Love Storm (55 page)

I moved toward him and rested a hand on his arm, and had just opened my mouth to speak – I don't know what I had been planning on saying – when the door slammed open and an extremely enraged Zackary Crowne stormed in, rather red in the face and looking quite worked up.

"Mr. Garber, I've been through this whole essay, looking at all the edits you made, and I honestly don't think I deserve a C- for all the effort I –– whoa." He stopped short when he saw Gavin and me. Then I knew how bad this must have looked – the two of us in an empty classroom, alone, standing close together. I snatched back my hand and jumped away from him. Zack's golden eyes flickered between the two of us, the anger draining from his face. He visibly struggled with himself for a moment and he shot me a look of confusion, hurt – and worst of all, betrayal. Zack backed out of the classroom.

"Sorry," he said, his voice carefully controlled. "I thought Mr. Garber was still in here." He made to leave.

"No, Zack," I said desperately, holding out a hand, making him stop, "It's not what it looks like –"

"Right," he nodded, obviously unconvinced. His eyes hardened. "When were you planning on telling me the truth?"

"Zack, Gavin and I –" I gestured between us, shaking my head frantically. It was imperative that he understand. "We –"

"It's okay," Zack said softly. "You can stop lying now." He laughed hollowly. "And to think, I even told you just this morning that I trusted you."

"I'm not lying!" I yelled, frustrated. "We're not –" But then I clapped a hand over my mouth in horror, eyes wide, realizing I had just said exactly what I couldn't and
shouldn't
have said about what Gavin and I were, because I hadn't given Gavin an answer yet. It would be too cruel to shoot him down by telling someone else outright, in front of him no less, that as far as I was concerned we weren't going out, but that was what I had done, fucking bitch that I was.

I turned to Gavin, opening my mouth to explain, but he beat me to it.

"We're not going out, right?" he smiled humorlessly.

"I – I don't know what to say. I'm sorry," I said wretchedly. I turned to look at the doorway but Zack was gone. Shit. How did I manage to mess this up so perfectly? I ran a hand through my hair agitatedly.

Gavin heaved a huge sigh. "It's okay, I guess," he mumbled. "I should have known anyway." He looked devastated. Just as I had never seen him so serious before, I had never seen him this downcast before, and it killed me that I was the cause of it.

"Gavin, we're such good friends, I don't want to lose you over this," I said softly, swallowing the hard lump in my throat. "I don't want to lose our friendship over how stupid I've been. I'm so sorry. It's
all
my fault. I don't blame you if you're livid with me right now, I've been such an inconsiderate
jerk
–"

"Nah," he said in a low voice. "Don't worry about it. I have to admit, before I asked, I was more afraid I was gonna lose you instead of the other way around."

I felt a stab somewhere in my chest. How could he be so kind? "That wouldn't be a bad idea at this point," I sighed, slumping down into a chair. "You better drop me as soon as you can; you don't want someone like me as your friend," I said, biting my lip and shutting my eyes.

He said nothing, and I knew he had heard a shred of truth in there somewhere. I felt another stab. I rubbed my eyes, swallowing again.

"Well, I, uh, I better go to practice," Gavin muttered.

"Okay," I said, lifting my head. We couldn't quite meet each other's eyes.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay."

He left looking defeated, and I was left in an empty classroom staring after him helplessly.

Chapter 34: Shrink At Work

-
Winter
-

Boys
, I thought savagely to myself as I packed up my Spanish binder when the bell rang dismissing us for lunch.
Stupid, idiotic, good for nothing, testosterone driven boys. Exactly
what
have I done to deserve this? It's not like I asked for it!
I raged in my head.
I never wanted Gavin to ask me out! I never even wanted Zack to be right about him liking me!
I paused.
And really, what's up with that anyway?
I wondered crossly.

It was all over the school that Winter Bruin was a backstabbing slut who had (gasp) dared to tamper with
both
the hearts of the sweet Gavin Pennington and the cooler than cool Zackary Crowne. It transpired that a freshman girl had been standing outside the classroom door and had heard the whole thing.

Fucking freshman. Gossiping about upperclassmen and women who could make her life miserable. It was a good thing I knew exactly zero freshmen outside of the five that were on the JV tennis team, otherwise there really would be hell to pay.

I had only one consolation, and that was that Martin Rifkin, the most powerful senior at Branner High, was on my side. Praise the Lord. Maybe football captains are worth something after all.

"It'll all die down soon enough," Martin said bracingly as he walked me through the halls between fourth block and lunch to my locker, girls everywhere glaring daggers at me. I glared right back.

"They're kind of scary actually," I whispered to him, ceasing my glaring because one, my forehead was starting to hurt, and two, I saw a girl with a particularly nasty expression on her face that startled me enough I was sure my glare had been tempered with an almost comical surprise. "They're like rabid or something, look at them!" I gestured at a clique of girls that was looking quite disgruntled at the sight of Martin walking along with me and at being gesticulated at. "I'll bet they're saying stuff about how I went through Zack and Gavin and now I'm having my evil temptress-like ways with you."

Martin laughed. "No doubt they are. But you won't let that bother you, right? Right," he declared firmly, without waiting for my answer.

I scowled at him and didn't reply because we had reached my locker.

He grinned back as I spun my combination. "Love ya too, Win. Winnie. Hey!" he exclaimed, eyes lighting up. "Winnie! Winnie-the –"

"Don't you
dare
," I cut in dangerously, depositing my books, picking up my lunch, and slamming the metal door shut. "Other people have been down that very same train of thought before, and I refuse to be given a nickname after some silly, overweight stuffed toy that wears a shirt but no pants and manages to get his head stuck in honey pots!"

