Chapter 24 #2
Jaden chuckled. “Yeah, Gemma. I know you. I mean, you’d always talk about it with Morgan. I meant to bring it up earlier, but…” He laughed again, though this time it was much more awkward-sounding. “You’ve been a little different lately. Quieter.”
I placed my sneaker on a crack in the sidewalk, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. “I didn’t notice.”
He shifted his weight on his feet. “That’s kind of what I mean, Gemma. Even now. I feel like you look at me less.”
I forced myself to shift my attention up. “I look at you.”
“Not like you used to.”
The air was cold, much colder than it’d been when I first stepped out of the house.
With us standing here waiting for the bus, regarding each other solemnly, it felt like the beginning of an end.
I knew it was a tie I needed to cut, but I was too afraid of the side effects.
This would be the end to the era of calmness, because once I said what I needed to, everything would be thrown into a tailspin.
“Things feel different,” I conceded finally, curling my hands into little fists at my sides. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
Jaden leaned forward. “You don’t like me anymore, do you?”
I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t sure I liked him in the first place. I should’ve at least had the decency to look up at him when I said it, but like he’d focused on my chicks, I focused on his Canadian flags. “I like you as a friend. I just don’t think I…like-like you.”
I could practically hear my house of cards whoosh as it began to topple.
I could hear Mom’s voice now, demanding to know why I’d turned down such a boy, a boy they’d tried to plan my future with.
She and Mrs. Morris talked about it in the way moms do, with tittering quips and whispered teases.
Living with that had been another version of keeping my head down and keeping my mouth shut.
Letting it happen because the flipside was too hard.
Jaden’s lips stretched into a smile, one that then morphed into a wide grin, and then he laughed. He actually laughed. “Gemma,” he began, shaking his head. “I don’t like-like you either.”
I blinked, waiting, but he didn’t follow up with anything else. The words lingered in the air between us like the condensation of an exhale. “You…don’t?”
Jaden stuffed his hands into his pajama pants pockets, rocking on his heels.
“I like you as a friend, too. I always have. I know our parents really pushed for the opposite, and I guess for a while I thought you wanted that, too. I—well, I was never really that bothered, and it wasn’t like I had anyone else or anything, and you’re a good friend to talk to and stuff, but I—”
“You don’t like me?”
Jaden gave a nervous chuckle, glancing around as if this were a trick question. “Not like that, no.”
I curled my arms tighter around myself, as if that could help me through my confusion. “But—you kissed me. In the eighth grade.”
“You can kiss someone and not feel anything for them,” he said, like duh.
“You walk me to the bus every day.”
“Your mom asked me to do that. And I have to ride the bus anyway, so it works out.” He laughed. “Our parents really wanted us to be together, I guess. Both of our parents. I think they liked the idea of having control.”
It was almost startling how much he hit the nail on the head with that, at least with my parents. There was no risk with Jaden.
My brain seriously couldn’t wrap around the fact for a long, long moment.
Not because I thought I was hot stuff or anything like that, but because I’d never even thought to wonder whether or not Jaden liked me romantically.
From how hard our parents pushed us together, and for how attentive he always was, it never even crossed my mind that he’d been in the same boat as I’d been, with his decisions made for him.
“Can we keep this a secret from our parents?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t think my request was weird. “For a little while?”
Jaden mimed zipping his lips shut. “Don’t worry, I’m looking forward to setting them straight about as much as you are.”
“So not at all?”
“Bingo.”
Mrs. Savion rumbled up with Bus 32 at that moment, stopping beside Jaden and me at the curb. Like always, Jaden let me walk on first, and he sat down beside me on the seat. “I always wondered how awkward this conversation would be, eventually.” He nudged my leg. “Turns out, not that bad.”
“I can’t…” I shook my head, but the bewilderment still didn’t clear. “Morgan’s going to freak, you know.”
“You can tell her.”
“Uh-uh.” I elbowed him in the side. “You can.”
Jaden swayed from side to side beside me, ultimately leaning in. “Do you think I should ask her to homecoming?”
I shoved him again, unable to keep a shocked laugh from escaping. “I can only handle so much shock in one day, okay? Ask Morgan…” The bus bounced with a pothole that jostled us together, and I ultimately sighed. “She’d probably say yes. If you asked her.”
He grinned at that, which caused me to scoff again. This was a day for shock, apparently. I wasn’t sure how to look at Jaden now that I knew he didn’t have feelings for me, and I definitely didn’t know how to look at him if he had feelings for Morgan. Too, too weird.
Mrs. Savion stopped at a street that picked up a few boys, and Jaden looked up at them as they passed. “If it’s okay with you,” he began tentatively, “I’m going to go sit with Trevor and the guys.”
