Hopeless(26)

I snap out of my trance and finish pulling my running shoes on. At least our tiff in the hallway yesterday was left unresolved. He won’t be running with me today because of it, and I’m pretty relieved about that. I need the quiet time to myself today, more than any. I don’t know why, though. It’ll just be spent wondering.

About him.

I open my bedroom window and crawl outside. It’s darker than usual for this time of morning. I look up and see that the sky is overcast, a perfect indicator of my mood. I take in the direction of the clouds, then glance at the sky to the left, curious if I have enough time to run before the bottom falls out.

“Do you always climb out your window or were you just hoping to avoid me?”

I spin around at the sound of his voice. He’s standing at the edge of the sidewalk, decked out in shorts and running shoes. No shirt today.

Dammit.

“If I was trying to avoid you I would have just stayed in bed.” I walk toward him with confidence, hoping to hide the fact that the sight of him is causing my entire body to go haywire. A small part of me is disappointed he showed up today, but most of me is stupidly, pathetically happy. I walk past him and drop onto the sidewalk to stretch. I spread my legs out in front of me and lean forward, grabbing my shoes and burying my head against my knees—partly for the muscle stretch, but mostly to avoid having to look at him.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d show up.” He drops down and claims a spot on the sidewalk in front of me.

I raise up and look at him. “Why wouldn’t I? I’m not the one with the issues. Besides, neither of us owns the road.” I practically snap at him. I’m not even sure why.

He does that staring and thinking thing again where his intense gaze somehow renders me unresponsive. It’s becoming such a habit of his I almost want to give it a name. It’s like he holds me with his eyes while he silently thinks, purposefully giving no tells in his expression. I’ve never met anyone that puts so much thought into their own responses. The way he lets things soak in while he prepares his own response—it’s like words are limited and he only wants to use the ones that are absolutely necessary.

I stop stretching and face him, unwilling to back down from this visual standoff. I’m not going to let him perform his little Jedi mind tricks on me, no matter how much I wish I could perform them on him. He’s completely unreadable and even more unpredictable. It pisses me off.

He stretches his legs out in front of me. “Give me your hands. I need to stretch, too.”

He’s sitting with his hands out in front of me like we’re about to play patty-cake. If anyone was to drive by right now I can just imagine the rumors. Just the thought of it makes me laugh. I place my hands in his outstretched palms and he pulls me forward toward him for several seconds. When he eases the tension, I pull back while he stretches forward, only he doesn’t look down. He keeps his gaze locked on mine in his debilitating eye-hold while he stretches.

“For the record,” he says, “I wasn’t the one with the issue yesterday.”

I pull him harder, more out of malice than a desire to help him stretch.

“Are you insinuating I’m the one with the issue?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Clarify,” I say. “I don’t like vague.”

He laughs, but it’s an irritable laugh. “Sky, if there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I don’t do vague. I told you I’ll only ever be honest with you, and to me, vague is the same thing as dishonesty.” He pulls my hands forward and leans back.

“That’s a pretty vague answer you just gave me,” I point out.

“I was never asked a question. I’ve told you before, if you want to know something, just ask. You seem to think you know me, yet you’ve never actually asked me anything yourself.”

“I don’t know you.”

He laughs again and shakes his head, then releases my hands. “Forget it.” He stands up and starts walking away.

“Wait.” I pull myself up from the concrete and follow him. If anyone has the right to be angry here, it’s me. “What did I say? I don’t know you. Why are you getting all pissy with me again?”

He stops walking and turns around, then takes a couple of steps toward me. “I guess after spending time with you over the last few days, I thought I’d get a slightly different reaction from you at school. I’ve given you plenty of opportunity to ask me whatever you want to ask me, but for some reason you want to believe everything you hear, despite the fact that you never heard any of it from me. And coming from someone with her own share of rumors, I figured you’d be a little less judgmental.”