You'll Just Know

Chapter 2-Luke

I glanced at her hands, and I realized she was the same Brittany, if not slightly different. Her fingers will still long and slim, her palms a little large for a girl. Her nails were chewed almost completely down to the nub, and the skin was raw from where she had gnawed there as well. I felt my teeth clench in anger. She must have been really stressed to have chewed her nails that much. Maybe it was James. Maybe he had been rude to her. I would teach him a lesson. 

After a few seconds I let out a breath and looked back to her face. I chuckled inwardly, watching as her eyes scanned over my arms and legs. “Hello? Anyone there?” I waved my hand in front of her face and she shook her head.

“Uh, yeah?” she asked, sounding slightly rude. Hmm.

I handed her her papers. She still hadn’t recognized me, throughout all this time. I decided to make her a little ruffled. I had done that before in high school, surely I could do it now. “You look familiar,” I told her, and before she could stop me I yanked off her glasses, watching as she squinted angrily at me. “You’re Brittany Conoway.”

She stared at me in surprise and then furrowed her eyebrows, making her forehead wrinkle in a way that made me shockingly think she was cute. I had never thought of Brittany Conoway as cute. 

I expected her to realize who I was almost instantly, so her next question stunned me. “Who are you?”

Anger and a bit of despair built up inside me. Was I that forgettable that she didn’t remember who I was? “You don’t recognize me?” I asked in disbelief, my hand tightening around her glasses.

“Well maybe I could if you’d give me my glasses back. I can’t see anything,” she growled. Again this girl surprised me.There was the old Brit, her witty remarks making me almost miss the old days.

I decided to have a bit of fun with her, make her squirm a bit. “Looked like you got a good enough look at me a second ago.” I stared as her tan cheeks reddened and readied myself for another smart ass retort. But it was then as if the fire had left her eyes. She looked beaten, the fight that I remembered gone. “Can I just have my glasses back?” she murmured, almost so quietly I almost couldn’t make out what she said.

But I didn’t want to give her her glasses back yet. That meant she would have the excuse to leave, instead of stand here while I assessed the damages Brittany seemed to have acquired the year I was gone. “My name’s Lucas Reed,” I said, deciding to just say it rather than let her guess any longer. It seemed to me that she had completely forgotten who I was.

But then her face lit up with recognition, her eyes blazing back to life. “Wow, you’ve changed,” she commented. I wondered if that was a good thing, or a bad thing.

“Thanks, I guess,” I replied.

“You’re welcome, I guess,” she interjected. She held out her hand for her glasses, looking expectantly at me. I slowly placed them in her palm, letting my skin linger against hers. Her’s was soft.

She slipped her glasses back on, and then asked, “Um, so what are you doing here?”

She must have already known what I was actually doing here, so I assumed she meant at the school. I explained to her that I was just dropping by Coach J’s office. I didn’t say that he had told me how bad the team had gotten since I left. They hadn’t made it past regionals this year, and with James’ cocky attitude, Coach J had known from the start they wouldn’t make it far this year.

Brittany’s nervous chuckle pulled me from my thoughts. “I meant, what’re you doing back in Clearwater?”

For a second I was confused. Surely she knew why I was back. But I saw the question in her eyes. She honestly didn’t know why I was here. Was she that callous that she honestly didn’t care about my family now that I was no longer in the picture? She seemed to have cared when I was around. Did our families no longer talk? From the way my mother acted towards it, she seemed to think they still did. So how could Brittany possibly not know about my dad?

“You don’t know?” I questioned her in disbelief.

“Know what?” she answered quickly. I shook my head angrily, about to spit out something I would probably regret later. But when my phone went off, I used that as a distraction and pulled it out. The text was from my mom.

Dad wants to talk to you. Hurry home. 

The word hurry made my chest deflate. This couldn’t be the end right now. This couldn’t be happening. A fire blazed through my veins. How could she not know how miserable I was? How terrible it was to know that my dad could be gone at any moment?

I gritted my teeth as she stared at me, reading me like an open book. She had always seemed to do that, even when I was so sure I had kept my emotions blank. “I’ve got to go,” I snarled through my teeth, “Good to see you.” Sarcasm dripped from every word. I knew she had heard it because I saw her lips tremble as I pushed past her and out the doors. Good. She deserved to feel just as bad as I did.