Up in the Air

Chapter 32

Dedicated to SorryThatIsIncorrect for the conversation, the swooning and for keeping things hush hush. 

Thank you also to everyone – lamein, thisusernameislame, carousel_, the-words-of-a-fool, rocoro, YouWILLbealright, Helen-Anne8 and missmacby – who helped me wrestle with the French language. Merci, I think, is more apt.

Outfit in the media section and you can also listen to French Class by BLAJK.

Chapter 32

Sadness. Anger. Apathy. Moving forward.

That was my game plan; four steps to feeling marginally okay again.

I cried my eyes out for a night. Allie and Jenny whisked me off to a weekend-long slumber party aptly themed Tits over Brits – Jenny's idea, surprisingly. I spent the week afterwards studying and doing homework that I was at least a week ahead of what my teachers were discussing.

It didn't dawn on me that it was already Friday until I walked into my Creative Writing class. What was I going to do for the weekend? I cringed at the thought of studying some more.

I took out a pad of paper and decided to make a to do list. It was embarrassingly short. What homework there was on it, I could easily finish by tonight. I sighed and tacked cleaning my room to the end of the list.

"You look like someone died."

I looked up at the shadow looming over me. "Hello, Julian." Even I knew my own voice sounded flat.

He sat down and eyed me warily. "Did someone really die?"

"I've just had a lot of things on my plate this week."

An eyebrow went up. "You still have a ton of Thanksgiving leftovers? Damn. If my parents weren't here, I'd guilt trip you into bringing me food again," he joked.

"Not that kind of plate." I laughed. It was my first non-chuckle, non-giggle laugh since last Thursday. "It's been ... a busy week."

"Looks like it. You need a good night's sleep, Preston."

If only.

Usually it would take me seconds to fall asleep. But the past week, I lay in bed for thirty minutes before I actually felt sleepy. I refused to cry so, instead, I reviewed whatever I'd just studied until, eventually, I bored myself to sleep.

If this continued, I wouldn't be surprised if I turned into an insomniac.

"So how's your part of the project going?" I asked.

"I've got a couple of shots since you've been coming to my house," Julian shrugged although he didn't look entirely happy about it. "You?"

"Too busy to write."

He saw through my lie. "Lacking inspiration? A good make out session'll fix that."

"You wanna volunteer for the job?"

For a second, Julian was shell-shocked. "That's your boyfriend's job." He smiled evilly. "Unless you wanna move over to the dark side and play around a bit – in which case," he trailed off suggestively.

"Haha," I laughed dryly. "The boyfriend position is vacant right now so I don't think making out is the right solution."

His smug look evaporated. "Wait. What? You're serious?"