And Then There Was Victor

Chapter 30

I spent the next week an utter mess. My appetite was gone, I kept reading book pages over and over without having an idea what I had read and it's not that I avoided the boys, it's that I avoided solitary time with Victor. For him not to notice, I invented the most complex bullshit project that kept me in the computer lab for hours. Each time I ran into Yara in the hallway she raised her brow as if to ask 'did you?' and my face constantly looked constipated so the answer was a clear 'no'.

One morning when I checked out of the lab, I found Isla working at the counter. We hadn't hung out as much and she had already moved in with her boyfriend so aside from a passing hello we didn't see one another. She looked up when I greeted her in surprise.

"Hey, how you've been?" I asked and signed my name.

"I didn't see you here, are you hiding? Loverboy was here earlier looking for you," Isla said and I paused, my hand midway from my bag.

"Who?"

"Loverboy, the one you're always with. With the muscles and the tees two sizes too small," she said and leveled me a look, a slight smirk on her red lips. "With the black hair, thinks he's too good for anyone."

Victor.

"Victor." My mouth twisted. "He's not my anything."

Isla's interest peaked and she stared at me with a wry smile. "Wait, are you saying you two are not anything?"

"That's what I'm saying, Isla." I flushed as I stuffed my notebook into my bag.

I watched as the wide Cheshire grin spread on her face as she studied at me with keen interest, her chin on her hand. "But you two -"

"Are nothing," I emphasized. "We're just friends."

"Well!" She shrugged her thin shoulders. "I wish you would've told me that before."

There was something in the way she said it, that coyness mixed with amusement that made my stomach drop into my knees.

"What did you do?" Growing mounting horror spread through me.

Isla pushed her black hair over her shoulder, looking unperturbed. "I said, shouldn't he know where his girlfriend was and not me."

I gasped, covering my mouth with my hands. "Isla!"

"How was I supposed to know?" Isla huffed. "You two are always together, it confuses people!"

"It confuses no one, no one is confused!" I cried, hands in the air. "No one but you!"

People stopped typing in the lab and stared at me. The wild girl. In love with her best friend. 

"Well, he didn't correct me!" Isla defended.

"Because he's shy, he'd never correct you!" I moaned into my hands.

Isla's lip twisted. "You should've clarified, and besides, I'm not the only one who has said this."

At that, I looked up. "Tell me everything."

Isla looked at me doubtfully. "Everything?"

"Everything."

I was going to be sick. Absolutely sick. Apparently, people were talking and in such a small College, which acted as an extended arm of High School, meant everyone knew. I wondered if anyone had said anything to Victor or was he just as oblivious. Regardless, I knew one person would be in the know and that one person was on his phone when I stormed up to him in the Atrium.

He kept looking at his phone. "Good afternoon to you too, sunshine."

"We need to talk," I said, pushing Jon's phone down and making him look at me.