Chapter Twenty
OfficialEndeavourHigh: Seniors: i hacked in lol
“I think we should talk about what you said.” I speak clearly into the open air, so Esha can hear me through my phone-in-the-cupholder situation. My voice sounds oddly serious.
“Okay.” She doesn’t ask what I mean by what she said. She knows exactly what I’m talking about.
There’s a long pause.
“I think you might be right,” I whisper, like I’m admitting to something horrible.
“Okay,” Esha says again. She doesn’t brag that she knows me better than I know myself, and I appreciate that. She also doesn’t offer any opinion on the matter, which I would appreciate.
“But you know I’m bad at this, Esh. Love.” I turn the wheel to change lanes and realize I forgot to hit my turn signal. Oops. “I don’t know if I want to feel it again. To say nothing of just, like … basic flirting. Basic dating.“
“No, no, no.” She sits up and starts glaring at the phone, clearly preparing to talk with the hands that usually express as much emotion as her face. “You dated a couple of the wrong guys. That’s not a crime. They were bad for you. They were bad to you.”
“Yeah, but—” I try to interject.
“And I hope they both rot in hell. Or I hope they, like, live terrible, boring lives and realize in their mid-forties that they’ve wasted their time on this earth.”
I laugh. She is beyond ridiculous.
“It’s not that serious.” I’m contradicting myself now, and I know it. Because she might want to talk specifics, and I can’t even stand a passing thought about what happened the only two times I’ve ever seriously dated anyone.
“Nova. It is that serious. It was that bad. He made you water yourself down so he wouldn’t be threatened by you. And then the other one made you do everything you didn’t want to do. They both—”
“STOP,” I bark out, as rude as I’ve literally ever been. “Please. I can’t think about that.”
We don’t say their names anymore. Not ever. If Esha mentions them, which she rarely does, it’s just Him and the Other One. The first one was bad; the second one was worse. And ever since, I’ve wondered if I’ll ever be the same again.
“I remember, I promise I do, I …” My voice trails off. I’m not going to cry. Not over them. Fuck them. I sit up straighter in the driver’s seat.
“I think this is why you reached out to Piper. You understand her.”
“Yeah … maybe.” She’s right. I saw Piper going through what I went through a couple of years ago, but much more publicly. And I had Esha. Piper has almost no one.
“I know you haven’t dated anyone for a while. And that’s good. You needed a minute to be by yourself.”
I nod.
“And I have reservations about Hayes. I do. He’s not who I would pick for you to date.
He has hurt you, remember? But if you’re feeling something for him, maybe that means you’re healing, and I will cautiously support you …
while watching him with the binocular vision of a big cat.
Ready to pounce. Ready to eliminate him. ”
“I like him,” I admit quietly.
It scares the hell out of me, but I like him.
“I know,” Esha says. “I said so first.”
I make the turn into the school, with my signal on this time.
“Hey, Nova?” she asks.
“Yeah?” I ask, freeing my phone from the cupholder and realizing I somehow missed thirteen emails on the drive here.
“What about the Beta election?”
I know what she means. If I like Hayes, what happens to this inane rivalry we’ve spent years building? If we become … something, then what happens to that?
“Maybe I’ll have to stop liking him then.”
His car pulls into the space next to mine. His music is so fucking loud. He’s dancing to it so badly that I feel myself smile.
Yeah, maybe I’ll have to stop liking him at some point. But I think it might be safe to like him now, if I’m careful. And if it’s only a little.