“What,” I say, and swallow, trying to sound normal. “Did Gideon do that you think he needs to apologize for?”
I’m afraid I know the answer, and it feels like the bottom dropping out, like tiny barbs in my heart. Cut off. Oh fuck. Oh, god.
“For you, mostly,” Matt says, just as William says, “He was disrespectful.”
“Good,” I say, and feel like someone else is talking. “You don’t deserve his respect.”
William gives Matt a significant look. “Told you,” he says, softly.
“You’re going to die alone,” I tell William, because I can say whatever I want now. “You’re going to drive away anyone who’s still got the ability to love you, and when the shriveled husk of your heart finally stops beating, you will be alone in this world. And I hope I can feel it when it happens.”
There’s a blanket of silence in this over-bright high school lobby. It settles and stretches, my brain echoing, and I try to convince my feet to move out the door but William is staring at me, ugly with anger, and Matt is staring over my shoulder and looking slightly alarmed and—
I can sense what’s happened a moment before I actually turn to see it.
It’s Gideon. He’s standing in the doorway, the door slightly propped behind him. I didn’t hear it open, and I have no idea how long he’s been there, and I’ve been shouting at his family and doesn’t that prove what they’ve been saying about me?
“Hi,” I manage, my chest clenching so hard I can barely breathe.
“Hi,” he says, wide-eyed and stock still.
I stare, desperately trying to think of something to say that isn’t just fuck fuck fuck fuck. His eyes flick over my shoulder and then back to me and he’s—wary and uncertain and maybe hurt and a whole lot of ways I didn’t want to make him feel.
“Listen,” I say, and jerk a thumb over my shoulder, toward the school. “I’ll just call Lucia—”
“Andi—”
“—it’s fine, don’t worry about it, I’ll. You know. A ride.” I’m babbling and walking backwards, and then I point haphazardly toward a hallway and power walk toward it before I can think or speak or do anything else.
“Andi!” he calls, but I don’t slow down because all I want is to be away, to hide in a hole and not come out maybe ever because I did this. He’s not on speaking terms with his parents and it’s my fault. If only I had been better, somehow. A little less me and a little more of a sweet, smiling girl who bakes pies and keeps a household running smoothly.
Behind me, William or maybe Matt says something I can’t quite hear, but I do hear Gideon snap I thought we weren’t talking and it doesn’t make me feel better. I don’t hear whatever else he says because I’m off, turning corners and pacing through hallways, closed door after closed door in the high school I never attended.
I think, wildly, that I could really run. I could escape upstairs or out a door. I could walk into the woods that surround the school on three sides and Gideon wouldn’t be able to find me, probably. I could move back to New York and go on with my life and never have to look into his pretty eyes again. I could live my life and never face up to the fact that I’m exactly who his family thinks I am, and he’s the worse for it.
But then I turn another corner and it’s a dead end, tile and cinderblocks and closed doors and forest-green lockers. Fluorescent lights and drop-tile ceiling. I wish I’d never seen William Bell again, and I slump against the lockers.
They’re cool behind my shoulder blades. Breathe in, then out. I just need a few minutes, that’s all. I’ll collect myself and go back and apologize and it will be fine, perfectly fine, like it was before. In, out. Except: how long has Gideon not been on speaking terms with them? How could I not know, not tell? This happened because of me and he never said anything?
Why the hell didn’t he say anything?
I’ll fix it. I just—need a minute so I can calm down and fit the lies to my mouth so they don’t sound quite so outrageous. It’s not lying, not lying lying, if it’s for a good reason right? Not lying if no one can prove it. I know how it is, with family, how you dislike them and also need them and how complicated and totally fucked it can be.
“Andi,” says Gideon’s voice from the end of the short hallway.
I drag a breath into my lungs. “Hi,” I say.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” he says, because of course that’s the first thing he says. I roll my eyes without really meaning to.
“You’re welcome to leave.”
“I’m not letting you get locked in a high school overnight.”
“That’s not what would happen,” I say. “It’s got the doors that push out or whatever. I’d escape just fine.”
He sighs and pushes his hands a little deeper in his pockets and looks around like he thinks a SWAT team is going to descend at any moment.
“There aren’t even metal detectors in this high school,” I point out. I sound a lot sharper than I mean to. “No one is going to come arrest you for standing in a hallway a little while after the school closes, so just chill the fuck out.”
“I need to chill out?” he asks, low and gruff. “Andi, what is—fuck, did I do something?”
“You didn’t tell me your parents disowned you!” I say, waving an arm in his direction. “You didn’t say anything! And you let me just carry on, bitching about your sisters and everything, and--fuck, Gideon, what the hell?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” he says.
“You should have told me this!”
“Why? Does it matter?”
I don’t have an answer for that, so I stare at him. Gideon glowers back, and somewhere in the back of my mind, the part of me that’s been paying attention in therapy for twenty years is saying this is a very stupid argument that you’re only having because you’re in emotional distress.
“I don’t know!” I shout anyway, and push myself to my feet. “If my parents had stopped talking to me when I told them we were dating, I’d have told you about it!”
“That’s different.”
“How?!” I shout and Gideon glares harder, his jaw flexing under his beard. Now we’re three feet away from each other, both standing. Despite myself, I think of all the ways that my parents and his are, in fact, completely different. I take a deep breath.
“Seriously?” he asks, and I scrub my hands over my face.
“I can’t do this,” I say, and everything goes dead silent.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
GIDEON
These big municipal buildings sound strange when there’s nothing to hear. Clicks and groans and sounds echoing from God knows where; sighs and the sound of vents shifting, the ghosts of sneakers scuffing on linoleum.
“What does that mean?” I ask her, twenty seconds later, in the cacophony of silence.
“This,” she waves an arm around as if that explains fucking anything. “I can’t—look, I’m fucking it up, this is going so bad. I’m sorry. I just—sorry.”