The Education of Hailey Kendrick - Eileen Cook [49]
I shifted in the seat, turning my shoulder to my new stalker, and tried to focus on the book. I read a few lines, but my eyes kept darting back to the reflection to see if the person was still watching. Finally I turned around so I could see who it was and hopefully embarrass them into moving along.
My eyes went wide. It was Tristan. He sat at one of the long tables, just staring at me. He didn’t have any books with him; he wasn’t even pretending to do anything else. The book I’d been holding slipped out of my hands and smacked loudly onto the marble floor, making me flinch. Tristan stood and shuffled over. I pulled my knees up so there was room, and he sat across from me in the window seat, our feet lined up in the middle and our knees making two mountains to separate us.
“You okay?” Tristan asked, his voice low and quiet even though we were the only ones in the library.
I nodded. “You okay?” My heart was beating fast. We were having an actual conversation. No ignoring each other, no screaming, just talking.
He shrugged and looked out the window, his reflection staring right back at him. “Some people are saying you snapped this morning and Dean Winston found you wandering around and brought you back.”
“Not exactly. I couldn’t handle the dining hall meeting thing, so I bolted. I went into town for a while to think. I came back on my own.”
“You skipped classes?”
“Can you believe it?” I asked, trying to make him laugh, or at least smile. Tristan used to tease me about being a rule follower. He would say there was never a guideline I didn’t embrace.
“These days there are a lot of things about you that I can’t believe,” he said, looking at his lap.
So much for trying to lighten the mood. “I’m sorry. I really, really am.”
“What do you want to happen now?” Tristan picked at the hem on his sweater, pulling a thread loose. “Do you want to be with this guy?”
“No.” My heart sped up, and I was glad I wasn’t hooked to a lie detector test. I didn’t want to date Joel. I was almost sure of it, but I couldn’t deny there had been something that night, and that meant I was attracted either to Joel or to the idea of kissing someone else.
“Do you want us to get back together?”
My heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t tell if he was asking me out of curiosity or if he thought he might be able to forgive me. Suddenly I had an image of Drew sitting at Denny’s telling me that what I really wanted was to break up with Tristan. I shook my head slightly to clear his voice out of my mind. Getting back together with Tristan would be a huge step forward to getting my life back.
“I never wanted us to be apart,” I said softly. I touched his wrist. He didn’t pull away, so I left my finger resting there. I could feel his pulse just below the skin. “I want to be able to explain, to give you a good reason for everything that’s happened, but I don’t have a good reason. I screwed up.” A tear ran down my face, and I wiped it away quickly. I didn’t want him to think I was relying on guilt.
“You want me to say it’s okay, that I forgive you, but it’s not that easy. I always felt I could trust you, and then this happened. Everything feels upside down.”
“I know.”
“What do we do now?” Tristan asked.
I felt a brief flash of annoyance. Why did I always have to be the one to make decisions? What was I supposed to say? Was the choice over whether we got back together really in my hands? I always picked the movies and where we went to eat. Wasn’t this one of the decisions