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He’s going to ignore me and pretend he didn’t see me like everyone else has been doing, and I prepare myself for the rejection, but he surprises me by striding straight toward me.
“Hey,” he greets me.
“Hey?” I repeat back, but it comes out as a question.
He’s talking to me? Like normal?
“What are you doing out here?” he asks, shocking the hell out of me when he places the food beside me and shakes his arms out like he’s preparing to stay a while. “Is everything okay?”
“Um, not really,” I reply, catching the couple walking through the parking lot whispering to each other when they see me, one pointing me out to the other. Warren doesn’t seem to notice or mind, though, just waits for me to elaborate.
“I’m not allowed to go in to work because of everything going on, and I don’t have a phone to order an Uber, and I’m not entirely sure how to get to Jason’s from here—I’m crashing there.”
“That’s easy enough to solve,” Warren says, picking up his food. “Let me drive you.”
Did he not hear about everything going on? That’s impossible, he’sWarren, he talks to everyone. He has to know. Does he not care? “Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes, now hurry up and get in the car before my food gets cold.”
I’m not going to sit around and wait for him to change his mind, so I grab my purse and follow him toward a shiny, expensive-looking Bentley.
“You must be hungry.” I attempt to joke to break the weird air that might be only in my mind.
He laughs. “Oh, yeah . . . I haven’t eaten all day, so I might have overcompensated.”
A car door opens, and kids in King City letterman jackets get out. They’re Brandon’s friends. Warren and I share homeroom with two of them.
As we cross paths, they glare at me.
“Brandon’s off the team because of you; he had the best chance of all of us to go pro,” one says as the other coughs while muttering, “Murderous whore.”
I don’t know what’s been going on at school, but people must have found out about what happened between me and Brandon on Monday after school. He was on steroids, so if he’s off the team, that’snotmy fault.
So, before they pass, I shoot back, “Brandon’s off the team because ofhimself.”
They clearly weren’t expecting me to say anything, because they scamper away into the restaurant without replying. Good. I’m sure Brandon got more than just kicked off the team. His mother was so pissed when she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out of the house, apologizing to me along the way and begging me not to press charges, promising she’d handle Brandon and would call Zia Stella to explain everything.
Beside me, Warren explains, “Brianna’s going around telling everyone Brandon decided to go to military school, but other people are whispering that was his parents’ last-ditch effort because they found out he was using and fucked up his college offers. Not sure what Brandon told his friends or why they’d say it was your fault.”
Not wanting to get into it all here in the parking lot, I answer with a simple, “Well, I can’t say I’m disappointed to see him go.”
At the car, he places the food in the back while I put my seat belt on. We still haven’t addressed or even glanced at the elephant in the room, and when he closes his own door, I can’t hold back my curiosity anymore.
“You’re like the only person to talk to me since Monday, other than the Parkers. Don’t you think I’m amurderous whoreor whatever else they’re calling me?
Don’t you think I had something to do with Lily?”
Warren waves me off. “That’s ridiculous, you didn’t have anything to do with Lily.”
“And what about the other stuff?”
Warren turns to me, his brown eyes uncharacteristically intense and serious. “I read the text in the picture.
Maybe I shouldn’t have because it clearly wasn’t meant to be shared, but I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, it was clearly self-defense. So, I don’t care about what happened as long as you’re okay. Nothing about you has changed in my eyes.”
I’m stunned into silence by his admission. Outside of Jason and his family, Warren’s the first and only person to say that and to not treat me any differently.
“Seriously?” I finally sputter out.
