The Trouble with Kissing Connor

Chapter 23 (Connor)

I stood dead centre in the middle of my room. What had just happened with Sadie at the courts? I rushed to check my phone, but this time not to see if mystery mint kisser had emailed me. I was hoping for messages from Sadie.

None!

I paced a little and then I ran over to my window and looked out. Her curtains were closed, it was late, so she was definitely home. I reached for the pellet gun and fired. My hands were shaking so much that it missed. I fired again. Missed again—Fuck!

I took better aim now, forcing my hands to be steadier. BANG. It hit and I waited for Sadie to pull back her curtain. It felt like I waited forever. I shot again. And again. Still no movement. I was desperate to talk to her.

Then it hit me: she was probably with Jarrod. This was all wrong. Why was she hanging around with that guy? She was supposed to be hanging with me. We should have been in her room right then, eating chocolate and playing video games, Netflixing and chatting. Laughing. Doing what we always did together...

Suddenly, I was unable to put into words what was going on inside my head. Images of Sadie and I staring at each other on the court kept flashing through my mind. That, and other images of time we'd spent together started flicking through my head one-by-one, by one. I was now watching an internal slide show of our entire relationship. From the very start, until now.

I wanted to message her, but I didn't know what to say. And I didn't want to hear that she was with Jarrod either. I sat on my bed trying to calm down, to silence whatever was going on inside me. But whenever I thought of Sadie and where she might be, my heart started pounding and anxiety closed in around me.

I have a tournament tomorrow. I needed to focus. Whatever this was, it couldn't be happening right now... so I pushed it down as far as it could go and walked downstairs to grab some leftovers from the fridge.

**

I'd just managed to fall asleep when the message woke me up. In my frenzy to grab my phone, I knocked it off my table. It fell under my bed and I crawled onto the floor, unable to fish it out fast enough.

It wasn't Sadie. It was Brett. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. And what the hell was Brett doing messaging me at 11:30 pm anyway?

Brett: You need to come over to my house, now!

What the fuck? There was no way—

Brett: NOW!

Connor: No ways. Tournament's tomorrow.

Brett: This is more important. It's about Sadie.

Sudden panic gripped me.

Connor: Is she ok?

Brett: She's fine. But I need you see something. Come to the back door.

I didn't need any more convincing, so I grabbed a warm top, shot down the trellis and started jogging to Brett's house. I was there in about five minutes. I snuck around to the back door where Brett was standing there waiting to usher me in.

"Shhhh." He put a finger over his lips and I followed him through the house, walking as silently as possible. He lead me to the spare bedroom on the far end, aka Brett's edit suit. He'd bought a fancy Mac the year before and set it up in there. Now he spent hours down there making strange little movies and messing around. Once, we were in, Brett closed the door behind us and begun.

"Right, Connor Matthews, I'd like you to take a seat over there." He pointed at the chair in front of a screen mounted on the wall.

"What's going on?"