Martin was laughing before I even finished talking. Highly affronted, I turned away and marched off to lunch by myself. Jesus. Winnie-the-fucking-Pooh, my ass.

"Hey, hey, hey," he chuckled, catching up to me. "Chill out. Everything'll be okay, you'll see. You just have to go talk to Crowne and Gavin. Make peace with them. Though if I were you I'd go out with Gavin and forget Crowne."

"Luckily, you are not me," I said acidly, then paused for a second. "Or maybe unluckily." I smirked.

He seemed rather taken aback from my quick change of demeanor, and said, "Uh, yeah…dunno what would be the best answer in this situation," he muttered to himself.

"And, you have to admit," I added, in a superior tone, "You are biased against Zack."

"If you want to make peace with Crowne too I guess you could," Martin said reluctantly.

"If I can even get him to talk to me first," I muttered darkly. "I tried this morning and he acted like I was invisible or something. Gav's not speaking to me either."

He shrugged. "Hey," he said, "Sorry to change the subject, but Eva called me last night."

"Oh?" I arched an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Martin said slowly, frowning. "Did you know that her dad –"

"Yeah." I exhaled the word. "Got a fiancée. And you really shouldn't have brought it up because it's supposed to be a secret," I added irritably, instantly regretting the tone of voice I had used. I realized it was unfair of me to unleash all my frustration on Martin. No one else seemed very keen to hold a conversation with me unless it involved some groundless finger pointing and insults.
Would you mind not snapping at the only person who's willing to talk to you?
I scolded myself.

Some form of an apology must have shown on my face because he said lightly, "I know you and Eva are best friends and I know she tells you everything, so I figured it'd be harmless to bring it up with you."

I nodded. "Sorry I've been so grouchy," I mumbled sheepishly.

"No problem. Let's go eat lunch."

"Yeah," I sighed. "Let's go. No, please not to the cafeteria," I said when he moved off in that direction. "Let's just…go eat outside or something."

"Sure, whatever you want," Martin said cheerily, whistling a little tune as we stepped outside into the bright sunlight.

"What are you so happy about?" I asked gruffly as we strolled on the lawn, looking for a place to sit. "Oh, let's go sit by the wall, I haven't eaten lunch there since Eva moved away."

"Okay. And nothing," Martin beamed in answer to my question. "I'm always this happy, remember?"

I rolled my eyes as we sat down next to each other on the grass with our backs against the wall in the shade. It was made of stone, roughly four and a half feet high, and it was old – as old as Branner High itself, which only looked as new as it did because of some major remodeling six years ago. There was a plaque on the other side with the date 1923 on it, to give you an idea of its age. It was originally constructed as one of the perimeters of the school, but today, it was merely a crumbling stone structure smack dab in the middle of the east lawn. It was a nice place to sit for lunch – there was a huge willow tree at one end of the wall providing shade, and a sunny spot on the other. Eva and I used to use this to our utmost advantage, getting rid of our horrible sock tans by positioning ourselves in the shade with just our bare feet sticking out into the sunlight.

"So, you ready for the Calculus test tomorrow?" Martin asked as we opened our lunches.

"Yeah," I said around a mouthful of apple. "You?"

"Sure, why not?" he grinned.

"You going to the dance on Friday?" I asked.

"Eh, what? The dance? No," he said, appearing to think the question and answer irrelevant to how he would do on the Calculus test. I suppose he thought right, but I was too preoccupied to notice.

"I see," I nodded, taking another bite of the apple. "Hey, how's football?"

"Uh…good. Yeah, you must have heard about how Bellmont forfeited last Thursday. Because their coach is weird and doesn't like them playing in the rain."

I nodded again. "So you finished that book for English after all, huh?" I guessed.

He looked bewildered. "Which one?"

"I don't know, whichever one you were telling me you hadn't finished yet," I explained very specifically, waving it off. "And anyway," I said thoughtfully to myself, "You didn't have a game, because they
did
forfeit. So you must have finished it. The book, I mean."

"Um…yeah," Martin said, obviously failing to see the logic behind this. "So…" he hedged.

"Yeah, and I was late getting home that day," I continued, frowning. "Got yelled at by my mother again. Do you have any idea what a roux is?" I demanded.

"No, I don't think I do, really," he said, looking positively alarmed by now. "Are you –"

"Me neither! Not until my mom told me to watch over it for her when she went to use the bathroom," I said. "
Apparently
it's just water and flour. How can you burn water and flour? But I burned it," I said mournfully, "And got shouted at again. How do you burn water and flour?" I asked again.

"I have…no clue," he said, in a rather cautious way.

"Ugh, same here," I agreed gloomily, done with my apple now. I took out my sandwich and tossed the apple core back into my empty brown paper bag. "And my cell phone's out of batteries again!"

"I'm
sorry
," Martin said emphatically, a rather wild look in his eyes.

"Not your fault my cell's out of batteries. And Eva wanted me to call her tonight," I said quietly, taking a bite of my sandwich, and even as I talked new thoughts popped in where the old one was, one after another, sometimes more than one at once, tumbling over each other.

"You should call her then," Martin said.

"I should," I murmured, trying to bring my attention back to the thought about Eva, for Martin's sake. Stress did this to me, and I suppose it must have been near torture to hold a conversation with me when I was so frazzled.