That Infuriating Feeling: An Academic Rivals to Lovers Novel (Chasing Feelings Book 2)

Chapter 29

June, Sunday, 3 Days Before the Semester is Out

Over the last couple of weeks, twirled up in Oli’s clean sheets had become one of my favorite places to be. Our project was finished and ready for presentation day, but we still saw each other frequently. Every Tuesday and Saturday without fail, plus plenty of other hook-ups sprinkled in. It was important I kept meeting with him in case we needed to edit something on the project, or in case Jonah needed a friend, or…I don’t know. There were lots of reasons, I guess.

I awoke in his room on a bright, sunny morning, nuzzling my head into the pillow. Facing the wall, I felt no one behind me, so I scooted back hoping to rub up against him, but he wasn’t there. Humph. Maybe he’d gone to the bathroom or something.

I was turning around and curling the blankets up around me when I caught a glimpse of Jonah sitting upright on the edge of his bed, typing away on his phone. It was then that I noticed the faint conversation leaking in from the hallway. My head shot up, and I looked at the closed door. It was Oli who was speaking outside, and he sounded angry.

“Hey, June,” Jonah said quickly, shoving his phone down on his bed. “Top o’ the mornin’.” He pretended to lift his imaginary hat and chuckled uncomfortably.

What the fuck? Weird. Something was off. Very off.

“Did you know that sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins?” he blurted.

I furrowed my eyebrows, ignoring his blatant attempt to steal my attention as I ripped back the covers. The sleepy haze had hardly left my brain yet. On two wobbly legs, I made my way to the door to get a better listen of the conversation outside.

“I wouldn’t do that, June,” Jonah warned.

I turned to him sharply, cutting a stern hand through the air to shut him up. I’d do whatever I damn well pleased. He held up a defeated finger gun.

Pressing my ear to the cold door, I heard only one half of a phone conversation, but a whole nightmare. Oli growled at his father, sending obscenities his way, which vastly contrasted his behavior at the birthday dinner. He never spoke to authority figures as such, and here he was sending this one straight to hell.

“No, you can’t change my mind! I already told you. We are gone, Dad. Jonah and I are done here.” My hand slapped over my chest. Oli was…leaving? “Yeah, I’m a huge fucking failure. I don’t give a shit, Dad. I’ll keep it civil for Mom’s sake, but don’t expect any fucking postcards.” Postcards?! How fucking far was he going? My breathing became heavy and labored, my ears suddenly boiling. “Why would I stay? I have no reason to. Not a single one.”

Ouch. Fucking ouch. The pulleys on my castle walls must’ve given out because the iron gate around my soul slammed shut so abruptly that my body jerked. My chest pinched. I could no longer feel my hands or feet, and a nervous pool took form in my gut.

Oli was leaving. Oh, that thought just ripped my heart right through my ribs. And no reason to stay? Not even me? I couldn’t bear it. The dorm room walls were pushing in faster now. Faster than they ever had before.

“Fuck off, Dad.” I heard Oli huff a breath, and then the door clicked. He froze when he saw me standing just inside the entrance. I stumbled backward, my legs pliable rubber.

“Sorry, Oli,” Jonah muttered as he snatched his sneakers and rushed out of the room.

“Pussy,” Oli mumbled.

“You’re a pussy,” Jonah said as he whipped down the hall.

I got the feeling they both were.

“Are you blaming whatever this is on him, Oliver?” I asked sharply.

Veins popped in his red forehead. He just stood there with his brow in his fingers as if he’d totally given up. On all of it. On his family, his life. On me.

I obviously wasn’t meant to hear about all this, and that was a knife to the chest. I should have known. He’d been nothing but an asshole to me since the day I fucking met him, and I was an idiot for falling for his games. I tried to blow past him and grab my things, but he quickly caught me with one strong arm and pulled me in.

“Whiz kid,” he whispered.

My jaw dropped. Seriously? That’s all I fucking was to him? I was still just whiz kid from class? My fists curled at my sides. One thing was for sure, I was never going to let another person loot around in my life as Oliver had done. I’d been so stupid.