I wasn’t overly sure who “Trevor and the guys” were, but I nodded. “See you at lunch?”
“See you then,” he said, and then he hurried into the bus’s aisle, trying to get into a seat before Mrs. Savion picked up speed. I turned around to watch him maneuver toward the back, feeling like with every step, a weight rolled off my chest.
Of all the things to happen that Monday, that was one of the best things.
My house of cards didn’t tumble. Instead, it was an amicable way of tearing down the awkward wall between Jaden and me, one that opened new doors.
I liked the idea of him not being tied to my parents, tucked in their pocket—it was almost like I could look at him with new eyes now.
Mrs. Savion pulled up to Vista Villas, letting Hudson climb aboard.
My heart rushed into high gear at the sight of him, tousled blond hair and sleepy-looking eyes.
Seeing him caused everything that happened Friday night to rush back, especially him reaching out and clasping my cheeks, drawing my lips to his.
His eyes fell on the empty space beside me now, but even though I patted the seat, he still sat in the one across from me. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I thought we needed to hide it from your friends.”
“Jaden’s in the back.” I patted the seat again, giving him my best impression of puppy-dog eyes. “I won’t bite.”
I never would’ve guessed the puppy eyes would’ve worked on him, but then again, it wasn’t true that his heart was made of ice.
The Grim Reaper’s, maybe, but not Hudson Bishop’s.
He collected his things with a sigh, and as quickly as he could, he slipped across the aisle and into the space beside me.
His shoulder brushed mine, and then his thigh did as he shoved his backpack down by his feet.
“I think this is the first time I’m seeing you in pants,” he said, taking in my chicks. “It’s different.”
“Where are your pjs, Mr. Ripped Jeans?” I asked, reaching out and brushing my fingertip across the tear that flared over his knee.
“I’m more comfortable like this.”
“It’s not scary enough for the Grim Reaper to wear pajamas to school?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Not really.”
His hands were in his lap, and mine were still awkwardly wrapped around my backpack, and no one would’ve even guessed we’d kissed Friday night.
Everything that’d happened on Friday happened under the cover of night, when inhibitions were low, or whatever.
However, that did leave me wondering, with a little seed of panic, whether or not he regretted it.
Hudson cleared his throat. “You know, I realized over the weekend—I don’t even have your number. I couldn’t even text to see if you were a total zombie.”
“I definitely was,” I said, and then I pulled out my phone. “Here, let me put your number into my phone.”
We rode the rest of the bus route with my headphones plugged into my MP3 player, one earbud in my ear, the other in Hudson’s.
He mostly skipped through the songs and commented on ones he knew—“oh, you listen to Untapped Potential, too?”—but it was a simple interaction that started the Monday morning beautifully.
Mrs. Savion pulled into the lot and the bus rocked as all the students climbed to their feet.
Through the dirty window, I could see Superintendent Filmore standing by the doors that led into the school like he always did, smiling at everyone who walked in.
He looked like such a happy old man that it was hard to see him as the guy who was trying to sink Hudson’s ship and take him down.
Hudson shifted into the aisle first, and I edged into the aisle right behind him before the other students could stampede past.
“Slow down, Mr. Kessinger,” Mrs. Savion scolded as I passed her, and she glared off behind me. “You boys have too much energy for the morning, I swear—”
I pulled my backpack around the front of me to shove my MP3 player inside the small front pocket, and I’d just taken the step off the bus toward the sidewalk when a student shoved into my back.
It pitched me forward unevenly, and my ankle twisted where it landed on the sidewalk, pain shooting up the tendon. My backpack hit the ground, contents spilling everywhere, my palms jarring against the concrete.
People were shouting around me, but the words were all masked by the ringing in my ears. For a long moment, I sat there, braced against the cold concrete, feeling the strongest sense of déjà vu.
A large hand curved around my upper shoulder, and then I tipped my chin up, meeting Hudson’s vivid blue eyes. “You okay?”
“I think I twisted my ankle,” I said through my teeth, and even though I didn’t put any pressure on my foot, it throbbed along with my racing heart.
Mrs. Savion was berating Mr. Kessinger in the background, no doubt who’d bulldozed into me, and Jaden dropped down beside me to help collect a few of the contents from my bag. My MP3 player was among them, and I didn’t have hopes that it survived the kamikaze.
Hudson glanced around, too, to see if there was anything he needed to pick up, when he stiffened.
Pencils, erasers, and a few coins had fallen out, but following Hudson’s gaze, I saw what his attention fell on.
A purple pocketknife shined like a beacon on the concrete. In the fall, the button must’ve gotten pushed, because the shiny, iridescent blade glimmered in full view.
Hudson’s pocketknife. The one I never took out of my bag.