16. Lilah #2
My throat tightened. I battled against my first instinct to run from the room and tightened my grip on my tray. My stomach roiled like I was trapped on a boat being tossed around by ten-foot swells.
He walked past me with a sad look in his eyes.
I spun around to watch him retreat, confusion and worry gnawing at my gut.
He spoke to the server and waited as the plate was loaded with three times the amount of pasta that had been put on ours. No neat swirl, proving plating made the difference. The heap sloshed meat sauce along the sides as he walked back toward me.
A bolt of terror shot through me that it might be headed my way.
Paige stood beside me and didn’t seem nearly as freaked out as I was. Didn’t she remember what happened last time? My muscles were locked, putting on a perfect freeze response at the center of the room and everyone’s attention.
He stood beside me and looked straight ahead.
“What are you doing?”
“Setting the record straight.”
“Mason, don’t.” I gripped his arm, not knowing what the hell was going to happen.
“It’s less than I deserve.” He dragged his thumb across my knuckles.
I jerked my hand away.
His lips twitched in an almost smile, but his eyes heated when clashing with mine. He tossed his tray away, balancing the plate on his palm. The whole room remained church-mouse silent.
“Lilah was never a stalker. She isn’t a spy. She doesn’t even like hockey.”
Gasps and murmurs from the student body.
He slowly turned in a circle, arms wide with bits of sauce and pasta splatting to the floor around him, giving every inch of the dining hall a good look at the mess.
“She was never even all that into me. But I was very into her. Still am. And she rejected me. That’s when I said some fucked-up shit about her and got everyone to turn on her. So I’m apologizing to Lilah.”
He looked at me. “You’ll never know how truly sorry I am.”
Then back to the rest of the room. “And that’s why I deserve way more than this, even though she’s way too nice to ever do it herself.”
“Mason, don’t.”
His jaw clenched. He raised the plate high and dumped the messy, loose pasta over his head.
Yelps and laughter broke out throughout the room.
I gripped the edge of my tray and backed away, banging into Paige. The attention shifted from Mason back to me.
All the eyes on me only seemed to have more questions in their minds. What had happened between us? What had changed? What was I going to do?
“Like I said, you deserve your revenge.”
“I never wanted this—any of it.” I shoved my tray onto the closest table and bolted out of the room.
“Lilah!” Mason and Paige called after me.
I hid in a library study room with the lights off for the rest of the period. My concussion card for needing quiet dark places hadn’t expired yet, and I emailed all my teachers to let them know.
The words on the pages of my screen and the books in front of me floated and shifted as if written in an ancient, magical language. Studying was impossible when I knew I’d have to turn around and walk these halls tomorrow with even more questions.
I snuck out of the building a few minutes before the last bell, before the student body mass took hold of the hallway.
And the next day, it started all over again.
The non-spaghetti-covered Mason was the bent-knee poster boy for hot guy waiting at your locker. It was hard to pretend he didn’t affect me. I had eyes. And that annoying little flutter annoyed me on the last few steps toward him.
I spun the lock to the first number in my combination. “Haven’t you embarrassed me enough?”
Mason’s head snapped back, and his fingers brushed against my wrist, eyes dipped in concern and confusion. “I wasn’t trying to embarrass you in the dining hall.”
I snatched my hand away, finished my code, opened my locker and grabbed the three books I needed. All under the intense scrutiny of every person who walked by—and Mason. “Whether it’s what you were trying to do or not, it’s what you did.”
“I—I just wanted to let everyone know how much I messed up.
The thread twined between us warmed.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” I said, staring at my books.
“I would never—”
I cut my flinty gaze at him, but softened when he flinched.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “I can’t say that. But I’ll prove it, Lilah. Let me prove it. I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”
“That doesn’t change me being embarrassed. You dumped a plate of spaghetti on your head. Of course everyone’s going to look straight at me. All it did was remind them of what happened to me.”
His face twisted with shock. Like he hadn’t thought of that.
