A New Start
Page 3
Sam was in my room when I got there. Half of his stuff was already packed in the small duffel bag that he’d been carrying on his back when he’d arrived.
“Why are you packing?” It was a stupid question. It was obvious why he was packing, but I didn’t know what else to say. I was panicking. I didn’t want him to go. I couldn’t really understand why he was going. The situation seemed to be spinning out of control.
“I need to get back for my classes,” Sam said without stopping and without looking at me.
“I thought you said they didn’t matter?”
“I guess I’ve said a lot of things,” he said with a shrug. “You’ve got Eric back, anyway, so why does it matter?”
“What has Eric got to do with this?” I demanded. It wasn’t like Sam had ever shown any interest in me. It wasn’t like he’d asked me to the party on a date. Why was he acting so angry? Why was he making me feel like a bad a bad person? It wasn’t fair.
“It doesn’t matter.” He stopped folding the shirt in his hand and looked at me. “You wouldn’t get it.”
“Why? Do you really think that I’m that stupid?”
A guilty look flashed into his eyes. “I’m not saying you’re stupid.”
“You’re saying that I wouldn’t understand. That’s the same thing.” My hands had settled on my hips. “I deserve to know what the problem is.”
He threw the shirt down and sat on the edge of my bed. He looked uncomfortable. He looked like he wanted a trap door to open, so that he would have an escape. “It’s you.”
“It’s me? I’m the problem?”
“Look, I get it, okay? Eric is like Prince Charming incarnate. I don’t compare to that and I’m not going to try.”
“What are you talking about?” I felt confused. He was talking about Eric again, as though there was some kind of competition, but he’d never even asked me how I felt.
“I came over to transfer,” he said.
“What do you mean to transfer?”
“I was going to transfer over to your college. I missed you. They have some pretty good courses over here and then once I was settled in I was going to ask you out.”
“You were going to ask me out? Why didn’t you just ask me out?”
“I wanted to.” He flapped his hands aimlessly. “I wanted to ask you out over summer, but it just didn’t seem right when we were going to be states apart in the fall. I thought that it would be better if we were just friends, but then like I said, I missed you. I missed you a lot and I didn’t like it, so I came over here. I came over and I was going to transfer and then I was going to ask you out and you were going to be so moved by the gesture that you would have said yes.”
He’d started to ramble. He’d clearly put some thought into his plan and it had all been ruined in front of his eyes.
“I don’t want to be with Eric,” I told him softly. “I told Eric that and he wasn’t accepting it, but it’s true. Why would I want to be with a person who cheated on me? Why would I ever go back there?”
Sam looked up at me. I could feel his eyes searching mine. He was looking for the truth. He was looking for any lies. He looked conflicted. He looked as though I was asking him to choose between two things that meant the most to him. He shook his head and the eye contact broke.
“No, I’m sorry.” He stood up and picked up the shirt again. “I want to believe you, I really do, but I don’t.”
CHAPTER 8
Sam was gone. He’d packed up his stuff and he’d left. He wouldn’t even look at me to say goodbye. He refused to acknowledge the tears in my eyes. He refused to acknowledge the pain that he was forcing me to go through.
He didn’t believe me. I’d never lied to him. I’d never given him any reason to believe that I would lie to him. He was judging the girl he’d seen in the hallways. He was judging the girl that he’d heard rumors about. He was judging the girl that I had once been, but I wasn’t that girl any more.
It wasn’t like I’d even wanted to go to the party. That had been him. He’d pushed and he’d pushed until I’d had no choice but to agree. I’d wanted a quiet night in. I’d wanted to spend my time with him, but I couldn’t.
Now he’d cut his visit short. He left without even giving me a chance to explain how I felt. It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair because, I suddenly realized, I wanted him. I didn’t want Eric. I wanted Sam. He was right. The two of them could never compete against each other, but only because Sam was so much more. He was everything that Eric wasn’t and that was a good thing, even if he couldn’t see it himself.
None of that mattered now. It didn’t matter that I didn’t love Eric. It didn’t matter that I was falling in love with Sam. It didn’t matter in the slightest because Sam had given up on me. He didn’t trust me. He didn’t even want to try and trust me. Maybe I deserved it? Maybe a lifetime of doing wrong had finally caught up on me. Maybe I deserved to be treated as though I was liar, even though I’d left my lying days behind me. Maybe it was karma.
A knock came at my dorm door as I was getting ready for classes the following Monday. I wasn’t expecting anyone. I could feel a half-life hope that perhaps I’d find Sam standing on the other side.
But it wasn’t Sam. It was a tired looking Eric.
“Hey.” he said. He was leaning against the doorway as though standing up straight was too much effort. “I think we need to talk.”
“Well, you think wrong.” I tried to close the door, but it bounced off his open hand, which he’d stuck out to stop me.
“Eric, get lost.” I was frustrated. Why was he at my door? Why wouldn’t he just leave me alone? Hadn’t he already done enough damage?
“I told you, we need to talk. I’m not going anywhere.” He pushed past me so that he could get into the room. I tried to hold my ground, but I was nothing compared to his big frame.
“Jesus, you don’t know how to take no for an answer, do you?”
He sat down on my bed in the same spot that Sam had taken. “Look, I know I made a bit of an ass out of myself the other night, but what I said was true.”
“I don’t care,” I said quickly. The only thing in truth that I cared about was getting him to move out of that spot. It really bothered me. I didn’t want Eric touching anything that Sam had touched. It was two of my worlds colliding in a terrible way and I hated it.
“But, you do care, Cassie. I know you care.”
“You don’t know shit.”
He looked at me in surprise. “Cassie, you’re the girl who answered a question about her soul with the fact that you were popular. I know who you are.”
He was talking down to me. I could hear it in his tone. He was talking to me like I was stupid and I didn’t like it all.
“Wow, what a way to win me around.”
He laughed. “I’m not insulting you. You said that yourself. I’m just saying that we both know what you care about. I can give you that. I can hook you up with every social butterfly in on this campus. All you have to do is go out with me again.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? I told you. I miss you. It was a mistake leaving you.”
I shook my head. There was more to it than that. He hadn’t been in touch with me once since he’d got with Natasha. He’d been a total dick to me when we’d run in to each other on the campus. Why was he suddenly acting as though he loved me?
“Why do you care so much about us getting back together? It’s not about missing me. Don’t fucking lie to me about this. It isn’t fair to lie after everything you’ve done.”
He sighed. His head tilted up to me and I could see his glassy eyes staring at me through his fringe, which wasn’t tousled back like it had been on the night of the party. “Do you really want to know the truth?” he sighed. “My dad fucking loves you. He’s pissed that we broke up and he doesn’t even know why we broke up. He’s told me that if we don’t get back together then I can’t have my trust fund when I turn twenty-one.”
>
That felt like the truth and it made sense to me. His father was a good man and I’d always liked him. Eric wasn’t the most sensible guy out there. He liked to party and have a good time, but he didn’t always understand that everything comes with a cost. Well, he’d never really had to. His father was extremely rich. The difference between the two of them, though, was that his father had earned every cent that he had and Eric had never worked a day in his life.
“So,” Eric pushed me with desperation in his eyes. “Can we get back together?”
I thought it through. I thought about everything that he’d done to me. “What’s in it for me?” I bargained with him, because I quickly came to realize that I could probably get something worthwhile out of an agreement like that.
And why shouldn’t I? Eric had destroyed the life that I’d built myself, and he’d destroyed what I could have had with Sam. It was time that I got a little something back.
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ISBN: 9781681851839