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“Get the fuck away from me,” I growled, flashing my teeth.
Reuben had the gall to act offended. “Whoa, whoa.” He lifted his hands and backed away, but that glint in his eyes—that pompous, I-got-the-best-of-you gleam—kept me seething and frothing. “You need to chill. So the girl wanted me, not you. Get over it already.”
Oh, I’d get over it. I’d get over it all over his face. With my fucking fists.
Before I knew it, my arm was winding back. Everyone around me gasped. Reuben’s eyes grew wide with shock and fear.
Then a hand grabbed my arm, stopping me.
“Come on, bud,” Rush murmured in my ear. “Let’s walk it off.”
I let him pull me away. My muscles were so tight with tension and ferocity that I physically quivered.
“I hate him,” I chanted, shaking my head. “I fucking hate that bastard with a burning passion.”
“I know,” Rush said, patting my back. “I know.”
“He was rubbing it in. He had to fucking rub it in. Why the fuck was he rubbing it in?”
“Because he’s a bully. Just ignore him, and he’ll ease up and leave you alone.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t exactly feel very agreeable at the moment. I felt violent and unsatisfied. I need to hurt something. To make it bleed. And that something was Reuben.
I’d pinned my hopes on this girl. On Avery. And he’d stolen them all away.
And he never let up, not like Rush said he would. If anything, the more I ignored Reuben, the harder he pushed, telling me how sweet she tasted, how soft she felt in his arms, how magically she laughed in his ear.
God, I knew about the laugh. I’d gotten close enough to hear it before. It was a distinct, original sound, not one a person could easily forget. She did have a magical laugh. And Reuben got to hear it all the fucking time.
I seriously hated everything about him.
And all the while that I cursed him aloud, I secretly hated myself more. Because I’d been the one who’d been too chicken shit to even approach her.
Days turned into weeks, all of them filled with agony, and regret, and anger constantly clawing at my throat, struggling to be unleashed.
Reuben just kept picking, talking about her almost as much as I used to, making sure I knew everything they did together. He even brought her around band practice and introduced her to everyone. Our fellow band members weren’t quite sure how to respond at first. They thought what he’d done was a low blow, but then enough time passed that she eventually became known to them as his.
I always managed to slip away and escape before he could ever introduce her to me. The other band members helped; at least they had some pity on me.
I tried to focus on my new duties as the trumpet section leader, but my heart just wasn’t in it. Nothing felt right anymore. I began to wish I’d never even seen her or met Reuben.
I had no idea how to deal with the constant itch under my skin, the need to escape, the pain I felt when I saw him set his hand on the base of her spine, or when he leaned in to kiss her, or when she smiled at him.
Shit, this was bad. I have no idea why I even cared so much. So I had thought she was cute. I had wanted to meet her. I still knew absolutely nothing about her…except for her name. It wasn’t as if I’d actually lost anything. I’d never even had it. And yet I couldn’t stop the slide.
I operated on survival mode, getting through each day, somehow turning my papers for classes in on time and getting everything I needed to do done. I even played the trumpet just fine.
But inside, I felt empty. My muse was gone.
I was wondering wh
at I could do to change that one Monday as I tucked my trumpet protectively under my arm and entered the video conference room. Not that I knew what we were doing here on a Monday. We usually watched videos and discussed different marching routines every other Friday afternoon.
But as new as I was as the trumpet leader, I wasn’t going to question it. Maybe this was a special meeting that had been called for advanced roles.
It still felt weird to think of myself as advanced, though. I didn’t feel better than anyone else. I just showed up and did what I was supposed to do. But Rush seemed to think being a section leader was badass, so I shrugged and accepted it.
Faltering when I glanced around and saw no one else had arrived yet, I pulled the note out of my pocket that I’d found under the windshield wiper of my car. The time and place were both right, so I flipped on a light and found a seat near the back of the room, setting the trumpet bell-down on the desk as I wondered where everyone else was.
