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6 years ago: Sophomore Year of High School
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"... and what could the author have meant by that?"
I raised my hand and he nodded at me, "social commentary, I think, about how women get placed on a pedestal, but really it's more of a prison... like the bird cage that she keeps talking about."
My teacher beamed at me and a voice, two rows behind me, hid a barely disguised scoff under a throat clearing. I didn't have to turn to see who the voice belonged to. I already knew.
After 3rd period let out, I was en route to my locker when I was joined by the kid who sat across from me. Liam, I think. He was on the school's baseball team—if his sweatshirts were any indication.
"Hey, Josie," he said keeping pace with me, "I thought that was a really good point you made back there."
I smiled. "Thanks. It's an interesting book."
"I'm glad someone thinks so. It doesn't make that much sense to me."
He left his statement open-ended, sounding expectant. I had no idea what response he was expecting from me, but I'm sure it wasn't what I said next.
"It's probably because you're a guy."
Luckily, instead of being offended, as I mentally smacked myself, he chuckled. It was a nice laugh. His brown eyes crinkled when he did so and it was adorable.
"Maybe I need the female perspective to help me get it..." He looked at me again with that same peculiar expression.
I shrugged. "Yeah, that could definitely help."
A loud, obnoxious groan came from behind us. We both turned and my stomach sank as I spotted him. Donovan was walking a few paces behind us with an irritated expression on his face. He and Liam shared one of those masculine head nod things and then my former best-friend turned his eyes to me.
"He's trying to ask if you would help him in the class. And actually I'm pretty sure that he's trying to ask you out. If you would both get your heads out of your asses—"
I ignored the rest of what he had to say, as I'd been doing since Caitlin told me what he did to her earlier this year. It took a couple of months but he finally got the hint that I was no longer interested in talking to him. Though, I couldn't tell if he was hurt or pissed off at my having no desire to speak to him anymore. Even now, I didn't grace his interruption with a response, I simply smiled at Liam.
"I'd love to help you."
The baseball player grinned at me and we moved over to the side of the hallway so he could put his number in my phone. But not before we heard a loud voice from behind us,
"Halle- fuckin-lujah."
••••••••••
PRESENT DAY
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Monday came faster than I was hoping.
I dreaded my theater class all weekend. The class was fine itself, but I dreaded the apology I was going to have to make after it was over. Fortunately, Gisele had actually decided to show up this time so I had a little bit of backup.
Or, at least, I did until the professor instructed us to get into our partners to discuss which play we wanted to use for our project. My backup barely sent me an apologetic look before she skipped off to sit with her partner— an older lanky red headed student who looked like he was about to pass out when she smiled at him.
Donovan made no move to get up from his seat in the back of the auditorium so I gathered my books and headed toward him. He was playing a game on his phone and didn't look up when I sat down.
"Are you playing chess?" I asked.
"No," he said, still not looking up, "I'm winning at chess."
Despite myself, I laughed a little, but it faded quickly when he finally looked up. Neither of us spoke for a moment, before I finally swallowed my pride.
"Look, I wanted to say that I'm sorry for Friday night."
He looked back down at his phone and moved his queen forward. It was a rather bold play seeing as it looked like the game had only started a few moves ago.
"What about it?"
"Well, I'm... sorry about the way I... argued... with you."
He snorted. "You argued at me, Fish, not with me. There's a difference."
"What's the difference?"
"One implies that both parties are participatory in the arguing and the other implies that one party is being belligerently admonished by a drunk college girl—which is actually what happened."
He used his queen to take the other side's knight.
"That's quite the vocabulary you've got there."
"What a rousing endorsement coming from the girl who doesn't seem to know any other word besides 'stupid.'"
He moved a pawn forward two spaces.
"I'm sorry, okay? Satisfied?"
"Oh yeah, definitely. That's one of the warmest apologies I've ever had."
"You could at least look at me when I'm trying to apologize to you!" My voice was more demanding than I'd intended, but I was growing more and more irritated the longer he paid attention to his phone.
I regretted it instantly when he did finally look up—those blue eyes drilling into mine. They were so sharp, so exacting that I had to look away, swallowing the lump that had grown in my throat. Our knees were practically touching and I could feel the heat radiating off of him. Slowly, I tilted my knees away from his direction.
It's difficult to explain what happened to me in that moment. My stomach twisted, my blood flushed, and my skin tightened everywhere on my body. His eyes held mine again and it seemed like both of us wanted to speak, but neither of us did. He swallowed, the dimple in his cheek deepened and he opened his mouth to say something.
His phone rang violently and I realized I would never know what he was going to say. He stood, left to take the phone call out in the hallway, grabbed his backpack, and never came back to class.
I kept thinking he'd come back, checking the time and the door every few minutes waiting. But class ended and he still hadn't returned.
Where the hell did he go?
Something weird happened between us, but Donovan wasn't the kind of guy to avoid confrontation. In fact, he loved confrontation. I actually think he thrived off of confrontation.
We'd been instructed to tell our professor after class which play we'd decided on with our partner, but clearly Donovan and I hadn't settled on anything together. Professor Hirsch looked up from his clipboard when he saw me approach.
"Alright, Troutman... what did you and your partner decide on?"
I mentally cursed the football player in my head. "He left. Before we could decide. If you'd let me possibly do a monologue or something instead—"
"Wait. Your partner left in the middle of class?" His eyes narrowed on me, a growing look of concern on his face and I grew hopeful. Maybe if he realized how bad Donovan would be as a partner he'd let me work by myself on the project.
"Yes!" I quickly answered, "without any explanation. He just got a phone call and—"
"Oh, your partner's Donovan, right?"
