Cam had texted.
Cam had also tried to stop by Sunday night, Monday night and Tuesday night. Every time he did it was like a punch to the stomach.
I just couldn’t face him, because that look on his face had been as bad as the one on my mother’s.
It had been around five months after the Halloween party when I had decided I couldn’t take it anymore. The onslaught of emails, texts, phone calls, and Facebook messages had been bad, but at school, in real life? In the hallways, the bathrooms, the cafeteria, and the classrooms, people didn’t just whisper about what they heard happened when Blaine and I went into his bedroom. They openly talked about it in front of me. Called me every combination of lying whore you could come up with. The teachers didn’t stop it, neither did the staff.
So me and that picture frame that used to hold the photo of me and my best friend—the same girl who’d called me a slut that very day in the crowded hall at school—had gotten friendly.
My parents could barely look at me before I cut my wrist but after? In the hospital room, Mom had lost it. For the first time in, like forever, she had lost it.
She had stormed into the private room, Dad trailing behind her. Her sharp gaze shot from my face to my bandaged wrist.
Stricken panic had crossed her too perfect features, and I thought that finally, she was going to pull me into her arms and tell me that everything was going to be okay, that we’d get through this together.
That look of pain had given way to disappointment, to pity, and to anger.
“How dare you shame yourself and your family like this, Avery. What am I supposed to tell people when they find out about this?” Mom had said and her voice had shook as she struggled to keep quiet in the hospital room, but she lost control. The next words were shrieked. “After everything else, you go and do this? Haven’t you put us through enough? What is wrong with you, Avery? What is God’s name is wrong with you?”
The nurses had dragged Mom out of the room.
Strangely, what I remembered from that night had been that brief look of panic on her face and how I had mistakenly believed it had been there out of concern for me.
That stricken look had been on Cam’s face, and I wanted to be somebody else, because I knew that stricken look would eventually turn into something else, into disappointment, into pity, and into anger.
And I couldn’t bear to see that happen with Cam.
I would do anything to avoid that, even if it meant taking drastic steps. Somewhere between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, I’d made up my mind about the current state of my life.
This… this stuff with Cam had been doomed for failure from the beginning. Could a guy and a girl who were attracted to each other really be friends? I didn’t think so. Things would get too complicated. They’d either act on those feelings or stay away from each other. We had tried to act on those feelings for a hot second. We kissed a couple of times. That was all. And in reality, it wouldn’t have gone further.
I wasn’t sure that I could’ve gone further. Well, especially now I didn’t think so. Cam would eventually move on and I would have an absolutely obliterated heart. Not broken, but completely destroyed, because Cam… he was falling-in-love-with material. And I couldn’t let that happened.
Maybe you already had, whispered an evil, terrible, bitchy voice.
So on Wednesday morning I went to my advisor and made up some excuse about there being too much school work and that I was getting behind. The last day for complete withdrawal from a class had been at the end of October, so to get out of astronomy I would have to take an incomplete.
An incomplete would totally bitch slap my GPA, but the truth was I was doing good enough in the rest of my classes that it wouldn’t kill my overall.
There was a decision to make.
Face Cam and deal with the inevitable broken heart or take the incomplete.
I took the incomplete.
And as I left my advisor’s office, I knew what I’d done wasn’t so much making a decision. I was running. After all, wasn’t that what I was good at? Running?
Brit and Jacob attempted to stage an intervention the following weekend. Both showed up at my apartment and if I hadn’t let them in, I was confident they’d beat down my door, or worse, involve Cam.
I sat in my moon chair, staring up at them. “Guys, really…?”
Brit folded her arms, chin raised stubbornly. “We are your friends and obviously you’re facing a crisis of some sort, so we are here, and you can’t get rid of us that easily.”
“I’m not having or facing a crisis.” God, had Cam told them what he’d seen? My stomach dropped, but I told myself he wouldn’t have done that. At least I didn’t think so.
“Really?” Jacob said, returning from the kitchen. “Since you’ve come back from Thanksgiving break, you’ve been walking around like a zombie and not the cool, fast brain-eating kind. You looked like you’ve been crying your eyes out, you’ve been avoiding Cam and all talk of him, and there is nothing good to eat in your kitchen.”
I raised my brow at the last statement. “I haven’t been avoiding Cam.”
“Bullshit,” Brit replied. “I talked to Cam yesterday. He said you won’t talk to him, answer his phone calls or your door when it’s him, and you haven’t been to astronomy.”
A sharp pain sliced across my chest. I almost asked if she had approached him, but figured it didn’t matter. The less I thought about him the better. Not saying his name helped.
Having my two friends give me the third degree about him wasn’t helping.
