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“It’s new.” I didn’t owe her an explanation, yet guilt gnawed at me.
“Apparently. Really new.” She smirked, and then threw a paper towel in the trash. “You know, if you’d come to the end of summer bash, you’d realize justhownew. Enjoy Homecoming.”
With that, she sailed out the door. I slid into lit class with only seconds to spare. Coop frowned at me, but I shook my head. We couldn’t talk with class gearing up. Our journaling books officially needed to be started and I had one, I just hadn’t written a damn thing in it. Course, after this week, I had a lot I could put into consideration.
Class dragged in some ways, but my focus kept wandering. It wasn’t the material. I genuinely loved this class. What Sharon said lingered in the back of my brain, a vague, nagging little whisper. I’d skipped all the parties that summer, all except for Ian’s birthday, and he and Sharon had been very hot and very heavy at that party.
Coop had his tongue down Laura’s throat, Archie had Patty glued to him at the hip, and Jake and Maria? No doubt existed within me at all. But they weren’t hiding it, either.
It was all kind of deflating my day. Outside, the skies kept getting darker. The heavy wet slap of the air from the morning was worse when we went to lunch. Everyone crammed into Jake’s SUV. I was sandwiched between Archie and Coop this time. Ian made a face and took shotgun though Jake glanced at me in the rearview and said, “You can sit up front on the way back.”
“That’s not really fair to the guys.” They didn’t fit back here as easily as I did—not in the middle.
“I’m thinking fair to me.”
That got a laugh. Ricky’s wasn’t crowded, so we got our food fast. Even as the guys talked around me, the morning replayed in my head a little. Maria hadn’t looked as disappointed as Sharon. Sharon had been hurt. Maria had been…irritated? Maybe upset. Patty had been pissed, and I hadn’t seen Laura.
I hadn’t seen Laura in days, not since Coop told me he broke up with her, officially.
Had she just not been around, or had I been too wrapped up in myself to notice?
“Earth to Frankie,” Jake said, eyeing me. They were all staring at me.
“What?” I’d only eaten about half my food, but my appetite had fled in the middle of all that.
“You were checked out,” Coop said with a faint, almost hopeful smile. “Daydreaming?”
“Something like that.” I needed to get out of my head and stop brooding. “Making a homework list. Lots to get done and my weekend is pretty booked.”
That earned me more than one groan. Better that than bringing up the girls. They hadn’t mentioned them again beyond Archie’s comment in the hallway about being over the drama. Back at school, Jake cornered me during Study Hall.
“Something’s bothering you,” he said as soon as we scored our table in the corner of the library. “It’s because of the scene with Maria and the others this morning.”
“A little,” I sighed. “Not so much that they came over, but… you guys were kind of mean.”
“First,” Jake said, curling a lock of my hair around his finger. “They started it. Patty shouldn’t have been shitty to you.”
“She was disappointed.”
“I don’t care.” The indifference in his tone on those three words was bracing. “No one gets to be shitty to you. No one invited them over, and no one led them on.”
“Coop was dating Laura less than a week ago.”
“Again, don’t care, and Laura wasn’t there. Patty and Arch haven’t been together since the summer. Maria and I broke up before school started. Bubba and Sharon? Eh…that was always more her than him.”
Before school startedwas only a couple of weeks ago.
“Don’t let them get to you,” he said, tugging my hair gently. “Bubba asked you to homecoming, pretty slick on his part. You enjoyed that right?”
I had. “It…was awesome and embarrassing and wonderful.”
“There you go.” Jake looked smug. “That’s what it should be. Focus on that—and on our date Sunday.”
I groaned. Sunday seemed so far away with everything I already had planned to do and, at the same time, so close, and I was worried I’d miss something.
“I know,” Jake said, his voice low and his eyes hot. “I wish it were tonight, too.”
I gave him a little shove. “I’m going out with Archie tonight.”