“Are you dropping out?” I asked. I could hardly feel my lips as they moved. My words had turned to sludge along with the two feet I stood on.

“June, please just sit with me for a minute. We need to talk.”

Oh, my heart. My brittle, broken heart. God, please, not we need to talk. I began racking my brain, unable to calm myself down from the information overload. I grabbed my clothes off his chair, ripping off the pajamas he’d lent me and replacing them with my jeans and shirt as quickly as possible so as not to show him any more of my body than I already had. I needed to leave. Now.

“You’ve known, haven’t you?” I asked as I pulled my hair out of the collar of my shirt. “That night in your room…with Jonah…” I froze. “Oh my god.” I realized just how long he’d been keeping it from me. They’d slid the secret right under my nose as if I were some kind of fucking idiot. As if I weren’t part of the group. But what did I expect? I wasn’t part of the group. Never would be.

“Please. I know it was hard for you to open up to me and I didn’t want to—”

“Don’t tell me what you know about my feelings!”

He leaned in, and I lurched back. Oli swallowed hard, shaking his head, his eyes glimmering as they tinged pink. “I’m not leaving you, June.”

“Now you’re lying about it? You were my first friend in years, Oliver! You forced me open and kept me out!” My voice cracked, and I simply wanted to ball up and sleep forever. He didn’t care enough to let me in. Here I was, standing naked and alone outside my comfort zone, and he was harboring secrets. “When were you even going to tell me? We go home in threedays.”

“I… I honestly don’t know, June.”

I nodded. That was enough answer for me. I trudged to the door and heaved it open without another word.

“No, June. Please don’t do this. No!” Too late. I slammed the door behind me and stomped down the hall, his footsteps following. My face twisted uncontrollably, hot tears blurring my vision and cascading over my cheeks. I lifted my hand to cup my contorted mouth.

Oliver caught up to me. “I didn’t know how to. I was waiting for the right moment. I swear, I was going to tell you, I just didn’t know how to make you see that—”

“All I see, Oliver…” I turned to look at him through a thick wall of water. “Is that you did not take me seriously enough, you did not care enough, you did not trust me enough to simply tell me the truth.”

“But you’re doing exactly what I wanted to avoid!”

“Oh, right! Because I’m fucking crazy. How could I forget? You are such a fucking control freak, Oliver, that you don’t even let the people around you live!”

I turned and continued to walk. Again, he followed.

“Did you ever stop to think that I was scared? Do you understand how terrified I am, June?” He reached for my arm, and I shook it away.

“Terrified of what, Oliver? Of dealing with the consequences of your own actions?”

“Of you!”

I froze, an instant silence falling over the hallway. The gray walls began blurring with the slate color of the carpet, the corridor one long tube of fuzz that I couldn’t quite make out. I didn’t even have an answer to what he’d just said. Those two words absolutely slaughtered me. All I ever was and all I ever would be was a hot-headed, meltdown-prone fucking monster with no friends and no kindness to spare.

“June, I can hardly get you to talk, let alone agree to see me outside of our schedule. Everything is fragile, and I’m terrified.”

So now he was mad that we still saw each other every Tuesday and Saturday even though our project was finished. Cool. What the fuck else did this guy want from me?

“Sounds like a pretty toxic situation if you ask me,” I said, my body devoid of all feeling. “No worries. You’re free.”

“June, plea—”

“Three more days,” I said over my shoulder as I walked away. “That’s it.”

A thick cloud encompassed me so fully that I could hardly hear the sounds of my footsteps as I severed everything between us. It was better this way, and I’d known that from the start. I gave him a hard time to keep him out, and he just kept on trying to weasel his way in anyway. I hoped he was happy with the fucking result.

“I care, June, I promise you that. I take you so, so seriously.” Oliver’s voice trailed into my ear through the haze. “I’ll give you some space to think, and then I’ll come to you.”

Oh, the fucking gall of this guy. My rage began bubbling again. I turned around one last time to point my finger at him, ensuring he saw just how fucking serious I was. “I will not waste another second of my life thinking about you, Oliver!”

