I got up and wandered back into the poolhouse.
Well, I was trying. I’d tried, on many occasions, to do the right thing. To listen. To support. To look out for her when Cary couldn’t.
I’d tried to do the right thing that night in my car.
I just always seemed to fuck it up.
Maybe because I had such fucking mixed impulses around this girl. Such mixed reactions every time I got near her… I couldn’t even keep track of them all.
Concern. Irritation. Sympathy. Frustration.
Affection.
This terrible, twisted longing.
Lust.
I didn’t even know where the fuck that came from… but there it was. I was drawn to Courteney Clarke, even though I knew I shouldn’t be. I couldn’t deny that anymore.
But I couldn’t act on it, either.
For the one millionth time since that night in my car, I told myself to just fucking leave it alone.
Leaveheralone.
She hates you and that’s a good thing.
Chapter Five
Courteney
No. I did not want to talk about it.
Why did he even have to ask me that?
I couldn’t sleep, so as the night wore on, I just lay on my bed in the dark. I’d already watched several episodes ofStranger Thingsbefore Xander came home. It didn’t help.
Nothing was soothing right now.
Least of all Xander’s words.
I stared at the ceiling and tried to blank out my brain, andnotthink about that conversation out by the pool… or my whiplash feelings for Xander Rush.
About how nice he was to me tonight and how that made me feel… all squishy and yearning inside… when I was supposed to be hating him.
But that wasallI could think about.
Because I was wired all wrong or something.
My parents, my teachers, they all thought I was going to be a lawyer, like it was my destiny or something.
I didn’t think that.
Xander thought I was a stupid kid who, three weeks ago, needed a ride home from the bar before I got hurt… while I thought—hoped—he’d start noticing me. Noticing that I wasn’t a kid anymore.
Wasn’t happening.
But hewasnice to me tonight. And it really messed with my head when Xander was nice to me. When he dropped that cocky ego of his and looked me in the eye. Like we were equals, like hecared, and he talked to me.
