AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Fourteen
Not Asked Out. Twice.
Mason and Tucker had taken to sitting with Hadley, Celeste and me at Lunch. The rumour mill was furiously circling. If you believed everything you heard, Mason was going to ask me out any minute even though I’d secretly hooked up with Roman in the holidays but also couldn’t have possibly because I didn’t do that sort of thing and he was still talking to me so I must have been tutoring him or he was finally making a pass at Hadley through me.
My head spun just trying not to think about it.
Roman, of course, found it hilarious. But, he hadn’t gone near me at school since Tuesday. We parted at his ute in the morning and may as well not have existed to each other except for the usual level of interaction prior to the holidays until the last bell went and I met him back there.
He went through school with his stony expression exuding defiance, being yelled at by teachers, and Thursday I saw him and Rio running away from the building just before the fire alarm went off and we got doused by the sprinklers.
It wasn’t until Friday that I realised I hadn’t felt alone with my friends all week. I’d been happy for the most part and, when I wasn’t, hiding it wasn’t so much of an effort. I’d just had the epiphany and that had put me in a good enough mood when Mason caught up to me in the hallway at the start of Lunch.
“Hey, Piper. I was wondering if we could talk?” he asked.
I nodded as I shuffled with books in my locker. “Yeah, sure. I just need to run to the bathroom. I’ll catch up to you outside?”
“Uh, sure.”
“Great. Thanks, Mason.” I threw him a smile and dashed off. To be fair, it was only in hindsight that it occurred to me that he might have been about to ask me out and, in my defence, I had been desperate to go most of the previous lesson.
Either way, I was walking across the oval towards the group when Roman broke off from his friends and met me halfway. Absently, he put a hand on my stomach and ducked his head to my ear.
“Not causing trouble today?” I asked.
“Obviously not enough if you haven’t heard about it,” he answered ruefully, but his eyes were hard.
I smiled but was going to leave that where it was. “What’s up?”
“I have to go pick up Maddy. But, I should be back by end of the day,” he said softly.
I frowned at him. “She okay?”
“Yeah, I–” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I think so, but who knows. Mum just said I needed to go get her because she can’t get off work.” He took a drag of the cigarette I’d become so used to I’d stopped even noticing the smell – funny how he smoked so much but never smelled like it. “There’s a whole car seat thing and I need to go now.”
“Areyouokay?”
He turned his face to me. We looked at each other for a moment quite intently. Finally, he looked behind me again.
“No.”
I nodded. “All right. Need anything?”
He shook his head. “Not now.”
Even knowing Roman the way I did, I couldn’t see anything explicitly sexual in that. It was the Roman equivalent of ‘we’ll talk later’, only without the expectation that there’d be talking; we might just sit on the lakeshore and listen to music for a few hours.
“Okay. Well–”
“–I know where to find you,” he finished for me. “I know.” He sounded distracted, but not so much that he didn’t sound somewhat heartened by the knowledge I was there for him.
He shifted and I knew he was about to walk away. I put a hand on his chest. “Roman?”
He looked down at me. There was nothing in his eyes but stress and concern and that muscle in his jaw was twitching. I never seemed to know how to help him, not like he seemed to know with me. He seemed to know when I needed to be quiet, when I needed to talk, to be distracted, to laugh. When it came to him? I felt like the worst of all friends.
“Piper?” he asked back.
I blinked. “I can get the bus if it’s easier?”