“I’ll be thinking about you, June.”

“Do not undermine me! I am allowed to set these boundaries!” I trudged right back up to him until I was standing only a foot away. “You lied. You withheld. You made Jonah cover for you. You did not handle this correctly. And now you disrespect my decision?” I practically laughed aloud.

“June, I’m not saying I wasn’t wrong. I’m saying I refuse to lose you.”

“Lose me? You never had me, Oliver.”

His eyebrows dipped, his mouth hanging for a moment before pushing down a swallow. His voice broke as he whispered, “That’s not true.”

“It is. And it’s a good fucking thing because this would suck if we had real feelings for each other.”

His expression remained frozen as a tear rolled down his cheek. One, single tear. I almost felt bad. I watched it roll, my eyes following it from his eyelashes to his beard.

“You’ll never believe me, will you? No matter how hard I try.”

I thought about what he meant by that for a moment before answering. “I will not.”

I finally made it to the elevator. He didn’t follow me this time.

◆◆◆

“Now what?”I said to the air in full volume. “Oh, fucking fuck. Now what?”

I thought about going to the library, but not even the distraction of books could help me. I was so gut-wrenchingly miserable that I couldn’t even initiate my escape to a fantasy world. It wasn’t enough. I wasn’t at that sweet-spot level of sadness that allowed me to whine about my feelings and use escapism as a funny filler. This weight in my heart was a serious problem.

I stormed through campus, furious and alone. Who was I supposed to talk to? Who was I supposed to think about? I couldn’t return to crushing loneliness. No, I couldn’t handle the imminent dread of free time. There was no way I’d survive it. Someone had to be around. Someone had to talk to me.

As I stomped on the pavement, I hoped I might run into Jonah, though I knew that wouldn’t help. The last person I needed to speak with was Oliver’s best friend. Who was also leaving.

Fuck.

Mary?

No. For what? So she could point me in the direction of a useless frat party?

Daya?

No. I needed a physical person.

I could still smell the events of the last few weeks with Oliver on my hands. I could feel it in my bones. My heart clenched, and I sobbed. Very publicly. He…entered me. Mind, body, and soul, I was ashamed to admit. He took every last piece, yet he didn’t give me every piece of him.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, god, this hurts. What the fuck do I do?”

“Restaurant. Tiff works at a restaurant,” Alana said from somewhere in the air around me.

I smacked myself on the forehead. Alana’s not here, you fucking weirdo.

I fumbled for my phone, trying to remember the name of the place, ignoring the fact that even Tiff, the only person I’d met on this campus who seemed mildly level-headed, didn’t even go to school here.

Shit. Get it together, June.

Victor’s?

Vincenzo’s?

What the fuck was the restaurant called?

Uhm.

Fuck.

Shit.

“Vittorino’s.”

I quickly forced the restaurant name into my phone and called a car, not thinking as I thumped down on the leather seat. But upon arrival, I stepped out into the parking lot and I stopped.

I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I didn’t even know if she’d be working, or if she’d want to see me, or why the hell this girl would have any interest in someone who ditched her invitation for weeks and then showed up once in a bad mood. And she was Oliver’s friend, I realized suddenly. Oh, shit. She was just as much of an improper choice as Jonah was. And I was hysterically crying…

I wiped my finger under my eye.

Yep. Just as I suspected. I pulled away a pointer full of yesterday’s blotchy mascara.

Great.

I was too nervous to take a step toward the entrance. It was—I checked my phone—oh god, it was 10:00 a.m. on a Sunday. I covered my face with my hands and wept as my life came full circle. Would this be the last time I cried in a public parking lot, or was this going to be an every-three-years kind of thing? Because twice before the age of twenty-one seemed a little excessive to me.

But the universe, or Alana, must have taken pity on me, because my savior came running out of the swinging glass doors of the restaurant. “June!” Tiff took me between her arms as if she’d known me forever. I cringed and sank into myself. “Are you okay? Did something happen? Did something happen to Oli?” A new wave of tears overtook me at the sound of his name, and she deduced the issue from my mortifying wails. “It’s Oli?! Oh my god. Tell me he’s okay, please!”