He sagged against the lockers. “You’re right. That was stupid.”
“Can we forget about it? The whole thing?”
“I can’t be let off the hook that easily.”
“Why do you feel like you have to be punished after you’ve screwed up? Can’t you just be better going forward?”
“I deserve to get my shit rocked after making your life hell. I have to pay for it.”
Seconds of silence ticked by. I wasn’t sure how to fix his thoughts and nothing I said seemed to make it better.
I swallowed hard, trying to brush off the dozens of stares pinned to us. “I’m going to homeroom.”
“I’ll walk you.” He shoved off the locker, no longer looking stricken, but determined.
“And if I said you shouldn’t?” Confusion refused to give me even a moment of rest. Fighting against what I felt was like swimming underwater in a rip current when I didn’t know which way to kick to find the surface.
Fighting against the tide only distracted me more. I was more focused on Mason than anything else. What happened when you got stuck in a rip tide? You were supposed to swim parallel to the shore until it was safe to finally swim back in.
A flash of the killer mischievous glint in his eyes, even though his lips barely twitched, made me want to grab on to something to steady myself, but there was only Mason. “I know. Let me get that.” His hand slipped under my backpack.
I kept my hold on the frayed nylon strap. Maybe if we could just coexist again, he’d calm down some. Be friendlier, if that were possible.
His eyes softened, searching my own, and he tugged a little on the bag, but not snatching it away. He was waiting to see what I’d do. What I’d choose, like when he’d offered me the jersey.
The foot scuffs against the floor stopped. I think even breathing had stopped, mine included.
There was a time that I hadn’t wanted to fade into the background. Now I’d love a little of that anonymity back. And walking down the hall with Mason wasn’t exactly the way to reclaim a sliver of invisibility, but for once, I let myself do the stupid thing.
I unclenched my fingers from around my backpack strap.
Mason’s lips softened, corners twitching an inch higher. It was easier for him to show that hard, brutal, biting part of himself than this softness.
The pitch of conversation in the hallway ratcheted up at least double, and the furtive glances became full-on jaws-unhinged, fingers-gripping-their-friends’-arms staring.
“Everyone’s looking,” I whispered and ducked my head.
“Good. I want them to see us.” His self-assured, cool demeanor didn’t seem fazed at all by the hundreds of staring eyes. He lived his life in this fishbowl and would for a long time. I was merely visiting.
He slung my bag onto one shoulder and extended his hand toward me, palm up.
I pretended not to notice and kept my arms plastered to my sides. His free-swinging hand brushed against the back of mine. Again, I tried and failed to ignore the skin-tingling sparks from his knuckles grazing mine.
We stopped at my homeroom door. An awkward little clench tightened in my stomach.
“We’re here.” I turned to face him.
“We’re here,” he parroted back.
And for once, I leaned closer. “Don’t you get tired of the way people stare? Doesn’t it feel like you’re always being watched?”
“I’m used to it. Occupational hazard. Training for when I go pro.”
I exhaled a huff of laughter. “So confident.”
“It’s in my blood.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “You’re going to show up to my locker every day, aren’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Like it was a foregone conclusion.
I stared up at the ceiling, trying to calculate how long I’d be able to hold out. Part of me wanted to see how far I could push things, maybe overwhelm him and get him to back off. “And you’ll be waiting for me at the end of the day too.”
He nodded. “Unless I have a game.”
“Which you also want me to come to…in your jersey.”
A flash of a smile, so irresistible I almost had to grab on to the wall to steady myself.
His heady presence threatened to swallow up all my reservations.
“I’ll wait until you’re ready for that.”
“And if I tell you I don’t want you to walk me to class or drive me to school or rope me into any more school-wide declarations?”
“Then I’ll have to find new ways to prove to you that I’m sorry, I can be good to you, and I won’t ever hurt you again.”
I didn’t know what was scarier—how confident Mason was or that I was starting to believe him.