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Our porch. God, this was all so incredibly bizarre. I now shared a porch with Wick Webster.
The same Wick Webster Topher hated.
Topher, whom yesterday, I had loved, but today…didn’t. At least, I don’t think I did. I felt sick, and panicky, and lost whenever he popped into my head. I felt hurt and angry and betrayed. I felt bitter and vengeful. But love didn’t seem to fill any of the gaps between those emotions.
I honestly think he’d slaughtered my love for him in one split moment. Just like that.
But how could that be possible? Wasn’t love supposed to last forever? Weather any storm? How could it die so easily?
Unless…
Had I really ever, truly loved him at all?
Oh God. My heart began to pound, because that thought was more traumatizing than thinking he’d killed my love in an instant, like stepping on a bug and squishing it flat. I could cope with a love that he had destroyed, but thinking about a possibility where I haven’t even known what love really was…that would be on me. That would prove that I’d been wrong about my own heart.
I didn’t want to think about a world where I couldn’t even understand how love truly worked, so I focused on Wick’s back as I followed him, and that seemed to center me again.
Poor guy had definitely become my life raft tonight.
Once inside, I collapsed onto the couch and ran my hands over my face. My brain buzzed as memories flashed through my head: Topher and Annabeth together on the couch, me hiding out in Izzy Webster’s dorm room, my parents showing up out of the blue, Wick-the-not-so-dick-after-all-Webster being nice, creepy basements whispering my name, and then me staring around my bare dorm room after I’d cleaned it out, realizing an era of my life was over. Forever.
Gone, just like that.
I shuddered, trying to dispel the thoughts, but they only fought back harder, coming at me faster until I just wanted to scream at them and pound my fists against a nearby wall in retaliation. But Wick was here, and I couldn’t lose it in front of him. Probably shouldn’t let the new roommate realize what a nut job he now lived with until maybe the third or fourth night, right?
Dropping my hands, I studied him as he settled into a chair on the opposite side of the room and yawned. Then he pulled a phone from his pocket and started browsing like a guy sitting in a reception room, waiting for his name to be called for an appointment…or for my laundry to finish.
I smiled over his consideration. But… “You don’t have to wait up with me,” I told him as I waved my hand toward the hallway that led back to the rooms. “Go on to bed; I’ll be fine.”
He glanced at me, only to return his attention back to the screen of his phone. Then he mumbled, “Can’t. My bed’s taken.”
Oh shit. That was right. His sister had disappeared into his room a while back to sleep there, so he was currently displaced from his own bed, meaning…
“Oh my God!” I leaped up from the couch where I’d been kicked back and relaxing as if I owned the piece of furniture. “I’m sitting on your bed for the night.” That could’ve been what he meant when he’d said his bed was taken. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think. I’ll just go and wait for my laundry to finish somewhere else.”
I needed to get started unpacking and organizing my things in my new room, anyway, even though the mere idea left me feeling drained.
“You don’t have to go.” He shot me another brief glance. “Even if you left me alone now and I actually fell asleep, you’ll only wake me up again whenever you have to pass through here and open the door, letting in a shit ton of freezing outside air whenever you go down to check on your sheets. Besides.” He shrugged and went back to playing on his phone, his thumbs moving and colored objects shifting on the screen. “I don’t think I could sleep now, even if I tried.”
That I could agree with, completely.
I huffed out a breath and sat back down on the couch, feeling defeated. “So, you’re saying I should’ve just borrowed your spare sheets?”
Another shrug. “Too late now.”
God, I swear he had shrugging down to a fine art. It was like his own personal language, except I was already fluent and understood what each unique shift of his shoulders meant.
Watching him play his game, I tapped my fingernails restlessly against the tops of the nails on my opposite hand. My own phone was currently in my room, charging, which was good. I didn’t feel like talking about what had happened tonight, so I was avoiding all the messages that were flooding my inboxes.
But I guess I didn’t feel like keeping quiet either, because I was unable to handle the silence in the room as I watched Wick ignore me after he’d just told me I could stay.
“What’re you playing?” I asked as I crossed my legs so I could swing one foot for something to do.
Wick glanced up, seemingly surprised, as if he couldn’t believe I actually wanted to converse with him. Then he faltered as he checked his screen, leading me to think he had no idea what he was actually playing.
“Uh…” Shaking his head, he looked up again. “It’s called Gardenscapes.”
I brightened. “Really? Ooh, I play that game too.” Pausing, I frowned. “I mean, I did. But then I reached this level with this goopy, yellowish orange stuff that spread across the screen and destroyed everything. And I could never beat it, so it pissed me off enough that I just deleted the entire app off my phone.”