Fuck, coming here was the worst idea I’d had in a long time. Well, second worst. The first was probably fucking my project partner.

“He’s okay.” I sniffled so hard I had to swallow it. “I’m not.”

She calmed slightly, her shoulders drooping. “Come inside, June.” Tiff patted my back and led me through the doors.

Luckily, not many people wanted pasta first thing Sunday morning, so the restaurant was relatively empty. But I was sure I got a couple of looks from the few people seated at the bar, in for their morning cappuccinos. She bustled me through the kitchen and around a few cooks until we reached some sort of back office with cheap-looking walls and furniture that may have been here since the sixties.

“I shouldn’t be back here,” I said.

“It’s fine. Noah’s cousins own the place.” She sat me down in an ugly, cushioned chair just in front of the office desk and took the one next to me. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“You, Noah, Jonah, and Oli are the only people I’ve met at school who I’ve really even liked,” I cried.

She chuckled, perhaps at my childish display, cocking her head and leaning her cheek into her palm. “We really like you, too. One of us, in particular. Why does that make you sad?”

I wiped a hand over my wet, puffy face. “Because Oliver is a coward and a liar. Without him, I don’t have you guys, and I wanted to get to know you all better. And I… Well, I guess maybe I wanted to get to know him better, too. And now I’m back to square one. A lonely loser.” I plopped my hands on the armrests of the chair.

“You’re not a loser. You’re cool as hell. Whether Oli is in the picture or not, I want to get to know you too. Okay?”

She smiled, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Thinking of Oli not being in the picture, thinking of hearing future stories about him from Tiff, hardly put me in an adequate head space to be making proper friends.

I didn’t answer, so she got up and spun out of the room. Through the doorway, I watched her open a fridge and pull out a long, yellow bottle. She then grabbed two shot glasses off a shelf and returned to sit next to me.

“It’s technically a digestive,” she said as she placed the little glasses on the mahogany desk in front of us and served two shots. “But I like the taste of it. It’s not strong.”

Something about the fact that she was giving me early-morning alcohol instead of trying to convince me Oliver was a good guy oddly made my heart sink even more. Maybe I’d really come here subconsciously needing to hear that he wasn’t all bad.

I took one of the glasses, clinked it to hers, and swallowed the brightly colored liquid. It didn’t go down quite as easy as I would’ve guessed. “You’re not going to tell me to go talk it out with him?” I asked solemnly.

“No.” Ouch. The guy must be a real asshole, then. “Not until you tell me what happened, at least.” So there was a conceivable possibility that he could do something bad enough that she wouldn’t vouch for him. Noted.

“He’s dropping out with Jonah and he kept it from me. They talked about it right under my nose, and he still didn’t tell me the truth.”

“Oli isn’t a liar, June.” She shook her head with a serious but loving look on her face. A look like she wanted me to trust her.

“Then he’s a withholder.” I dropped the little glass on the desk and stared at it.

She shrugged. “Well, I’ve never seen him in any type of relationship. I’m not sure he knows how to handle one very well.”

“Yeah, because it comes so fucking naturally to me.” I scoffed, sitting back in my seat. Tiff poured another round and passed me my glass. I took it.

“Have you ever thought about what things look like from his side?” She downed her shot to punctuate her sentence, or maybe to prepare for what she thought might be an angry answer from me.

“Yeah… I… Well, I think he wanted me to give him a chance. So, I did.” I tossed my drink back as well.

“I think it runs a little deeper than that.”

“Deeper?” I asked, my face twisting from the alcohol.

She nodded. “Can I say something as your friend? As in, will you agree to be my friend even after this, meaning I can speak plainly to you?”

“Yikes.” I shifted in my seat and returned my glass to the table once more. “Can’t we be friends without the real talk?”

“I’m afraid not.” She refilled my cup.

I rolled my eyes and sucked down my third swallow. “Fine, friend. Shoot.”

