He found her and my first instinct was to jump out of the truck and run away. I guess when it comes to fight or flight, I choose the flying. I'm used to it?
Ugh. I'm mad at myself. Once I had a moment to cool down, I thought better of everything and realized that I should have, you know, talked to Rhett about it. How did he find her? Did he call her on the phone? Where is she? What did she say? How did he get her name?
I didn't ask any of those things. Nope. I flipped out, made him take me home, scraped my hands and knees up, cried on the couch, and ate two containers of ice cream. By myself. In one sitting. That was a bad night.
After the girls left, I continued to wallow and ignore texts and calls. I even ignored Mia. Fortunately for me, Tobi didn't ask any questions. For some reason. She didn't ask what, specifically, Rhett had done. I just told her that he'd done something, but not something bad. Something he thought was helping me and I took it badly. Because that's really how it went. Now that I've had some actual time to think about it, I know that he did it because he cares about me. And I lost it.
I'd like to blame it on shock, but I'm not sure that I can. And now I don't know if I should call him or what. I just . . . I can't face him now. I'm still a little mad and I'm embarrassed and I miss him and everything in my brain is all fucked up and I don't know what to do. So I've decided to sequester myself in my house and not talk to anyone. Best course of action. Right?
Probably not. But that's what I'm doing. I emailed Coach and let her know I was going to be out for the whole week. She's pissed, but I claimed some sort of illness. I can't handle practice right now. I can't handle anything right now. Just getting up and eating is almost too much.
Rhett waits until my second day of locking myself in my apartment to text me. I'm actually surprised he waited that long. I expected him to show up like he's done before.
But he doesn't. I go back to class on Wednesday but avoid the library and change my gym schedule so I don't see him. At practice, I don't talk to him at all. I freeze him out, and he gets the hint after he tries to talk to me a few times. I go to class and come home. That's it. I almost develop this fear of flannel and dudes with dark hair. It would be just my luck to run into him on campus.
I don't.
It's the actual worst week of my life. Have hours and days always been that long? I'm not sure. Time stretches out and seems to last forever and I just want to break down and call him or drive to his place or even talk to him while we're stunting and working on a ball-up heel stretch tick-tock. I get in my car several times and almost go to his apartment, but then I stop myself.
What the fuck do I say to him? What do I do? How can we repair the damage? We aren't even dating. Even though I am pretty sure that I'm in love with him.
I don't know how it happened. I only know that it has and there's nothing I can do about it. I could literally never see him again, and I'll carry this damn torch for the rest of my life. I'll probably marry some dude just because that's what I'm supposed to do and when I'm old, I'll tell my grandchildren about the one that got away.
I'm in an impossible situation, so I just sort of hide under a blanket for a week. The cheer girls try to lift my spirits by getting me to go out and have lots of pizza and manicures at Tobi's house. Coach is also making us do "squad bonding" activities like trust falls and shit.
"Do you trust me?" Tobi says in a deep voice as Willow and Carrie repeatedly fall into each other and just giggle and flirt. Seeing them happy makes me want to cry. Rhett is on the other side of the room with Gwen and Clint. I can see him in my peripheral vision.
"This is crap," I say, falling and letting her catch me.
"This is serious. This. Is. TRUST FALLSSSSS!" I roll my eyes at her and go back to trying to ignore Rhett.
But avoiding him can only work for so long . . .
17
Freya
"You need to face him. He's been a complete wreck this week," Tobi says on Sunday afternoon when she comes over to make sure I'm okay. I've barely been talking to her during practice, but Coach is up our asses because we're preparing to make our video submission for a bid to Nationals, so there hasn't been much extraneous chatter.
"And you miss him." I do. A frustrated sound escapes my mouth, and I cover my face with a blanket.
"And you totally love him and he totally loves you," she says in sing song. I whip the blanket off my face.
"Wait, what?"
"He loves you. Did you not know that? How could you not know that? Haven't you talked about that yet?"
"Noooooo," I wail again. "What are you talking about?"