Distractions

Eighteen: Nobody Knows What's Happening

Everest shrugged. "It's loud and there's a lot of people running around in there and I don't like it."

He hummed his acknowledgement and wondered whether or not he should bring up what she had said the night before. "Everest, about last night—"

"Save it. Please." She held up a shaky hand with a ring or two on each finger. "I—I'm not ready to deal with that stuff right now."

He sighed, but nodded. "Alright. Just, when you are ready, please call me and we'll talk about it, okay?"

She nodded, staring at a helicopter as it flew past.

"I'm heading inside now, you're more than welcome to join me if you'd like," Magnus said.

Everest just waved him off, watching the street. He walked away with a final glance back at her. She didn't turn around or go back inside until three minutes after the doors had closed behind him.

"I can do this," she whispered forcefully. "I can do this."

She ignored whatever was happening in the Ops Center and went to her room instead. She needed to be alone for a little while just to calm down completely and write down the scene that had been nagging at her brain for hours.

He was done. So, utterly and completely done. Wesley had tried everything in his power to get Nicholas's attention. He had befriended his friends, he had partnered with him in class, he had even talked to the guy and hung out with him—alone! Yet, nothing he did seemed to show Nicholas that he liked him as more than a friend. He had done everything he could think of besides simply telling the boy that he was falling head over Converse for him. And he really didn't want to just outright say it, at least not say it first, because to him that was too much too soon. Never mind the fact that it had been almost two years since Wesley had moved to Owl Creek High and a year and a month since he had realized that he was falling in love with Nicholas.

Wesley huffed as he scooped another spoon of cake into his mouth. What was he going to do? Should he just ask him out and hope he said yes? Continue pining over the boy in silence? He had no idea what to do. No idea at all.

Everest glared at the screen, trying to figure out what was wrong with it. There was something off about it, but she didn't know what. Wait...

"There!" she exclaimed. "That's it, that's what's wrong with it!"

She had written that Wesley 'scooped another spoon of cake into his mouth.' She frowned. What was that supposed to be instead? She shrugged after a while. 'Wesley only eats cake with a spoon now,' she decided. She scribbled that down on a piece of paper and leaned back on her beanbag-crate contraption, nearly falling off in the process.

She checked the time and sighed when she saw that it had only been twenty minutes. It felt longer than that. 'No wonder Jace and the others didn't come searching for me,' she thought to herself. Jace! A mental bell went off in her brain. She should probably talk to him about whatever happened the night before.

She stood in front of his door with her hand raised to knock again, wondering if he hadn't heard her the first time. But just before she could knock again, the door opened to reveal a disheveled blonde.

"Everest?" He sounded rather confused.

"We should talk," she told him seriously. "But also get pizza."

"What?"

She gave him her most serious expression that she could muster. "We need to talk, but I need to eat so we're going to get pizza too. And you deserve pizza, so there's that too."