awkwardly before letting his hand drop.
"I know," he said. "I do."
"You do?" I said hopefully.
"Listen, Reed, it's all in the past, okay?" he said, backing off again. "You can't stress about what's
already done, especially with everything else that's going on."
Everything else? Didn't he get that he mattered to me more than any of the rest of it?
He picked up my one bottle of perfume from the top of my dresser and toyed with it.
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"Just... get through finals and everything will be better after break," he said, glancing over at me.
"It'll be like a new start or something, you know?" He gestured at my itty-bitty room. "New dorm,
new friends... You can focus on the SATs and getting into an Ivy and leaving all this behind. Two
years from now none of this crap is going to matter anymore."
Except you. You'll still matter.
I felt at that moment that I would be able to leave all of this behind if only I still had him. The
person who had always been there for me. The person who had always kept me sane, no matter
what was going on around me.
Josh shoved his hands in his back pockets again and faced me. He looked as if he didn't know what
to do with himself next. I just wanted him to touch me again. Even if it was another uncomfortable
shoulder squeeze. It was so insane, how you could go from kissing and hugging and cuddling
someone every single day like it was the most natural thing in the world to not being allowed
within two feet of them. It was as if there were this invisible barrier between us and all I wanted to
do was breach it. Did he feel even remotely the same way?
I saw his eyes dart past me to his jacket and sensed he was about to bail. But I wasn't ready to let
him leave just yet.
"Well, I guess you finally got your wish," I said with a sardonic smile. "I'm no longer in Billings."
Josh's eyes flooded with so much pity I immediately wished I had kept my mouth shut.
"None of this is what I wished for," he said earnestly. "Believe me."
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My heart skipped and I looked at the floor, my eyes filling with tears. My computer had clicked
over to a slow song, as if it were trying to make the perfect sound track for our conversation.