Her thin shoulders went up and down once, and she was measured in looking at me. “No,” she answered honestly. “I’m sorry, but there’s not.”
“Well, you might not believe me, but it’s true.” I was slow in setting my bag on my desk, my hands feeling limp at my sides. “I do care about you, and you are my friend. I would never do anything to hurt you.”
Mel’s lips curled into the smallest smile I’d ever seen, but she said nothing as she sat at her desk and pulled out her laptop, getting to work straight away. That, or pretending to, so she wouldn’t have to talk to me anymore about this.
I went to sit on my bed, working to take off my shoes, staring at her back all the while. Her shoulders were hunched, her body almost curling in on itself as she sat there on that chair. She really was in dire straits, wasn’t she?
Shit.
Chapter Nine – Levi
When it was time for bio lab again, I couldn’t help but wonder if Kelsey would come up and talk to me, if she’d come to her senses and realized she belonged with me. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten what she’d done while she was gone—if I ever saw that fucker in person, I’d lay into him—but it was more that I needed her anyways.
She was mine. She was mine, even if she didn’t realize it yet. She drove me crazy, her mischievous smiles, her blatantly mean comebacks. Everything about her, really. I needed that girl, and somehow, someway, I’d make her realize that I wasn’t going to give up.
One day I’d told her that her resisting made me want to chase her more, that I never really wanted to chase anyone before. It had been true, and it still rang true to this day. I didn’t care if it made me weak or a fool; I was only weak for her, a fool for her.
By the time I arrived for lab, she was already in her seat, next to her partner. I hated that she’d emailed the professor and asked to change, but I understood why she did it. She felt she had to. I couldn’t blame her.
It just made the class period go by so slowly.
My eyes locked with hers as I walked in and made my way to my seat, though I eventually had to turn my back to her, since she sat behind me on the other side of the room. From her expression, I could tell she wanted to talk to me, but she didn’t want to admit it. This thing between us was a first for us both.
Today our professor brought in some pond water he’d taken from a local water source. Every pair got a petri dish of it, along with a microscope. We had to draw each organism we saw and try to figure out what they were. Fun stuff.
Not really. I hated this class. The only thing that made it bearable was Kelsey, and even now, without her as my partner, the time crawled by so slowly. Frankly, I didn’t give a fuck about biology or algae or whatever the fuck we were learning about. I didn’t care. Who the hell did?
The minutes ticked by slowly, but the moment the professor let us start to clean up and pack up, the room turned into chaos, everyone trying to hurry to get out first, to reclaim their lives out of this stupid room.
Kelsey was the only one moving slowly, so I set my pace to hers. I ended up walking out of the classroom mere moments before she did, and I felt almost giddy inside when she stepped out of the hall and met those big brown eyes with mine.
Giddy.
I just described myself as giddy. God, Kelsey really was changing me, because never in my life had I ever described myself as fucking giddy.
“Hey,” I spoke.
“Hi,” she said. “I haven’t—” I haven’t decided. I haven’t had enough time. Whatever she was about to say, I didn’t want to hear it. I just…I needed to spend some time with her.
“That’s okay,” I said quickly. “I was just thinking, maybe we could swing by the union, get food.” Oh, yeah. Real smooth. Kelsey was the only girl who ever made my tongue feel so heavy in my mouth it didn’t want to work right.
“Food?” she echoed. “Like a mini-date?”
“No, just food. Like friends, or something.” Friends. That was good for a laugh. I was pretty sure both Kelsey and I knew by now we could never be just friends. We’d passed that point a very long time ago.
“Or something?” Again, with the echoing.
I narrowed my eyes at her as I said, “Stop being difficult. We’re getting food.” I turned on my heel and started heading to the stairwell, not glancing back to see if she was following me. I didn’t need to to know that she would stand there for a few seconds, scowling at me with those gorgeous eyes, and then swear at herself before rushing to catch up to me.
And that’s precisely what she did. I heard her mutter the word “Fuck” under her breath before she hurried to my side, all the while giving me a dirty look, like she was blaming me for this. Like I was controlling her.
I wasn’t. I just knew how she operated. I knew her too well by now.
And I knew, by the texts I saw on her phone, that she felt terrible
