He reaches over and lifts the front of the book so he can glimpse the cover. “Anna Karenina, huh? Does Suzanne Collins know you’re stepping out on her?”
“My reading tastes have evolved,” I inform him, dragging my book closer to the right edge of my desk so he can’t reach it.
I hate how tempted I am to talk to him. I never want to speak to him again after what he did, but then he shows up and makes it so hard to ignore him.
“You like Tolstoy now?”
“I do. You know what I don’t like?”
His lips curve up wryly, anticipating my response before I can utter it. “Me?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t know,” he says, deliberately skeptical. “You seemed to like me just fine when I was balls deep inside of you at Valerie’s house.”
The girl at the desk in front of him spins around to stare, eyes wide.
He knows people are paying attention, the bastard.
I want to kill him.
“Your girlfriend’s house, you mean,” I reply bitingly, letting him see the anger bubbling just beneath the surface.
“Come on, don’t tell me you didn’t like sticking it to her, at least a little bit. You hate Valerie.”
“Not as much as I hate you,” I shoot back sweetly.
“That’s not true.”
He’s right, but I don’t bother letting him know it. Fixing my attention on the interaction taking place in black and white on the pages of my book, I tell him, “We’re done speaking. I’m busy. Go away.”
“This is my assigned seat,” he reminds me. “I can’t go any farther than this.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him to go back to Italy, but it’s too mean.
I’m mad at myself for considering it too mean, but I do.
I don’t dwell on it. I’m still mad as hell and I don’t forgive him, I just refuse to stoop to his level. I refuse to be cruel just because he was.
Even if he deserves it.
“All right, everyone,” the teacher says, her gaze moving around the room. “It’s time to settle down. If you’ll close your mouths and open your minds, we’re going to start the week off right with an introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald...”
Chapter Twenty Six
Riley
“Hey, look what I got!”
I’m on the couch with a textbook open on my lap, a pen and notebook beside me in case I need to take notes.
At the sound of my mom entering the living room—and apparently with something to show me—I turn around to see what it is. She’s holding up a gift card.
“We’ve got $10 worth of free custard, baby.”
“Nice,” I say, flashing her a smile. “Where’d you get that?”
Her enthusiasm drops and her shoulders slouch. “Ugh, stupid, awful PTO meeting.”
“Oh, was that tonight?” I ask sympathetically.
She nods, kicking her heels off and dropping onto the couch beside me. “Those women are vipers.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Awful, awful, terrible, no-good…”
I point to her gift card. “But we get free custard. That’s something, right?”
“Free is an overstatement. Those custards cost six bucks each and we can’t leave Ray home. He hasn’t even had custard before; we have to help him fix his life.”
“And the first step is custard?”
“The second step is custard.” She smirks. “The first step was something you are far too young to know about.”
“Gross,” I tell her. “Also, how old do you think I am?”
“You’re seven and you want a pony for Christmas.”
“This might explain why you insist I’m too young to look at boys,” I say.
“Speaking of boys…”
My eyes widen in alarm. “What? We were speaking of custard.” I redirect her attention to the mom perk she brought home from the PTO meeting. “So, the gift card will actually end up costing us $8.”
She looks over at me, exaggerating her exhaustion. “Everything about the PTO is terrible.”
“I’m sorry. You should quit.”
“That’s the spirit,” she says, but quickly, so she can move on to the topic she was trying to segue to before. “You want to know what else I found out tonight?”
A lone butterfly takes flight in my stomach. “Is it custard-related?”
She shakes her head, her smile tightening into a sympathetic grimace. Her eyes, though. The eyes of a hawk.
She knows.
I accept it for a split second before she says, “Guess who decided to come home for senior year?”
I break her gaze, sighing and looking straight ahead.
“Maybe you don’t have to guess,” she murmurs.
“I was going to tell you.”
“Were you? School’s been back for over a week, hon. Seems like it should have come up by now.”
“I know you don’t like him.”
“Of course I don’t like him. He lied about my daughter sleeping with him before she could drive. What’s to like?”
She’s not wrong, and I’m mad at Hunter for new reasons she doesn’t even know about, but old instincts somehow still come into play. The protectiveness I always used to feel that made me shy away from sharing Hunter with my mom… there must still be some essence of it, because the last thing I want to do is sit here and talk about him with her.
I slide a piece of paper between the pages of my textbook and close it. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “It’s not even worth discussing. Hunter and I aren’t friends anymore. He’s back—so what? It doesn’t matter.”
Regarding me skeptically, she murmurs, “So you said.”
“Well, it doesn’t.” I hear myself being defensive, but I struggle to rein it in.
If she’s heard Hunter is back, I’m terrified she might have heard something else.
“Have you talked to him?” she asks, her tone calm despite my rising hysteria.
I know it’s not her fault, but her questions are making my skin crawl.
It’s my fault. I feel guilty because I have been keeping this from her, and there’s more I’m keeping from her. Worse stuff that I really, really don’t want to talk about.
I get off the couch and busy myself collecting my study materials so I have something to do other than look at her or noticeably avoid her gaze. “Yeah, I guess. Nothing significant, just…”
That’s not a dodge, it’s a blatant lie.
My stomach sinks.
I hate lying to my mom.
“It doesn’t matter that he’s back,” I say, looking up at her as I clutch my books against my chest.
“Yeah, I heard.” Her tone is flat. “Hunter is back and it doesn’t matter—that’s my clear take away from this conversation.”
“Good. It should be.” I drop her gaze, my heart feeling all funny.
“What are you doing?” she asks, glancing at my books clutched to my chest.
“I’ve got some homework to do,” I tell her. “I’m gonna go in my room.”