“Don’t think you’re doing me any favors by pretending to care. I’m going to go back into the school to get my phone and call someone who actually cares about me to come pick me up! I won’t inconvenience you anymore by forcing you to pretend to actually care about me.”
I stubbornly turn around and march back to the school doors without another thought, even though a small part of me is aching, telling me I’m stupid and begging me to turn around and run into the safety of Aiden’s protective arms. It’s telling me that I’m overreacting, that I know that absolutely none of this is Aiden’s fault. I’m sad, hurt, and frustrated, and took it out on the first thing available. I know that it’s not Aiden’s fault I can’t be Thea Kennedy anymore. I know it’s not his fault that Kaitlyn and Ryan vandalized my car. And I definitely know that Aiden wasn’t pretending to care about me: his countless past actions have proven otherwise.
But a bigger part of me is saying it doesn’t matter, that I’m fed up with drama and pain and emotional roller coasters. It’s saying I’m better off without Aiden, and that maybe Aiden is better off without me. All I’ve ever done is cause pain and suffering to the people I’ve grown close to. It’s saying that I’m so emotionally damaged that I’m better off alone.
When I reach the school doors, I pull on a handle, but the door doesn’t budge. I try the other door and get the same result.
No. No. No. No. This isn’t happening. I frantically pull on both handles at the same time.
Locked.
“Open the door!” I yell for what feels like the hundredth time, banging on the locked school doors.
Aiden leans on the wall to my right, his arms folded across his muscled chest, looking immensely bored.
“I know you’re in there, you stupid janitor!” I bang on the door again, my frustration clearly evident.
I’m still reeling from fighting with Aiden, my vandalized car, Kaitlyn and Ryan, and everything in general.
“We’ve been here for twenty minutes.” Aiden sighs indifferently. “He’s clearly jerking off somewhere with his headphones on. No one’s going to open the door.”
He leans his head back on the wall, his eyes closed and arms still crossed; the complete picture of relaxed disinterest.
“No one asked you to stay!” I snap at him, turning back to the doors and banging on them again.
But the bigger part of me is too busy being overcome with anger toward this stupid. Bang. Door. Bang. That won’t. Bang. Open. Bang.
“URGHHHH!” My primal scream of frustration echoes through the dark parking lot.
Aiden gets off the wall. “Amelia. It’s late. Let’s just go home and get our stuff in the morning.”
“All of our shit is in there! My purse. My phone. My house keys. My car keys—not that they’ll do me any good, but still—your car keys. How the hell am I supposed to get home! It’s a twenty-minute drive! That’s like an hour’s walk! And what time is it? Like, ten thirty? Eleven? My mom left on her flight at nine! How am I supposed to get inside my house if my keys are sitting in this godforsaken school and no one is home! I need to call someone and nothing’s open around here where I can use a phone! Are there even pay phones around her
e anymore? I doubt I’d even know how to use one. I don’t even have a quarter or nickel or whatever the hell those ancient things use and oh God! My car! I have to get it out of here before the whole student body sees the message Kaitlyn scratched into it and—”
“Amelia!” Aiden shakes my shoulders. “Breathe.”
Doing as I’m told, I take big gulps of air. Aiden rubs his hands soothingly up and down my arms, encouraging me, and my traitorous body instantly relaxes at his touch.
“I’m fine.” I push his arms off once I recover, immediately missing his reassuring contact.
“Look,” he starts, putting his therapeutic hands in his pockets. “Clearly, screaming and banging on the door isn’t working. It’s probably a fifteen- to twenty-minute walk to my house from here, closer than yours. I have a spare set of car keys, and we can call Mason or someone to give us a ride back. That way, we can sort out everything with a tow truck to get your car out of here.”
“But isn’t everything closed—”
“I have connections.” He cuts me off smoothly. “The driver owes me some favors, too, so it’ll be free of charge.”
“But where—”
“He’ll bring it to my mechanic. I have connections there, too, so they’ll get you new tires and see what they can do about the paint job.”
“But how do you—”
“You can call Charlotte or Anna and stay at one of their houses tonight. I’m sure they won’t mind. I’ll come back first thing in the morning when they unlock the doors to get our stuff before anyone touches it.”
Snapping my mouth shut, my mind replays what he said to me before I freaked out and placed all the misfortunes in my life on him. I’ll handle this, you’ll be okay. I’ll take care of everything, I promise.
It seems like he is. He figured everything out and covered all of the bases without even missing a beat. While I was over here attacking the door and screaming my lungs off, Aiden came up with an actual plan that isn’t just okay, but the best one that you could possibly come up with for a situation like this.