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Lily: You skipped class?
Peyton: I just needed some air. I’m okay. I’ll be home later.
Lily: Where are you? I’m worried...
Thick,sludgy guilt slithered through me.
Peyton: I’m okay, I promise. A couple of Sean’s groupies cornered me in the girls bathroom.
He’d spreada bunch of lies about me. I guess rejection was an excuse to be a cruel asshole because the things he’d told them…
Inhaling a ragged breath, I wiped my eyes and texted Lily back before she could reply.
Peyton: I’ll be fine. I just couldn’t stay there for another second. Please, don’t worry about me.
Lily: Not possible. You’re my best friend. It’s what we do.
I textedher back a heart emoji and silenced my phone, shoving it back in my pocket. The truth was, when I’d fled from school, I hadn’t been thinking about anything other than getting out of the bathroom. The walls had begun closing in around me while Layla and her friends taunted me about Sean.
Before I knew it, I’d burst out of the main entrance to school and spilled into the cold winter air… and I’d kept walking. I’d just kept going until I was out of the gates.
Cocktease.
Trailer trash.
Whore.
Their words had washed over me like an unrelenting storm. I knew my classmates thought I was a notorious flirt. Before… everything, it had been true to an extent.
I’d enjoyed the attention. It filled that gaping hole inside of me. The part of me that craved to feel normal. To be a normal teenage girl. But I wasn’t reckless with my body. I didn’t sleep with guy after guy. That wasn’t who I was.
I’d watched my mom’s revolving door of guys. Men who would use her and hurt her and make her cry out in pain. I had no desire to become that… none. But flirting, kissing, getting hot and heavy with a guy made me feel good. I never promised more than I could give, and I was always, always safe.
“Peyton?”
Xander stood before me, his eyes crinkled with concern. I hadn’t even heard him approach, too lost in my thoughts.
“You’re crying.”
“I’m not—” I touched my frozen fingers to my cheeks. “I didn’t realize. Did everything go… okay?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He joined me on the bench again. “It never gets any easier, even after all this time.”
“You miss them.”
“Every second of every day,” he admitted. “I never got over it, losing her. It changed me. Therapists tried to label it, to help my dad and brother understand it, to help me understand it. But I always knew what the problem was… something inside me broke the day I had to say goodbye to her. Maybe it was my heart or my sense of reason or some part of my brain. I don’t know… but I wasn’t the same after that.”
“Xander…” My breath caught, his pain like a living thing in the air around us. I wanted to reach for him, to comfort him, but I was so scared of being rejected again.
I couldn’t stop myself though. Because he was hurting, and I needed to show him he wasn’t alone.
Lacing my arm through his, I tangled our hands together. Xander dropped his gaze to where our fingers twined, and I held my breath, waiting for him to pull away.
He didn’t.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” I whispered, laying my head on his shoulder as we stared out at the cemetery.
“It does,” he replied after a beat. “It means… a lot.”
