Chapter 12 #2
Someone who’s at least capable of loving. Unlike him.
“So then what happened? Why have you been so sad?”
Sad.
Yeah, I’ve been that.
I don’t know how to stop being sad at the thought of falling for someone else.
“It’s just…” I bite my lip. “He gave up soccer and he’s working for his dad. That’s how he got me off the hook.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“But Callie, that’s like…”
“I know.”
“Huge.”
I sniffle. “Yeah.”
“Are you sure he’s not in l–”
I cut her off. “Yeah, I’m sure. This is what he does.
He did all those sweet things before and I fell for them and…
” I shake my head. “I can’t. Not again, Wyn.
I can’t forget what he did. I can’t forget how he broke my heart.
No matter how hard I try and… It’s just my stupid broken heart that still. ..”
Beats for him.
I can see Wyn is blinking too and I know she’s doing it to keep her tears at bay. “Hearts are stupid, aren’t they? Foolish little dreamers.”
I chuckle sadly. “Yeah.”
“So your heart wants him then.”
I bite my lip again. Harder this time. Much harder, so I can stop the thundering in my chest. This wave of ache and need.
“I’m not listening to it,” I tell her. “I listened to my heart once and it didn’t turn out so well.”
Wyn nods. Then, “And what about the other stuff?”
“What?”
“You know, you’ve been sick a lot. And you haven’t been to your studio.”
Oh. That.
When I said there’s something wrong with me, I meant that there’s something wrong with me on multiple levels.
Levels like my stomach is acting weird this week.
I’m either ragingly hungry or I’m throwing up or feeling nauseated.
Especially around my favorite things, coffee and bacon.
The bacon thing really saddens me because I don’t get to eat it that often anyway because of my stupid diet.
So I savor it whenever I eat it, but I can’t even do that anymore.
I do fantastic with arugula or kale. Even lettuce.
Things that I’ve had to eat because of my diet but have never really liked in the past.
So I don’t know what’s happening there. It actually snuck up on me a few days ago.
Not to mention, I’ve been so tired, bone tired lately.
So much so that ballet and practice and exercises are the last thing on my mind, which is fine because I already sent in my Juilliard application but still.
I can barely drag myself out of bed in the morning and stay awake in classes after lunch.
I feel like my body is swollen and heavy and I just want to sleep till the end of time.
“Maybe I’ll go next week,” I say and smile reassuringly.
Hopefully I’ll be better next week, won’t I?
I have to be.
This can’t go on forever. Especially when this is what I want. Especially when it’s been three weeks since that night.
But hours later, long after Wyn has gone to sleep, I’m still awake.
I’m tossing and turning, so hot and so uncomfortable in my skin that I decide to sneak out. Coincidentally, it’s a Thursday and so a perfect night for sneaking out.
I’m not going to the studio though because I don’t have the energy or any will to dance, but I need some fresh air. So I creep out of the room, scale the fence and wander into the woods.
I walk aimlessly, my feet kicking up the leaves, crunching them, my fingers grazing the rough bark, the branches, trying to get rid of this nausea that has suddenly crept up.
I even walk over to the tree. The tree.
Just by the side of the road. Where he kissed me.
I’m an idiot for doing that. I know.
But I just wanted to see it. I just wanted to touch it.
As soon as I do though, I snatch my hand back, disgusted with myself, and walk away, ready to go back to my dorm room, when I hear something.
Tires screeching. Bang of a car door shutting.
Footsteps.
Loud and thumping.
I can hear the crunch of the leaves. I can feel the force of the heels stomping the ground right in my chest.
Strangely, I know it’s him.
I already know it so I dive for the tree just by my side and hide behind it. I hunch my shoulders and try to shrink my body, try to make myself smaller because I don’t want him to see me.
I don’t.
What is he doing here? Why has he come?
He’s looking for me, isn’t he?
He’s come to find me when he promised. He promised he wouldn’t.
Yet he’s here on a Thursday at midnight.
God, Reed.
I ignore my fluttering heart. I ignore that it soars in my chest, that a rush goes through me. At the fact that he’s here.
I slowly look over my shoulder from where I’m hiding. I dig my nails into the bark when I see that he’s striding down the path that I take to and from the fence. He’s going to that spot, the spot from which we sneak out.
I showed him that spot the other night.
That night.
He actually carried me to that spot. After. In the rain.
Like I was his doll or something.
And I held on to him like I’d never let go. I burrowed my nose in the side of his neck, in the triangle of his throat, trying to fill my lungs with his scent for the last time.
He kept smelling me too, pressing his hot mouth on my forehead, breathing me in and breathing out.
I want to do that right now.
Jump into his arms so he carries me. Rub my nose in his hoodie, smell him, have him smell me.
Kiss me.
But I stay put as my stomach churns.
As I watch Reed march over to the fence, that I can only partially see through the trees.
As I feel dizzy.
Pressing my spine to the tree to keep my balance, I put a hand on my stomach and God, it feels so warm.
I don’t remember my belly ever being so heated.
Why is it so hot?
But I don’t have the time to think about it right now because he’s come to a stop. Right at the spot in the fence where I asked him to let me down and where he watched me scale it and leave him to go back to my dorm.
Like he was really my Romeo and I was really his Juliet, sneaking back to my room.
In this moment, my Romeo is watching the fence, running his hands through his hair.
His shoulders and back are shifting with what I think are agitated breaths and his stance is wide, battle-ready.
As if he’s going to tear the fence apart, take it down brick by brick, demolish it, all with those hands that are messing up his overly-long hair.
My belly lurches and churns and bile rises up my throat.
And oh my God, I think I’m gonna throw up.
I think…
Reed turns around then and looks in my direction, or rather where I’m hiding.
And quickly, I duck even more behind the tree.
I clench my eyes shut, put a hand on my mouth to muffle the sounds of my breaths. The hand that’s on my stomach, I press it even more as if I’m trying to stop whatever the heck is going on inside my body.
Whatever the heck makes me want to throw up right now and all the time, and that repels bacon and coffee and that makes me…
Wait a second.
Just wait a freaking second.
I’m throwing up all the time. I’m tired and I’m depressed and I smell everything and everything makes me nauseous.
And I can’t remember the last time I had my period and wasn’t I supposed to get a period a few days ago?
But maybe that’s fine. Maybe I’m just a little late.
It doesn’t mean anything, right?
My stomach churns and roars and I can feel him running his eyes frantically over the area. I can feel him looking for me, hunting for me, and it’s getting harder and harder to stop this chaos in my stomach.
Oh God.
Please, Reed. Please, please, please.
I’m not sure what I’m pleading for. Am I pleading for him to leave or to find me or to tell me that whatever I’m thinking, whatever I’ve discovered about my body is false?
Maybe I want him to tell me that it’s not right.
That it can’t be.
There needs to be some other explanation. That it can’t be what my body has been trying to tell me for the past few days.
But he doesn’t do any of that.
He doesn’t find me and tell me that it’s all going to be okay, no.
He leaves.
Just as he’d come, out of the blue, almost jogging up to the fence, he walks away from it. I hear him leave. I hear his footsteps thumping and retreating.
Until I can’t hear them anymore.
Until I open my eyes and fall down to my knees.
Then I throw up on the ground, my heart rebelling over letting him go and my body rebelling over what we did three weeks ago.