10. Gideon
Chapter 10
Gideon
T he next day, I went to class with kiss-swollen lips and the promise of change strumming just beneath my skin.
Fletcher had kissed me until I came in my pants, then he’d left without a word. His departure hadn’t worried me because it was the same way he’d left me the night we masturbated together. Besides, it wasn’t like I’d never see him again. Our assignment was due after lunch, and then…
Who knew what would come next?
For the first time since finding out my parents had agreed to ship me off to Rose Hill Prep, I had an undeniable sense of optimism that maybe…just maybe…my life might end up different than I’d always feared.
I got to class early, and Fletcher was nowhere to be found. We’d agreed no texting, so I couldn’t reach out, and when it was our turn to present, Mr. Smith leveled me with a sharp look and a promise to see me after class. That meeting never came because, midway through class, the dean arrived, escorted Mr. Smith out, and dismissed everyone early.
To call it weird would have been an understatement, but when Dean Malcom stopped me in the doorway, my earlier sense of optimism turned abruptly into foreboding dread.
“Yes, sir?” I asked, adjusting the strap of my bag with nervous hands.
“Your lack of classroom participation has been brought to my attention recently,” he said with a frown. “It’s unfortunate Mr. Smith let it go on as long as he did.”
“I’m sorry. What, sir?”
“I’ve been made aware that you offered no participation in your group final.”
“I spent the past two weeks with Fletcher, sir,” I protested, stepping back into the classroom. “We’ve worked on it every night since it was assigned.”
We’d done more than just work on our paper, but those were secrets between Fletcher and me that no one was supposed to know about.
“Mr. Sinclair turned the paper in before class today,” Dean Malcom said, and the floor dropped out from under me. I had to brace myself against a table to stop myself from falling over. “He advised Mr. Smith that you’d made yourself unavailable to him for the duration.”
I dug my phone out of my pocket, ready to show him Fletcher’s name in my call log, to prove whatever he’d heard was a lie. My lips were dry, though, the wet heat of Fletcher’s mouth long gone.
“We worked on it together,” I said again.
“Can you prove it?”
“You can ask Fletcher!” I raised my voice, fisting my hands at my sides.
“I’ve heard his side and I’ve seen the work he did on his own so he didn’t fail. What can you show me, Mr. North?”
This was absurd.
Dean Malcom was lucky I wasn’t one of those “you’ll be hearing from my father” kind of kids, but I did take the time to remind him who’d just paid for their new library while I fought my way into my bag to pull out the notebook Fletcher and I had been working out of for the last two weeks.
It wasn’t there, of course. And somehow, in my bones, I knew it wasn’t going to be in my room either.
“I can’t,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I’m going to personally review the rest of your coursework, Mr. North, and then I’ll determine if you pass or fail this class.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I slung my bag back over my shoulder and headed for the door. I was going to find Fletcher and find out what the hell had happened from the kiss to now.
“And Mr. North?”
I stopped, not turning around.
“Your family might have paid for the library upgrades, as you so kindly reminded me, but my office isn’t in the library.”
I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled and stormed off toward Fletcher’s dorm. He was there, because of course he was, leaning against the closed door with his legs crossed at the ankle and his arms folded in front of his chest. His backpack sat at his feet, zipped up neatly and undoubtedly housing the notebook with all of our work in it.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Fletcher looked up at me, eyes red-rimmed and expression heavy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he drawled.
“You’re outside your room waiting for me,” I said. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Oh.” He tried to look casual, straightening his spine. “Are you talking about our little group project?”
“Oh, so you admit it is ours?”
“I didn’t turn in our work,” he said.
“Right. You told them it was yours. You got the Dean involved?” My voice lifted to an embarrassingly high octave, and my cheeks burned with embarrassment.
“I didn’t get the Dean involved. Would you calm down? You’re making a scene.”
“The Dean escorted Mr. Smith out of class this morning so you did something .”
A flash of—something—lit up Fletcher’s face, but just like so much between us, it was gone before I could get used to it, let alone make sense of it.
“What did you do, Fletcher?” I asked again. “Why did you do it? I thought…”
He huffed a sad laugh, mouth twisting into the cruelest smile I’d ever seen on anyone, including my father.
Fletcher leaned down, bringing our faces close together and my first reflex was to kiss him. I could still feel his lips on mine, his hands in my hair.
“What did you think, Gideon?”
“I…” Tears welled up in my throat, and I snapped my mouth closed before I did something I’d regret more than the things I’d already done.
“I,” he repeated, mocking me.
I screwed my eyes closed, taking a step away from him.
Fletcher laughed at the way I recoiled from him, a sharp-edged noise that had us both reeling away from each other at the sound of it.
“Did you think that because you got off in front of me that there was something special between us?”
“We kissed,” I whispered. “I thought?—”
“Whatever you thought, you thought wrong.” Fletcher bent over and picked up his backpack, blinking hard and shifting his stare to a point on the wall behind me.
“I thought we were at least…friends.”
“We’re not friends,” he sneered. “We’re Fletcher Sinclair and Gideon North. That’s all we’ll ever be.”
He was right, and I hated him for it. But nowhere near as much as I hated myself.
Fletcher gave me a fleeting look, his nose scrunched up at me in disgust. I blinked, hating the way a tear escaped from the corner of my eye, but there was no way he was telling me the truth. With my eyes closed, I could recall the touch of him against my fingers, the way he’d smile at me when he didn’t think I was looking. I could remember the way his fingers felt in my hair, his tongue in my mouth.
He was right that we weren’t friends, but for two weeks…we hadn’t been enemies.
Or so I’d thought.
Before I could arrange the words to tell him that, he gave me one last look with those tired blue eyes of his, then he walked away from me without so much as a single glance back.
And I didn’t see him again for six and a half years.