“I think Oli has been very confused by you for some time now. I don’t think he knows how to read your signals, and he’s worried you’ll disappear. So, he treads lightly.” I perked up in my seat to get defensive, but she placed a hand over mine, silently asking me to wait. “Is it possible you two have created an unstable environment together?”

“Not for me. I had just gotten comfortable.”

She twisted her mouth in understanding but didn’t answer.

I sighed. “I appreciate the sentiment, Tiff, but I don’t need to be treated like a ticking time bomb, for starters. And I certainly don’t need to attach myself to someone who’s too scared to tell the truth. It was a fine fling; I’ll give him that. But we’re obviously not on the same page.”

“He’s a twenty-year-old, June,” she said plainly. So was Tiff, I think, though she seemed wise beyond her years. “He’s learning. He’s trying.”

“So, I’m supposed to settle and forgive him?”

“No, god no.” She poured another round, shaking her head. “I date too. I get it. Even being with Noah has its complications.”

“How’d you two meet anyway?” I asked, craving to talk about literally anything else. I grabbed my newly filled glass and clinked it to hers.

Tiff smiled to herself and sat back in her seat as she swallowed her shot. She looked utterly giddy, visibly fond of the memory that sprung to her mind. “We were six. He was a new student at our school, from Minnesota, originally. He had this bouncy ball that he took with him everywhere. I mean everywhere. Or, he has this bouncy ball, I should say. He keeps it in his nightstand now. Anyway, one day, I came around the corner at recess and found him sitting up against the brick wall of the building with his knees in his chest, crying into his hands. Even then, his beautiful, blonde head shone in the sunlight.”

She chuckled to herself. So did I. It was a cute image.

“I asked what happened,” she continued, “and he pointed to the grassy space next to the playground. Some boys were throwing his ball around and laughing. Evil little kids. So, I marched right up to them and gave them a piece of my mind. I pushed Turner Clayton down in the mud and you best believe I got that ball back to Noah. I was asked to stay home for a week because of it.”

“And then?”

“And then Noah was waiting in the entryway of the school when I returned. He said he’d been waiting every day right up until the last minute. He wasn’t sure when I’d come back.”

“Like a little puppy.”

She giggled at that, poking at her shot glass on the desk, watching it slide across the wood. “Yeah. We started doing everything together.”

“So, you’ve been dating since you were six?”

She shook her head. “Not until we were fifteen. We were just friends, but I wanted to practice kissing.” She shrugged. “Turns out we were pretty good at it.”

“For some reason, that really doesn’t surprise me.”

She lifted her eyebrows in lazy agreement. “He’s perfect, June. And when I say he’s perfect, I mean he’s perfect even when he’s slow to catch on, even when I want to relax and he just won’t stop talking, even when he hides things from me because he wants to fix them himself. He’s not just a pretty goofball. He’s a whole person. A goodhearted, passionate, intelligent person.”

I stared at the sliver of yellow liquid that remained in the bottom of the glass between my fingers. “Well, I’m glad one of us found their match.”

She motioned me to set the glass down and poured us yet another round. “I’m just giving you something to think about. Oli is a whole person too, with good parts and bad parts and everything in between. I won’t say he didn’t fuck up. He did. I’m with you on this one, but I also know he acts with good intentions. So, just give it some thought. I’m sure he’s overlooked some of your mistakes, hasn’t he?”

God, I hated that she was probably right. I suppose it was refreshing to get some honesty, though. It had been a long time since someone had spoken so plainly to me. Since someone had dared to speak so plainly to me. But Tiff did, and Jonah did, and Oli did most of the time. Maybe people weren’t really walking on eggshells around me anymore. Maybe I’d become the one who was being too careful.

No way I’d admit that aloud, though. Nor would I let Oliver get away with such blatant disrespect.

“That’s ridiculous. I don’t make mistakes. I’m perfect,” I grumbled, taking the glass from the table.

“Cheers to that, girlfriend.”

Our glasses touched once more, and this shot was a bit easier to swallow.