AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, okay,” Shannon replied as she scrambled off the bed and hurried to the door. “Are you sure?” she stopped in the doorway to ask me.
No.
“I’m always sure, Shannon.”
Smiling, she nodded and then hurried back down stairs to get her bag.
“Fuck.” Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I typed out a quick SOS message to Gibsie, only to delete it before sending it.
Exhaling a frustrated breath, I typed out another text, this one to Jason, letting him know I wouldn’t make this afternoon’s hydropool session and then quickly shut my phone off before he could call to give me a litany of abuse.
I already knew I was doing wrong.
I’d missed yesterday’s session and two more a couple of weeks back.
Because of her. Because when she jumped, I flew clean off the ledge after her.
Didn’t need my trainer to tell me something I already knew. He’d tell me I needed to get my head back in the game. He’d scream at me and tell me to focus on my future—on the upcoming fitness test I needed to pass more than I needed to breathe.
Problem was, I couldn’t focus. Because my head was gone. Shot to shite. Lost inside the girl whose bedroom I was sitting in.
I was sliding my phone back into the pocket of my school trousers when Shannon returned with her bag.
“I think business wouldn’t be so hard if I could get a handle on the maths side of it,” she said in a slightly breathless tone as she hauled her bag over to the bed.
Dropping it on the floor, she ran back to her door and quickly locked it before resuming her position on the bed, cross-legged and facing me.
“I had trouble concentrating at my old school,” she added, while rummaging in her bag. “I managed to keep up with my language classes, but I let maths slide.”
I knew this. I’d read all about it in her file.
“That’s understandable,” I told her, nodding.
Shannon looked at me with a wary expression. “Why is that understandable?”
Shit.
Fuck.
“Because you have to take a crazy number of subjects for the junior cert,” I bluffed. Shrugging, I added, “Can’t be good at all of them.”
“I bet you were,” she replied, turning her attention back to her bag, disaster averted. She pulled her maths book out and dropped it on the bed between us. “Let me guess, you took all higher-level subjects for your junior cert, too?”
“Give me that book,” I grumbled, feeling embarrassed.
“All A’s?” she teased.
“Nope,” I shot back, flicking through the pages of her textbook. “I got a C in ordinary-level science,” I told her and then I sighed before admitting, “The rest were higher-level A’s.”
“Really?”
I nodded, feeling hot and uncomfortable.
“You’re smart?”
I just shrugged.
“Well, I got my only A in science,” she mused. “It’s my only higher-level subject.”
