The diner is familiar ground. We’ve come here a couple of times since she first brought me, and it relaxes me enough to sit down and breathe in the scent of coffee and bacon and sugar. It reminds me of that day she dragged me here, determined to make me feel better, and that memory all on its own serves to slow down my racing heart.
She’s not indifferent. She gives a shit about me. Right? She’s not following just anyone and everyone around, talking to them and hauling them off to diners for coffee and pancakes. Only me.
So where did she vanish to this past week?
She’s fiddling with the end of her ponytail, and her nervousness is undoing the good effect of this place, undermining my reassurances to myself.
When the waitress comes to pour us coffee, I accept my mug and take a long gulp, letting the heat flow through me, hoping it will ground me.
“What’s going on?” I finally ask, unable to stand the silence any longer. I know that’s rich coming from me, but... “Something freaked you out, didn’t it?”
I don’t even know how I know that. Maybe because that’s how I feel most of the time, this twisty thing fucking up my chest—like when I realized I need the Lowes more than I thought. When I realized I need Gigi. This fucking panic.
“No, I...” She spreads her hands on the table. They’re small, pale hands with pale pink nails, perfect ovals. What will she do if I take her hands in mine, if I kiss her palms? “Everything’s fine.”
I search her face for the lie, because, come on—but I can’t find anything that says she’s dishing out what I wanna hear. She smiles again, color rising in her cheeks, her gaze meeting mine, tentative and yet bold.
Fuck, she’s beautiful. And there’s something so sweet about her face, about that smile, that I’m transfixed.
The pancakes arrive then, the clatter of the plates on the table jarring me. The waitress winks at me and goes, and I blink stupidly after her.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me how things are at home,” she says after we’ve dug into the syrupy goodness of the pancakes and the crispy bacon. She licks her fingers and I stare, her words flying right over my head and my dick going diamond hard. “Jarett.”
“Huh.” I realize I’ve been staring at her mouth, and force my gaze away. “Nah, I’m good. I mean...” I lift a hand to rub at my forehead and the headache spiking there. “Not really, but man, I don’t know, are friends supposed to always—”
“Friends understand.”
I look back at her, surprised. “What? Understand what?”
“If the other person needs some space. But eventually you talk to each other. We,” she waves between us, “talk to each other about whatever has been on our minds. That’s how it works.”
I nod, not sure what to say. If that’s what she wants from me, then that’s what I’ll do. And if all we get to be is friends, then that’s okay. It has to be okay.
Right now, it’s all I have.
“Give me your phone number,” she says. “And I’ll give you mine. And you can call me whatever you need someone to talk to. Or to have pancakes with.”
My mouth pulls into a smile.
Somewhere in my head, a voice is railing at me for letting this slip of a girl tell me what to do, dictate how this relationship will work. But just for that word, that idea, that relationship with her, I’d work hard.
I’d give all I have. It’s not much, but I’d give it all of myself.
Chapter Ten
Gigi
“Lick me, Gertrude,” Ollie says, thrusting his hips, standing way too close to me, while his buddy Everett holds me in place as I flail. “Suck me. Take it deep, bitch.”
The fact he’s fully dressed, that we all are, and we’re right outside the school doesn’t matter to my panicked mind.
“Let me go!” I struggle in Everett’s hold as the two idiots laugh, but for me it’s a flashback straight to hell, to my recurring nightmares. A memory from a few years back that shouldn’t have shaken me so badly. It shouldn’t, I keep telling myself stubbornly, even if it’s obvious that it did. “Everett, let go!”
I wonder how many more people will pass by and not stop. You’d think my shouts would give people pause, but they only hurry by fast, heads down.
Do they think I want it? That I asked for it? That my skirt is too short, my cleavage too low, my hair too long? That I invited these assholes to paw at me and make crude jokes?
Jesus.