Chapter 22 #2
Absolutely the hell not. Frankly, maybe this conversation should be a tell-all about our relationship, since he seems so keen on sharing other relationship updates with his mother.
He shakes his head at me again, more urgently this time, and all the blood rushes back into my body.
“I am seeing someone right now, actually,” I say, smiling at his mother. Her eyes widen with some combination of intrigue and alarm. She glances at Harrison, who returns to staring pointedly into his cup of coffee.
“Oh? Tell me more!” She brings the pot of coffee over to refill my cup.
I thank her as she walks back to the pancake station, then continue. “Well, it’s new. It doesn’t feel new, but also, we’re still figuring a lot of things out. Honestly, I’m getting mixed signals.”
Harrison looks like he’s about to melt into the floor. You let me believe a lie, and then you left me, I tell him with my eyes. I trusted you last night, and then you left me alone. If he can read my thoughts, he doesn’t acknowledge it.
His mom continues to ignore him. “Oh? Like what?”
“You know, I’m just not sure he’s invested in us the way I am. That’s how it feels, sometimes.”
Based on the way Millie keeps glancing back and forth between me and Harrison, she seems to know what’s going on here but is continuing to play along to get more information.
She’ll probably interrogate him later, but if he’s going to be an asshole and treat me like a dirty secret, his mom isn’t my problem.
“Well, maybe he’s just not that into you,” Millie suggests.
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe there’ll be someone at your party tonight who would be more interested.”
Harrison finally directly acknowledges me, mouthing the word stop.
“Sorry,” I say, looking at him. “What did you say?”
He clears his throat, eyes jerking toward the kitchen. “Mom, I think the pancakes are burning.”
She scowls, whipping around with her spatula to remove the pancakes from the griddle. Harrison looks straight at me. He doesn’t say anything, but I can read his expression.[*3]
Damn straight.
Before either Harrison or I can say something to break the tension, Millie turns off the burner, throws the spatula into the sink, and stalks off in a wave of burnt-pancake-scented smoke. The door to the primary bedroom slams shut a moment later.
“Why would you do that?” Harrison murmurs.
I force down a swallow. “Why would you treat me like your dirty little secret immediately after we spent the night together? And why didn’t you tell me Stephanie broke up with you? You knew I thought you ended it.”
“Right, because you’ve never misled me either?” he asks, breathing heavily.
I stand up abruptly, leaving the room. Harrison has won this game of musical chairs.
“Sometimes things are complicated, Emma,” he calls out as I walk away. “Sorry you can’t be my priority a hundred percent of the time. I tried that in college, and look where it got us.”
I stomp up the stairs, certain he’ll follow. He has to follow. But when I get to the bedroom we shared last night and sit on the armchair, waiting to hear footsteps, what I hear instead is the door to the downstairs bedroom open and close.
Shit.
I scan the room, looking around at our belongings mingling on the floor and on the bed, our open backpacks next to each other, our toothbrushes next to each other on the sink, peeking in through the door to the connected bathroom. Rumpled sheets, clothes flung onto the rug.
A tropical storm begins to form in my stomach, and I evacuate the chair, grabbing all of my belongings and throwing them into my backpack so quickly and with such little care that I think my toothbrush ends up wrapped in a pile of dirty socks.
It takes me a record two minutes to pack, and as I walk downstairs, I call a rideshare that costs more than what I earn during a shift at Jo Jo’s.
Then again, you can’t put a price on my sanity.
And I need to get out of here before I completely crash out.
Kidding. That’s already happening.
I storm into the living room, wanting to make sure everyone knows about my dramatic exit.
Thirteen minutes away, my app tells me. Outside it is, then.
I can’t spend another second in this cabin, and especially not in the living room, where all I can see are ghostly images of twenty-year-old Harrison making me hot chocolate and curling up next to me under a blanket and talking to me about life and love and chemistry homework.
You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, he’d told me that night.
Just as I reach the front door, Harrison and his mom raise their voices, allowing the words to float through the closed bedroom door.
“No kidding, I don’t like her. No one who hurt my son as much as she did deserves my time of day.”
I think I’m going to throw up.
“It was complicated, Mom.”
“Absolutely nothing was complicated about how distraught you were. You should have been crying happy tears at your graduation, and instead, I had to mop you off the floor.”
I’m absolutely going to be sick. The coffee I drank on an empty stomach while waiting for the pancakes that never came is now sending acid shooting through my veins, and my hands tremble as a loud ringing reverberates through my head.
I’ve made a mistake. I’ve made a big, terrible mistake.
Whipping my phone out of my back pocket, I hit cancel on my ride. Are you sure you want to cancel? it asks. Your driver is already on the way, so you’ll still be charged.
“Shit,” I murmur, watching the driver inch closer. “Shit, shit, shit, shit—”
The door to the bedroom opens and closes, and my startled gaze collides with Harrison’s intense stare.
Skip Notes
*1 Wide eyes · Tense jaw · Shallow breathing | Facial expression | Frequency: low
Flustered shock.
*2 Wide eyes · Jerky movements · Shortness of breath | Facial expression | Frequency: low
Fear.
*3 Softened eyes · Head tilted down · Soft frown | Facial expression | Frequency: low
Guilt.