“Did you guys get into a fight?” Jacob plopped down on the couch.
Had we? Not really. I shook my head. “It’s nothing, guys. We didn’t get in a fight. I just haven’t been in the mood to talk to him.”
She shot me a bland look. “Avery, that’s bullshit, too.”
I raised my hands helplessly.
“Why haven’t you been going to astronomy?” she asked.
“I dropped the class.”
She gaped. “You’ve dropped the class? Avery, the last day to drop was—oh, my God, you’re taking an incomplete?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
Brit stared at me, so did Jacob. “Have you’ve lost your fucking mind, Avery?”
I winced. “No.”
Taking a deep breath, Brit glanced between Jacob and me. “Jacob, can you get back to the dorm by yourself?”
His brows knitted. “Uh yeah, it’s not that far of a walk, but—”
“Good,” she chirped. Leaning forward, she kissed him on the cheek. “See you later.”
Jacob sat there for a moment and then shook his head. He gave me a quick hug before he left. “Why did you kick him out?” I asked.
“Because we need to talk girl to girl,” she replied.
Oh dear.
She leaned forward, clenching her knees. “What happened between you two?”
I struggled to come up with a good excuse for why I was avoiding Cam. “It’s just that I don’t think pursuing a relationship with him is the right thing?”
“Okay. You’re entitled to decide that, but no friendship? To the point you can’t be in the same class as him?”
“We can’t be friends,” I said after a few moments, already weary with this conversation. “That’s just it, okay? I really don’t want to talk about this. I’m not trying to be rude, but there’s nothing to say. I don’t want to see him. End of story.”
I don’t want to see him. The thing about that was that it was only partially true. I was too embarrassed and ashamed to see him, but I missed him. It had only been a week, but I missed his smart ass comments, his wit and charm, and—I stopped myself with a shake of my head.
Brit pushed her hair off her forehead. “Alright, but I want to ask one question and I want a fucking honest answer, okay?”
My eyes widened. “Okay.”
“Did he try something?”
“What?” I shrieked.
She met my stare. “Did he hurt you or something?”
“Oh, my God, no.” I stood, running my hands down my hips. “Cam didn’t do anything. I promise you. He didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me. Okay. Please don’t think that about him.”
Brit nodded slowly. “I didn’t think he would’ve, but I had to ask. I had to know.”
She stayed for a little while longer, switching the conversation to her latest hook up with Jimmie, and for a while I forgot about Cam and the whole mess.
When she left, she stopped at the door and turned back to me. “Just in case you’re wondering, when I talked to Cam, he was really worried about you. He was upset. Whatever went down between you two, I hope you guys can work it out, because…”
“Because what?”
She pressed her lips together, exhaling through her nose. “Because I think the guy really does care about you, Avery. And I think you really care about him. It would be a fucking shame if you guys couldn’t fix this or work this out over some bullshit.”
With the semester winding down, I threw myself into finals. With the incomplete in astronomy, I needed to ace all my exams to just to make myself feel somewhat better after making such a crazy decision. More than once over the last week or so, I wanted to punt kick myself in the face for taking an incomplete. In those very rare logical moments, I cursed myself every which way from Sunday. It was a stupid, stupid decision, especially over a boy, but there was nothing I could do now. I’d missed the last two weeks of class and there was no way I could make up for that.
As I finished up my last final of the semester—music—I headed to the train station where my car was parked. Facing the brutal wind that seemed to blow straight in my eyes, I pulled out my cell. There were a couple of unread texts from Cam over the last week, one from the UNKNOWN CALLER who apparently got tired of calling me a whore over voicemail and moved on to texting it. Just like I avoided my cousin’s emails, I did the same with Cam’s texts.
I didn’t delete them though. I’m not sure why. I just couldn’t do it.
There was a missed call from Brit. She wanted to get together before she headed home for winter break. Neither her nor Jacob brought up the stuff with Cam again, but it hung between us every time we were together. After leaving campus, I headed to the grocery store for the long overdue trip. I milled through the aisles, not really finding anything appetizing, but more of just throwing stuff in my cart.
On the way out, I spotted Ollie heading into the pizza joint at the end of the strip mall. We were less than a mile from the apartments, so it wasn’t a surprise to see him there, but I stopped in the middle of the parking lot, my heart pounding. He didn’t look over my way, probably didn’t even see me, but I saw him and I thought of that stupid tortoise.
A lump appeared in my throat and I inhaled sharply. Tears burned the back of my eyes as I forced myself to the back of my car. I unloaded the groceries, focusing on the mundane task until I felt the messy ball of emotion slid back down.
The inevitable happened as I lugged up the last of my groceries.