“Don’t worry about it,” I reassure him. “I’ll work it out. Just do what you need to do to catch up on your schoolwork and keep your grades up. I’ve got it covered.”
With that, I turn on my heels and walk away before I have to face his sister, too, but I can’t stop myself from glancing back over my shoulder to see Warren still looking at me as I walk away, all the way up until the point that Bridget steps in front of him.
I have the strangest mix of feelings now, about all three of the boys. I like them all and I want them all, which wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to hate them—all of them.
At least I still hate Bridget.
If that had changed, I’d start to wonder if I was the one who got stuck outside in the snow a bit too long over break.
I walk to my class, completely lost in thought about the feeling of kissing each one of them. I replay the moments with Sterling, Chase, and Warren in my head and can almost feel each of their mouths on mine as I walk. I’m not even watching where I’m going when I bump straight into the back of one of the new students who looks lost on campus.
“Hey,” she says as she holds up a campus map to show me whatever her finger is pointing to. “Can you help me find this building please?”
I look at her, and then at the map, and it’s almost as if my entire mind has reset itself. Everything I knew about the guys has been turned upside down, and everything that I wanted to do to them this semester to punish them for how they treated me has been replaced with new things that I want to do with them.
I’m so confused by everything that I literally just stare at the girl’s map without saying anything for a minute.
“Never mind,” she says as she pulls her map back and starts to walk away, mumbling something under her breath about how weird the people here are.
I have got to get my head on straight again.
And fast … before it’s too late.
Though too late for what, I’m not sure.
Chapter Seventeen
Ever since kissing Warren, I’ve been avoiding Bridget like the plague, which is not easy to do considering that we share a room.
It would be one thing if it was a single kiss. That might be easy to hide, or if found out … forgivable even.
But it’s not just one kiss.
No, soon that single kiss turns into a habit of sneaking out of dorms early for more clandestine kisses under the bleachers, or behind the administration building, or with my breath heavy and back pressed against a snowy tree.
But that girl has a nose like a bloodhound for all things related to her brother, so we’ve been trying to time it so that I am up and out before Bridget wakes up, and then back again after she has already gone to sleep.
Anything to avoid the kind of prying questions I’m so fond of giving the wrong answers to. This, of course, means that I’m running a little low on my own sleep requirements. It’s okay though; it’s worth not having to deal with Bridget’s wrath.
I’ve also been trying to avoid running into her on campus, which I know from last term is something of a challenge in and of itself … especially now that she and her friends occupy the same table as me, Alaska, and Clark at lunch.
Bridget alone is bad enough to face, but having to face her with Tammy, Annabelle, and the others there beside her, all back to their simpering ways—mostly—well, that’s just too much. After a few days of this, I can stand it no longer.
I know I should be avoiding Warren altogether, but surely, I can be with him in public—if we’re not alone.
Or so I think, until I walk right past her table and sit down with the boys, garnering me looks of suspicion, not only from Bridget and her friends, but also from Alaska and Clark. I realize that it’s been a while since I’ve really hung out or talked with either of them. I’ve been too swept up in the guys to really give thought to anything or anyone else. I know that at some point, I need to go apologize to them for going MIA and for being such a shitty friend as of late.
Amongst other things I need to apologize for.
“Your sister does not seem very happy,” Sterling remarks to Warren as the four of us sit around the lunch table together and try not to glance in Bridget’s general direction.
Warren rolls his eyes. “My sister is never truly happy.”
“Well he’s right,” Chase chimes in. “She definitely seems even more put-off than usual.”
“That’s probably because of me,” I say. “I’ve been avoiding her, even in our room. I think she’s starting to suspect that something is up.”
“And by something,” Warren says with a raised brow. “Do you mean that she knows you’re—uh, with the three of us?”
“What does that even mean?” Sterling asks.
For some reason, Sterling seems a bit more on edge about the fact that I have been getting close with each of them. I can see what Chase meant about preferring to share a room with Warren over Sterling. Sterling definitely doesn’t seem like the type that likes to share much.
“How do you not know what that means?” Chase asks him.
I’m the one to blush and glance away, even before Sterling does.
This is the first time we’ve openly talked about it with all four of us together here. Aside from my single kiss with Chase and Sterling, Warren is the only one I’ve really made a habit of it with.
But from the way Chase is looking at me now, and even the way Sterling’s shoulders hunch up from some invisible cold, I wonder if
