Your Sweet Talk Always Was A Bit Much

Your Sweet Talk Always Was A Bit Much Chapter 9

            I took a deep breath before getting off the bus at the stop nearest my school. It was my first day back since the concert, and I imagined that word had gotten around about what happened. As the bus pulled away, I saw Blake standing on the sidewalk with his hands jammed into his front pockets.

            I sighed. I was also dreading this. “Hey,” I said, stepping up to him.

            “Hey,” he acknowledged, nodding briefly. “I wanted to catch you before school. It’s going to be crazy, everybody knows. Not my doing - Julia and Heather.”

            “I figured,” I said, reassuring him that I didn’t blame him. God, how could I? “Look, Blake, I’m really sorry about what happened that night. I – I didn’t think he’d know that I’d be there. I didn’t know they were back in town until you told me about the concert.”

            There was an awkward silence at first. Then, “So, you know Noah Hayes?”

            “Yeah,” I said quietly.

            “And he loves you?”

            “Yeah.”

            “And you love him?”

            I gulped. “Yeah.”

            He nodded briefly. “Are you back together?”

            “No.”

            “Are you going to get back together?”

            I hesitated for a second. “Noah and I have never had a very – stable, or healthy relationship, as you might have noticed at the concert. As things stand now, I’d say no, I’m not getting back together with him. But if my friends were here they’d probably disagree. I honestly can’t say for sure, and you deserve to know the truth. I’m really sorry that this was sprung on you so quickly, Blake.”

            Blake was quiet for a while, but then he offered me a weak, if evident grin. “With all the tabloid stories about girls throwing themselves at Noah Hayes, begging him to just look in their direction, what are the odds that I would find the one girl that can say with absolute confidence that Noah Hayes loves her? You could make some serious money on those odds!”

            I laughed a little at that, although I couldn’t help thinking that it was even more ironic that even as the one girl who could say with absolute confidence that Noah Hayes loves her, even as the girl he had proclaimed his never-ending love for in front of hundreds of people, I still couldn’t just be with Noah. My relationship with Noah was frustrating and exhausting. And at a certain point, no one could keep that up.

            Suddenly Blake started laughing, a genuine laugh, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I took you on a date to a concert of your ex-boyfriend! That might go down in history as the single worst date idea ever!”

            “You’re taking this really well,” I commented after laughing with him.

            He shrugged a bit, trying to cover up the fact that he was hurting. “I wasn’t taking it well Friday. Or Saturday. But what can I do?”

            I sighed. This sucked. Truly, truly sucked on a monumental scale. There wasn’t any neat way to make this better. Blake hadn’t done anything to warrant having me end things, even before they’d even officially started. And I really did like him; I’m pretty sure we would have gotten together if Noah hadn’t shown up. And while Noah had his faults, coming back to the town where he lived really wasn’t something I could blame him for. And he loved me. And I loved him. Maybe if he hadn’t come back I might have had a chance at moving on, possibly with Blake. This whole screwed up situation was my fault, if it was anybody’s.