Mess To Be Made

45

I've never done this before.

I've navigated plenty of Mondays after a weekend hookup. So many that I was well-rehearsed. I knew the lines. I knew the staging. I knew how to act. I knew when to smile, when to flirt, when to ignore, and, most importantly, when to shut it down and take my bow.

That, I knew. But this...

It was like being cast in a play I'd never even auditioned for. And now it was opening night, and I was about to walk onstage with a foggy mind and shaking hands. Drowning in complete and utter stage fright.

I've never done this before.

I've never dealt with being at school with a guy I actually like. Someone who's made my heart race and my toes curl from just a simple look. Someone who's heard words I've never spoken before. Someone who's witnessed my façade crumble around me with painstaking vulnerability.

How was I supposed to act around someone who's seen all that, while surrounded by people who I've singlehandedly convinced otherwise. People who I've spent years molding to believe I wasn't even capable of feelings like that. To the point where even I believed I wasn't capable of feelings like that.

Feelings like... how I actually felt.

Feelings. A lethal disease I was now diagnosed with. No known cure. I'll be lucky if I make it out alive.

So when I pulled into the parking lot this morning, I was easily the most scared I've ever been on a Monday after an eventful weekend. The show was about to start, and I still didn't even have a fucking script.

There was only one thing I did know. One thing I always knew to be true, no matter the circumstance. Some way, somehow, word always got out. So my first, and really only, order of business was alerting Lindsay and Rachel. Before they found out from someone else.

"I have to tell you guys something," I said after settling in the backseat of Lindsay's car, the churning in my stomach like a blender that had just been put on the highest setting.

What would they think about it? Would they be happy? Disapproving? He wasn't in our friend group. He wasn't even on most people's radar.

"Finally," Rachel drawled, kicking her feet up on Lindsay's dash, who immediately swatted at her legs. Lindsay liked to keep her car impeccably clean.

I squinted. "Finally?"

Lindsay turned to me with gentle doe eyes and a delicate smile, like she was about to confess to her child Santa wasn't real for the first time. "Well, you've been kind of... distant."

Rachel snorted and I watched her give Lindsay a reprimanding glare. My eyes immediately narrowed even further.

"Okay, okay... boring," Lindsay confessed.

"Both," Rachel finished.

Distant and boring.

I leaned back in the leather seat and crossed my arms over my chest. "Fuck you guys. I haven't been boring. I've just been busy."

"Oh yeah, so busy at Club Library with lover boy."

Lindsay was now the one to glare at Rachel scornfully, but I realized that Rachel wasn't completely wrong. Comparatively speaking, my daily life had become uninteresting. I used to always have something. A new guy I'd taken interest in. A former guy I'd been warding off. A snippet of gossip about Rory. An update about boys from Sean.

But now? I spent most of my time in the library with Tyler and Scott. Or catching up—and indulging in maybe a hit or two of a joint to get me through fifth period with the devil reincarnates formally referred to as Rory, Landon, and Blake—with Cory.