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As far as breaking up goes in a fake relationship.
She sighed. This was not her best display of maturity.
“Tully!” Her name bounced over the tops of students’ heads, and she paused to search for wherever it came from. It led her to Kimmy, who waved at her and pushed opposite the flow into the cafeteria to get to her. Tully smiled at her when she successfully made it through. “Are you eating with us again today?”
Oh crap. She hadn’t even thought about that. What exactly was her plan for lunch? Walk into the cafeteria and then what? Walk out? “Oh, uh, no, actually I need to work in the library, make up some volunteer hours.”
Kimmy grimaced like Tully had just told her she was going to be eating out of a toilet. “Is that like a weird valedictorian thing?”
No. It was just a weird Tully thing. “Sure.”
“Then thank God I’m not that smart,” Kimmy put her hand on her heart and laughed. Like lightning, the topic changed faster than Tully could keep up with. “Everything’s okay with you and Nathan, right?”
Maybe Kimmy really was interested in whether Tully was going to eat with them, or maybe she just wanted to know if they were going to break up after yesterday.
“Yeah.” She plastered on her most convincing smile. “Yeah, of course.”
“Thank God. I was a little worried after lunch yesterday since Tricia was being so pushy. Honestly, I don’t really care what happened between you and Nathan before as long as he likes you now and you’re good to him. He seems to like you a lot, so I like you too.”
Tully stared at her. It made her a little sad to think she might disappoint Kimmy when this all would inevitably end—whether today or in six months. It also made her sad because it turns out she quite liked Nathan’s friends, and once he was out of her life, so were they. Another inevitable in a fake relationship.
“Nope. We’re good.”
“Good,” Kimmy touched her shoulder gently, a friendly gesture that though uncomfortable, Tully didn’t brush off. “I’ll see you later then.”
They waved goodbye.
She turned around and walked away from the cafeteria and away from the library. She wasn’t going to take any chances that Kimmy would tell Nathan, and he would show up there in search for her.
* * *
Okay. It took her four more classes and an uncomfortable lunch in a stairwell until she finally humbled herself enough to fully accept that this entire thing was her own fault. She didn’t think. She made a mistake. And now she was ready to push past her ridiculous, stubborn pride and own up to it because if it was Nathan, he would have already done that.
Nathan was a better person than she was, the least she could do was stretch to his level while they had this arrangement.
She staked out next to his locker the minute the last bell rang and leaned against the cool metal to stay out of the way of passing students. Ducking her head, she used her hair to hide her face. Not that it mattered since everyone knew who she was by now, but it at least spared her from them catching her anxious expression. There were only two outcomes for this:
One, he breaks up with her.
Two, he doesn’t.
She hoped it wasn’t the former.
As much as she would hate to lose Nathan’s friends, she would hate losing him more.
Nathan didn’t show up for a long time. Waiting by his car might have been a better option because at this rate he could have seen her here and already scurried away to avoid her. Maybe she was wrong in thinking he would be searching for her—Nathan could be avoiding her as much as she was him. Maybe he sat in the library stacks too during lunch.
If that was the case, then how would he decide to break up with her? A phone call? A letter in her locker? Never speak to her again until she got the hint?
How exhausting. It was exactly the type of thing she would pull—wasalreadypulling.
“Good going,” she mumbled to herself and leaned her head back against his locker door with a deep sigh.
She jumped to attention when she met brown eyes.
Nathan stood right in front of her, an eyebrow up and a single strap keeping his backpack on his shoulder. How the hell did she miss him?
A better question would be how long had he been standing there watching her torment over her stupidity?
