ated.”
“Is he married?” Preston asks.
“No! It’s just…new.”
“New enough for him to break into school to see you?” Rebecca asks.
“Is that what people are saying?” I want to know and I don’t want to know.
“People are saying all kinds of things,” Stephanie reports. “Justin’s telling everyone he caught you going down on the guy. I’ve been telling everyone you were inside for maybe two minutes before we came in, and there was no evidence of him being, um, unzipped.”
“We hugged. That’s it.”
“Well, that’s enough,” Stephanie says. “I mean, for the gossip. As far as Justin is concerned, you are the biggest slut to ever hit this school. But he’s not exactly an unbiased witness.”
Now that the punching and the kicking are over, it’s really sinking in how much I’ve hurt him. What I did to him. What I did to us.
All that time. All those memories. I’ve burned it all down.
Rebecca leans in and hugs me tight.
“It’s going to be okay,” she tells me. “We’ll get through it.”
Preston and Stephanie echo this.
They might be all I have left.
—
The nurse lets me stay until the end of the day. When the final bell rings, I make a move to get out of the bed, but she gestures for me to hold off.
“Just let the halls clear,” she says. “Allow yourself that.”
She is so kind, I want to tell her everything. But I can only imagine what she’d think of me then.
—
I wait an extra hour. When I get to my locker, I find the photos of us that he kept in his locker and I kept in mine. He’s torn them all up, to the point that if I didn’t know what they’d once been, I’d never be able to guess.
That’s the only damage he’s done to my locker.
But it’s enough.
—
Rebecca wants me to go over to her house. Preston and Stephanie keep calling. Even Ben texts to say he hopes I’m okay.
There’s a part of me that wants to acknowledge the disaster I’ve caused, and take shelter with my friends.
But A is waiting. I know he’s waiting.
—
I return to that Starbucks. He’s cleaned up a little, but he still looks like a guy who’s lost a fight.
I see him. I see him seeing me. I go to get some coffee, to give myself one more minute to think.
“I really need this,” I tell him as I sit.