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He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Kat.”
I thought about the person he had been texting during the concert in the park. It could’ve been anyone, really—my sense of trust was so plagued by uncertainty at this point. I felt the need to second-guess every person I came into direct contact with. Cassidy proved me right—she had appeared at first to be some sweet do-gooder, when it turned out that she was really dating Pierre’s abusive bully-slash-Vivian’s cousin. Just as evil.
With a shrug, I settled back into my chair and tapped on the screen of my phone. Two minutes had passed.
Maybe it was best to just change the subject.
“I still have to bleach your hair, you know,” I said, meeting Pierre’s gaze with a smirk. “And dye it.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, getting up from his chair. He went into the bathroom, then came back a second later holding the two shades of dye. “Do we have enough time to do it now?”
“Hell no,” I said, laughing. “But put those in your suitcase right now so that you remember to bring it.” Running my fingers through my own waves, I added, “I think I need to do some touching up myself.”
“You could try a different color,” Pierre suggested, tossing the bottles of dye into his open suitcase like it was a basketball hoop.
“And ruin my signature look? I don’t know, man,” I said, standing up from the table. Moving over to his closet, I grabbed my coat, and started sliding it over my arms. “I don’t think you’d be able to recognize me.”
“You? Unrecognizable?” Pierre strode over to me, and before I could pull on the coat all the way, he had his arms around my waist and his nose was nuzzling mine. “Never.”
“You sound so sure about that,” I said, sounding a little more pensive than I wanted to admit. I was thinking out loud—after all, what if, over the course of the summer, I had changed? Just because I had been keeping in contact with Pierre over the phone didn’t mean my personality had stayed firm. The other three boys brought something else out of me. So much had happened back home, and Pierre was barely a part of it.
Or, was he?
“It’s because I am.” Pierre moved his face back from mine, just enough to allow me to see his eyes moving between mine. “Nothing will ever get in the way of our friendship, Kat. You know that, right?”
I nodded, unsure of what to say. It wasn’t a fact. That was his way of looking at things—of course, thousands of things could get in the way of our friendship. Including a certain somebody named Vivian Russo.
Or Elliot Lancaster.
“Right,” I finally said, smiling. “Nothing.”
Pierre regarded me for a moment longer as if to make sure I was being honest. When he seemed convinced, he raised his hands to my shoulders and started pushing back the fabric of my coat.
“Why are you in such a hurry? We still got, like, twenty minutes.”
“Oh, yeah?” I giggled, and let out a short gasp as his hand drifted down my back toward my ass. So, he had learned to be a little more forward over the past couple days. “And what are we supposed to do for twenty minutes?”
“Anything,” he said, just as the coat dropped to the floor. Stepping forward, he guided me to the wall. “Everything.”
“Sounds nice,” I replied, a little absent-mindedly as his right hand found its way to the seam of my sweatpants. “Make it quick.”
His fingers dipped past the fabric.
But just as he leaned in toward me for a kiss, the sound of a car horn blasted from outside. Quickly, Pierre removed his hand from my pants and hurried to the window, moving aside the curtain to peer outside.
“Shit,” he said, turning back to me. “Did we get the time wrong? I think that’s your ride.”
“Seriously?” Furrowing my brows, I joined him at the window and looked outside to find the stout black vehicle, bug-like circular headlights marking itself as a cab. Yup. That was me. “You’re right.”
And here I was, about to get a little finger-fucking in before a long-ass flight. Oh, well.
“Here,” Pierre said, handing me my coat. I slipped it on as Pierre went to find his own coat and shoes in order to walk me outside. What a gentleman. Even though I’d see him again in a few days, I already missed him. Something had changed between us within the past few days—in obvious, more physical ways, yes, but also emotionally. There was a cloud of suspicion between us, as if neither of us could be sure that the other was telling the truth. I hated that. We never used to be this way.
And most of all, I missed him because some part of me was scared that when the time came, he’d go back on his decision. That he’d refund the airplane ticket for himself and end up staying behind.
“You ready?” Pierre said, unlocking the door. I nodded, and followed him out of the hallway.
We made it down the elevator to the lobby in silence—a sad silence. The past few days had meant to be a fun, light-hearted affair. Sure, I wanted to amends with him, work through some of the things going on in his mind. His suicide attempt was not something I would take lightly—and I planned on addressing that further. I just didn’t want to overwhelm him.
