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And what did thatmean? Was Gabi supposed to do something,saysomething? She pulled her hair, ragging it from its neat ponytail, and let out a loud groan of frustration.
Should she pretend she felt nothing for Joy, or tell her she still had feelings, too? She didn’t know if it was love, because howcouldit still be love after they’d changed so much and lived through such different things? They weren’t the same two girls.
But her heart was still racing and thumping and there wasn’t much arguing with it.
THIRTEEN
JOY
Oh,God. Why had Joy said that? She shut the bathroom door and slid down the inside of it, ignoring her many aches as they flared up. Why couldn’t she have acted like a normal person and had a normal conversation instead of blurting out that she loved Gabi?
Well—because she was still wound so tight, she was close to snapping, and she was terrified and jumpy and emotional after everything that had happened. But how was she supposed to face Gabi now?
Joy flashed back to being inside that cell, the cold and damp not the worst of her conditions, but rather the waiting, the fearing, and the space tothinkand fill her mind with terrors. She couldn’t go back there. She couldn’t do it again. But how was she supposed to work with Gabi now she’d blurted out her feelings?
Joy pulled her knees to her chest and thumped her forehead against them.
It took ten minutes for the mortification to wear off. She needed to text Eilidh and Gus and the others, and make sure they all got home alright. Huffing, trying to banish those words from her head—I still love you—she patted the pocket of her borrowed hoodie for her phone.
“Oh, no,” she breathed, pausing her search. “Ohhhhh, no.”
Joy’s amethyst wand was tucked into the waistband of her pants, but she vaguely remembered putting her phone down on the kitchen table.
“Please, no,” she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut as if it could block out the past twenty minutes.
But she could picture it now, the pink casing winking at her from her memory, sitting right next to the pot of tea on the table. Joy warred with herself, but the need to check her friends’ safety won out in the end.
Groaning and berating herself the whole way, Joy pulled herself to her feet, cracked open the door, and tiptoed back downstairs.
She could do this. She’d just pretend she’d never said … what she’d said. Easy. No problem. She could do this.
It was too much to hope that Gabi would have gone up to her room; no, she was pacing the kitchen floor. Joy tried to duck in and out, but Gabi was too observant for that.
Her clever brown eyes swung to Joy, and she froze, phone in hand.
“I—” Joy started, but it was too awkward, and she didn’t know what to say. She held up the pink phone she’d snatched from the table, not looking directly at Gabi. “Sorry. I’m gonna—go to sleep. Like Salma said.”
Ughh, shut up, Joy. Stop making this nightmare of a day worse.
She backed up slowly, unable to even look in Gabi’s direction, let alone meet her gaze. Her heart pounded, pushing embarrassment into every inch of her just in case there remained a dark corner thatwasn’tutterly mortified.
“Joy,” Gabi sighed. “You don’t need to be…”
But Joy took another few steps. “I’m going up to sleep. No problem. No worries.”
Yup, she definitely needed both those statements. This was goingsowell.
“Take the bed in my room.”
“But you—” Joy met Gabi’s eyes without thinking, a frown creasing her brow.
“I’m fine on the couch. I won’t get much sleep anyway; I only need a few hours. I’ll be fine.” Looking closely, Joy thought Gabi looked exhausted. She should be sleeping more. Joy hesitated to accept her bed.
“Joy,” Gabi said in a voice so soft it was barely there, making Joy swallow hard. “We should talk.”
Joy shook her flaming face. “We can forget what I said, it’s alright, really. I was—I was under duress. The dead girl and—being locked up—Paulina—seeing you—it was a lot to take and—”
She dared a mortified look at Gabi and found her—smiling.
