgottenhim.
Me:
Okay, sorry again!
Relief and shame hit at the same time—twin punches, one right after the other. He wasn’t mad. Of course he wasn’t. Mathieu never really got mad.
The light turned green before I could even process whether to tell him the truth. My stomach twisted with the kind of dread that wasn’t about traffic or tardiness but about the fact that I suddenly didn’t know who I was supposed to be for anyone anymore.
For Mathieu, I was supposed to be his girlfriend. We weren’t “labeling” it. But we were dating. Mostly. Though he didn’t want to ask me to go to homecoming. Nor did he want me to ask him. So what did that make us now? There was something both reliable and utterly unsettled at the same time. Were we casual? Serious? I didn’t know.
Then there were the guys. My best friends. They were all so different, yet so inextricably a part of my life. That part seemed utterly in flux now.
For Jake… I was a disappointment now. Maybe that was harsh. But he’d been so angry. He’d also outed me to most of our class for being active with Mathieu. He’d apologized but what was between us had shifted dramatically. I’d always thought of us as being the ones who pushed each other, to be better, to be blunt, to be ourselves.
The question was who were we to each other now?
For Bubba… I was still his friend, but he wanted me to be more. A possibility. How had he put it? Don’t just limit myself to one guy? He’d also asked me to homecoming. Jake had too, but Jake was pretty sure I wouldn’t want him to take me after everything.
A dull thud began to pound behind my eyes. For Coop… Coop had been my best friend the longest. I couldn’t remember a time in my life that he hadn’t been a part of it. Nor did I want to imagine one without him. If anything, the summer apart from them had hurt. As angry as I was with all four of them for the choices they’d made forme, I had missed them.
Throw in the weekend’s posts regarding their summer of debauchery and Coop’s own confessions—I couldn’t focus on that. Just that single beat of memory made my stomach twist painfully and hurt my heart so damn much. I didn’t understand their choices.
Any of them.
I couldn’t pretend that I did.
Not understanding certainly didn’t keep you from kissing Archie, did it?
The snide little voice sounded a little like Rachel. But for all the shit she might give me, Rachel had come through this past weekend. She’d been there for me every damn minute and even managed to make me laugh when all I’d wanted to do was cry.
Still, who I was for all of them, including Rachel, was so damn different. But for Archie? Who I was for him… I didn’t know. He wanted me and if I’d had any doubts, the way he’d kissed me had erased them.
The worst part of all of it was I should feel a hell of a lot more guilt and shame than I did. I felt bad about forgetting to pick Mathieu up, not for kissing Archie.
What the hell did that say about me?
By the time the school lot came into view, I had no answers for any of it. Not about Maddy. Not about Mr. Standish. Not about the guys or Mathieu.
I pulled into my usual spot and sat there with the engine still running, both hands on the wheel. The coffee smell still lingered,sweet and bitter all at once. I wanted to rewind—to five minutes ago, hell to five months ago, to before any of this had happened.
But there was no rewinding. Only forward. As I sat there, staring at the school while my engine rumbled and the a/c kept me from sweating to death, the parking lot steadily filled with people who had no idea the world had just tilted off its axis.
