His shoulders stiffened and then he did as I asked. Cam left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Chapter 20
I didn’t go to astronomy class on Monday or Tuesday. I just couldn’t bring myself to face Cam. Not after I’d seen the look on his face when he realized what the scar on my wrist was from. Not after having to pretend like everything was okay in front of his mom and dad before we left. Even though I’d only known them for a short period, I thought they were wonderful and hated the fact that I was leaving knowing the likelihood of ever seeing them again was low. Not after the tense, never-ending ride home Friday morning or when Cam had followed me up to my apartment and tried to talk to me.
And definitely not after he tried to come over Sunday morning with eggs and I didn’t answer the door.
I spent most of the weekend in bed, my eyes aching so badly from the nonstop sob-fest that I didn’t think was truly over. I’d avoided my phone. Brit texted. Jacob texted.
Cam had texted.
Cam had also tried to stop by Sunday night, Monday night and Tuesday night. Every time he did it was like a punch to the stomach.
I just couldn’t face him, because that look on his face had been as bad as the one on my mother’s.
It had been around five months after the Halloween party when I had decided I couldn’t take it anymore. The onslaught of emails, texts, phone calls, and Facebook messages had been bad, but at school, in real life? In the hallways, the bathrooms, the cafeteria, and the classrooms, people didn’t just whisper about what they heard happened when Blaine and I went into his bedroom. They openly talked about it in front of me. Called me every combination of lying whore you could come up with. The teachers didn’t stop it, neither did the staff.
So me and that picture frame that used to hold the photo of me and my best friend—the same girl who’d called me a slut that very day in the crowded hall at school—had gotten friendly.
My parents could barely look at me before I cut my wrist but after? In the hospital room, Mom had lost it. For the first time in, like forever, she had lost it.
She had stormed into the private room, Dad trailing behind her. Her sharp gaze shot from my face to my bandaged wrist.
Stricken panic had crossed her too perfect features, and I thought that finally, she was going to pull me into her arms and tell me that everything was going to be okay, that we’d get through this together.
That look of pain had given way to disappointment, to pity, and to anger.
“ How dare you shame yourself and your family like this, Avery. What am I supposed to tell people when they find out about this?” Mom had said and her voice had shook as she struggled to keep quiet in the hospital room, but she lost control. The next words were shrieked. “ After everything else, you go and do this? Haven’t you put us through enough? What is wrong with you, Avery? What is God’s name is wrong with you?”
The nurses had dragged Mom out of the room.
Strangely, what I remembered from that night had been that brief look of panic on her face and how I had mistakenly believed it had been there out of concern for me.
That stricken look had been on Cam’s face, and I wanted to be somebody else, because I knew that stricken look would eventually turn into something else, into disappointment, into pity, and into anger.
And I couldn’t bear to see that happen with Cam.
I would do anything to avoid that, even if it meant taking drastic steps. Somewhere between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, I’d made up my mind about the current state of my life.
This… this stuff with Cam had been doomed for failure from the beginning. Could a guy and a girl who were attracted to each other really be friends? I didn’t think so. Things would get too complicated. They’d either act on those feelings or stay away from each other. We had tried to act on those feelings for a hot second. We kissed a couple of times. That was all. And in reality, it wouldn’t have gone further.
I wasn’t sure that I could’ve gone further. Well, especially now I didn’t think so. Cam would eventually move on and I would have an absolutely obliterated heart. Not broken, but completely destroyed, because Cam… he was falling-in-love-with material. And I couldn’t let that happened.
Maybe you already had,whispered an evil, terrible, bitchy voice.
So on Wednesday morning I went to my advisor and made up some excuse about there being too much school work and that I was getting behind. The last day for complete withdrawal from a class had been at the end of October, so to get out of astronomy I would have to take an incomplete.
An incomplete would totally bitch slap my GPA, but the truth was I was doing good enough in the rest of my classes that it wouldn’t kill my overall.
There was a decision to make.
Face Cam and deal with the inevitable broken heart or take the incomplete.
I took the incomplete.
And as I left my advisor’s office, I knew what I’d done wasn’t so much making a decision. I was running. After all, wasn’t that what I was good at? Running?
#
Brit and Jacob attempted to stage an intervention the following weekend. Both showed up at my apartment and if I hadn’t let them in, I was confident they’d beat down my door, or worse, involve Cam.
I sat in my moon chair, staring up at them. “Guys, really…?”
Brit folded her arms, chin raised stubbornly. “We are your friends and obviously you’re facing a crisis of some sort, so we are here, and you can’t get rid of us that easily.”
“I’m not having or facing a crisis.” God, had Cam told them what he’d seen? My stomach dropped, but I told myself he wouldn’t have done that. At least I didn’t think so.
“Really?” Jacob said, returning from the kitchen. “Since you’ve come back from Thanksgiving break, you’ve been walking around like a zombie and not the cool, fast brain-eating kind. You looked like you’ve been crying your eyes out, you’ve been avoiding Cam and all talk of him, and there is nothing good to eat in your kitchen.”
I raised my brow at the last statement. “I haven’t been avoiding Cam.”
“Bullshit,” Brit replied. “I talked to Cam yesterday. He said you won’t talk to him, answer his phone calls or your door when it’s him, and you haven’t been to astronomy.”
A sharp pain sliced across my chest. I almost asked if she had approached him, but figured it didn’t matter. The less I thought about him the better. Not saying his name helped.
Having my two friends give me the third degree about him wasn’t helping.
“Did you guys get into a fight?” Jacob plopped down on the couch.
Had we? Not really. I shook my head. “It’s nothing, guys. We didn’t get in a fight. I just haven’t been in the mood to talk to him.”
She shot me a bland look. “Avery, that’s bullshit, too.”
I raised my hands helplessly.
“Why haven’t you been going to astronomy?” she asked.
“I dropped the class.”
She gaped. “You’ve dropped the class? Avery, the last day to drop was—oh, my God, you’re taking an incomplete?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
Brit stared at me, so did Jacob. “Have you’ve lost your fucking mind, Avery?”
I winced. “No.”
Taking a deep breath, Brit glanced between Jacob and me. “Jacob, can you get back to the dorm by yourself?”
His brows knitted. “Uh yeah, it’s not that far of a walk, but—”
“Good,” she chirped. Leaning forward, she kissed him on the cheek. “See you later.”
Jacob sat there for a moment and then shook his head. He gave me a quick hug before he left. “Why did you kick him out?” I asked.
“Because we need to talk girl to girl,” she replied.
Oh dear.
She leaned forward, clenching her knees. “What happened between you two?”
I struggled to come up with a good excuse for why I was avoiding Cam. “It’s just that I don’t think pursuing a relationship with him is the right thing?”