Still Time / Billy Hargrove

𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘-𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑

"You never saw him again?"

"Nope. Never."

They pulled up to the school, and Addie and Will got out of the car. Will thanked Bob before running off to the junior high, and Addie stands by the passenger window, leaning down.

"Thanks for telling us about Mr. Baldo."

"Anytime. Have a good day at school!"

Once Addie walked over to the high school parking lot, the first thing that Addie noticed was that Billy's car was parked in his usual spot. Thinking about him still made her a little sad, but she was determined not to let it show.

Was the world out to get her today? That was the only explanation Addie could find when she saw Tommy standing by her locker. She hadn't spoken to him in a while, not since the Tina and Billy incident. You know what? She didn't need to drop off books at her locker. She was fine with carrying all 6 textbooks and 6 notebooks. She'd fit what she could in her backpack, and carry the rest in her hands. It would be fine.

"Hey Byers, I need to talk to you." Okay, it would not be fine.

"What do you want Tommy?"

He seemed nervous. "Look... I wanted to apologize."

Addie scoffed, not wanting to hear it. "The time for apologies was a long time ago. Save it."

"Come on please just hear me out."

Now that made Addie listen. Despite them never being close, she'd unfortunately known Tommy for kind of a long time and honestly couldn't remember the last time she heard him say "please".

"Do you want me to tell your old pal Steve that you apologized to me so that he'll be your friend again? Is that why this is happening? I have bad news for you, he's not at school today."

"No, I—"

"Cut the bullshit. You and I both know that you don't apologize. You can either tell me what's really going on, or I'm walking away."

"Your boyfriend threatened me alright!" He threw his hands up, admitting defeat.

"My... what??"

"Hargrove. Came up to me and asked if I ever apologized to you. Said if I didn't, he'd make things worse than they already were. Steve doesn't talk to me anymore, Carol dumped me, I got no one now."

"Am I supposed to feel bad for you? Why do you think you have "no one"? Could it be because you've been a bully for so long? Look I'll go tell Billy you apologized, just please leave me alone."

"No! He said you couldn't know it came from him. I was supposed to make it look sincere. And for what it's worth I really am sorry. I'm jealous okay. You're Ms. Popular and everyone loves you and when you rejected me, and I know it was a long time ago, it pissed me off. I know it doesn't give me a right to treat you the way that I did, it's not an excuse it's just where my head was at. So... I'm sorry."

Sometimes Addie hated how sympathetic she was. Part of her knew that Tommy didn't deserve her forgiveness. He'd proven himself to be a selfish jerk, and the last thing Addie wanted to do was to accept his apology. But he really did look like sad. And she knew he was only because he was no longer in the "popular crowd". Steve stopped being his friend the day Tina kissed Billy and it came out that Tommy helped arrange the plan. She wasn't friends with Carol, so she didn't know they'd broken up. But the fact that he voluntarily admitted that he had been dumped... Damn it, why did Addie have to be such a nice person?