That wasn't comforting. I confirmed and he nodded his head in complete understanding, his earlier concern was gone. Just like everyone, he'd apparently been taken in by the King's charm. My earlier hope was squashed just as quickly as it had come.
"The two of you can let me know your decision by the end of next week or whenever he returns."
I gaped. "But—"
Professor Hirsch had already started to walk away and I knew that he wouldn't listen. Needless to say I was plenty irritated, but I would just have to hope that whatever favoritism our professor had for him would be reflected in our final grade. Especially since it seemed like we'd never be able to work on it.
Donovan's behavior was barely a concern of mine. In fact, I let myself forget all about it.
But then he didn't come to class for the rest of the week. The deadline to tell Professor Hirsch our proposal for the project was approaching and there was nothing I could do. Hayden watched me from my bed as I paced the floor of my bedroom.
"Just pick one without him and tell your professor you decided on that one," he suggested.
"Maybe. But what if he comes back and tells the professor I picked it without him?"
Hayden raised a brow. "He'd really do that?"
I shrugged. I wasn't sure what kind of things he would do. We hadn't seen each other in a few years and I wasn't sure I really knew what Donovan was like anymore. The guy that I used to know was not... well, he wasn't like this one. This one was, all at once, harder to read and more open.
"Maybe he's avoiding me because I pissed him off?" I thought aloud.
"Nah, he hasn't been at practice for most of the week either."
Something formed in the pit of my stomach but I couldn't pinpoint exactly what the feeling was called or where it came from. Hayden was scrolling through his phone, unbothered by my pacing.
"That's it," I grunted, "I'm just going to text him."
"You have his number?" Hayden asked.
I hummed my response before pulling my phone out to send the text.
Me: We need to choose our play for the assignment. Deadline is Friday.
He answered almost immediately.
Unsaved number: I have a game Thursday. We can work on it Wednesday. Your place at 7.
I was so shocked by the response I didn't even question the fact that he just assumed I would be free. Maybe I would be irritated later but at that moment I was just relieved that I wouldn't fail Intro to Theatre. Any respectable law school would look at my transcript and laugh if they saw that.
A million other questions for him came to my mind: where did you go, what was your phone call, why have you been acting so weird? But I typed none of them out. My nosiness would stay unsatisfied. Instead, I just liked his text and hoped for the best outcome.
My hopes, however, would be in vain. It was Wednesday, and I'd already had a long day. One of my classes gave a pop quiz that I was woefully unprepared for, one of the girl's that I tutored was not understanding the material no matter what I did, and we'd run out of coffee this morning so I was operating on only half a cup of caffeine. Meeting Donovan was not at the top of my list on ways to make my day better but at least I would get it over with quickly.
He was thirty-five minutes late. Typical. His tardiness and the fact that I would have to endure his general presence made my already sour mood worse. When I opened the door, he greeted me with one of those arrogant grins. I wished, secretly, that I could learn to smile like that. He looked unshakeable.
"Let's get this show on the road, Joey. I'm trying to get home before the game comes on at 9."
I didn't bother asking what game. I didn't care. He followed me into the kitchen where my school work was strewn about on the dining room table.
"Well, if you'd actually come on time maybe we would be closer by now," I pointed out, settling down in the spot in front of my laptop.
He scoffed. "I was barely late."
"How does that excuse work with your coach?"
He opened his mouth to give me a snotty retort but closed it again when he realized I made a good point. Did he apologize? No. Instead he shrugged and pulled out our theatre textbook and the list of plays Professor Hirsch was allowing us to pull from.
"What about Romeo and Juliet?" He suggested after scanning the list a few times, "they kill each other right? That's kind of like us."
"No," I deadpanned, "they kill themselves because they can't be with each other and are supposedly madly in love."
"Hm, okay. Not like us then."
That was about the last moment of civility that either of us had. The next hour and a half was spent arguing. One of us would choose a play and then the other would shoot down the idea for some reason or another. All of my ideas he shot down out of spite, I was sure of it.
He checked his watch. I knew it was past nine, but honestly I could care less if he was going to miss some team play some sport somewhere against someone.
"Where are you going?"
"I told you I had to be done by nine."
"Nooooo," I drawled, "you said there was a game at nine. You're seriously going to leave to go watch a stupid game?"
His blue eyes flickered with some emotion. For some reason, instinct told me he was lying. Maybe it was the fact that I knew him when he first learned how to lie, but I recognized the hesitation.
My brow furrowed, curious as to what he had to lie to me about. It's not like I cared where he went at night. Well, now I did but only because he felt the need to lie about it.
He continued packing his stuff up and shrugged his jacket back on.
"We can finish this another time."
"We have to tell him by Friday!"
"Then pick one without me, Fish. You know I don't really give a fuck about this class."
At that, whatever thread of patience I may have had left snapped.
"Of course you don't. You don't give a fuck about the class. About your grades. About me. About anyone." I was ranting. "Three years was not long enough to give me a break from your bullshit."
His eyes narrowed and I waited for him to argue back with me, to add to the fire that had been brewing in my apartment for the last two hours. Instead, he checked his watch again, shook his head, and left without saying another word to me.
Cam peeked her out of her room to fix me with a look. I was still staring after him, confused at why he hadn't argued back.
"Jo, that was mean," she scolded, sounding a lot like a kindergarten teacher.
I threw my hands up in the air. "He's mean! He drives me insane."
Cam made a face that I couldn't quite decipher, but I didn't like.
"I could hear you shouting at him all night through my walls. You were much meaner to him tonight than he was to you."
She turned and shut the door with a disappointed click. The door shutting had the same effect as if she'd said 'I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.'
And suddenly I felt like a scolded child... and a little guilty.
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Hehehe thanks for reading!