My hands shaking had nothing to do with me wanting to touch him.
That verging on being sick feeling in my stomach had nothing to do with me desperately hoping he liked me too.
No.
There was this knowing look in his eye as he passed me. For once, it wasn’t completely condescending and arrogant. It was more like we shared a secret. Or we shared the secret that there was a secret.
I mean, it had only been a lift home. It wasn’t like we’d hooked up or whatever in his backseat. We hadn’t kissed like the world was ending. He hadn’t pulled me onto his lap. We hadn’t done anything questionable.
Not that I’d been thinking of exactly what questionable things we could have been getting up to. Much. Okay, a few times. I’d thought about him a few times since he’d mentioned it. But I had no reason to feel guilty over a few thoughts. Weirded out and annoyed, but not guilty.
He’d literally just dropped me home. It was totally innocent. Nothing to need to feel secretive about at all.
As he drew level with us, he gave the most imperceptible nod. It was so small I could have been persuaded I’d made it up. As though it was more the look in his eyes that suggested a head nod, if that was even possible. I wasn’t sure if I returned it or not.
Every piece of me wanted to pull him aside. I didn’t even want to yell at him for once. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but there seemed to be some sort of…something between us now that I really wanted to get rid of.
“Norah?” Lisa asked.
I forced my eyes back to her. “Yeah?”
Lisa watched Wade continue down the corridor and I was sure she was checking out his arse. “Wow. Letting Wade walk by without a single insult or rude word.”
I frowned at her. “Maybe it’s too early in the morning for another lecture from you about being nice to him.”
“Of course. It was all for my benefit. You’re not easing up on him at all.”
“Lisa, he’s a dick.”
She shrugged. “You can’t be a jerk to him forever. You’re going to need to get over it at some point.”
I wanted to ask her why I had to when she clearly had no plans to anytime soon. I didn’t though. It was too early and I was too tired for any serious conversations that might turn into a fight.
“Today is not that day,” I told her as I closed my locker and we headed for our first lesson.
For the rest of the day, my eyes managed to find Wade whenever we were in the same room together. It was like I’d had some kind of Wade-detecting radar installed on my brain. I’d get this feeling and I’d look up, or around or away, and there he was. He’d be looking at me too. No snark or cheeky cockiness on his face. Just Wade.
On Tuesday, I came across him in the hallway between classes without Lisa.
We paused in front of each other. I felt high on alert. Would we trade insults or wouldn’t we? Something about him made me keep my mouth shut. I didn’t have the overwhelming urge to stamp him down and put him in his place.
I wondered if that was because I was worried about what he’d say. What if I did something like brought up his car accident again and he threw it back in my face I’d been yelling at my mum in the hospital? What if he dug too deep? What if he found out my parents were getting divorced and threw that back in my face?
So, I nodded to him. “Wade.”
And he nodded back. “Norah.”
And we tried to get out of each other’s way, but failed every time.
He went right. I went right.
I went left. He went left.
He went right. I went right.
I went left. He went left.
All the while, our eyes were pinned to each other. There was a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his lips. It was hard not to return it. The situation was absurd.
“I’m just gonna…” I said, kicking my head to the right.
He nodded. “Then, I’m gonna…” he kicked his head to his right. My left.
I nodded again. “Cool.”
“Cool.”
One more nod each, like it was going out of fashion, then we were past each other and back on our own way.
As I hurried to class, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck bristle and I was deadly sure he’d turned to look at me. I just knew it. The same way I apparently knew when he was in the same room as me but failed to notice him in a semi-busy corridor. I just shook myself out and kept right on hurrying. Ain’t no way was I looking back for anybody. Especially not Wade Phillips.
Especially not a Wade Phillips my brain didn’t know what to think about anymore. On one hand, we hated him. Loathed him, even. On the other, I had this overwhelming urge to be nice to him. Weaved between the two were random thoughts about what hooking up with him would be like.
Sometimes I’d see him smile and this image of us in a sweet, almost romantic embrace would swan into my thoughts.
Other times, he’d give me that familiar knowing, cocky smirk and my mind had him throwing me against a wall, with his lips on my neck.
Both these concepts, fleeting though the thought may have been, soured my mood even further and made me feel even more like I was hiding something. Which I was already not pleased about. Adding these new ideas he’d put into my head was just extra annoying.
By Wednesday, the looks I shared with Wade no longer quickly ended as one of us looked away from the other like we hoped the other one hadn’t noticed us looking.
They lingered.
They lingered with unsaid things.
They lingered with meaning.
With intent.
With this sense that I needed to talk to him. I had no idea what I needed to talk to him about. Maybe it was this sense of secrecy. I’d have loved to know what secret we shared. Because it felt like way more than a simple lift home. Not like that. More. Not those ideas he’d put into my head. But something else I couldn’t put into words.
It had me not just finding him around the school, but looking for him as well.
I’d sneak looks at him in class, even though I felt totally obvious because he sat behind me. I didn’t just feel I was being totally obvious; I knew I was being totally obvious.
“What are you doing?” Lisa whispered to me, turning around to try to follow my gaze.
I nudged her in a vain effort to stop her, but she just stared at the back of the classroom like she’d be able to guess who I’d been looking at. Her eyes scanned as her lips curled in a knowing smirk. I didn’t know what she thought she knew, but she sure thought she knew something.
“Miss McGinty,” the teacher called lazily. “Can we perhaps leave ogling the boys until Recess?”
Lisa snorted as she turned around. “Definitely. Sorry.”
The teacher looked over her like he was bored of it all and just going through the motions. Finally, he nodded. “Thank you.” And got on with the lesson.
After the lesson, Lisa linked her arm in my elbow and leant her head to mine. “Does somebody have a new crush they need to tell me about?” she teased.
I had a sinking feeling I knew where this was going and, considering it was about Wade, definitely didn’t want it going anywhere near it.
“No,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Are you sure…?” she asked before breaking into a tentative, cajoling version of ‘Could This Be Love’.
“Yeah,” I chuckled, though it was anything but humoured. “I’m sure it’s definitely not love.”
I felt someone knock into me from behind gently and a hand go to my shoulder. “Oop. Sorry, Norah,” came Wade’s voice and I felt myself frown in frustration.
It wasn’t good enough that I ran into him without Lisa.
It wasn’t good enough that I was constantly staring at him like my life depended on it and I didn’t know why.
Now, it had to happen when Lisa was around as well?
“Yeah. Fine, Phillips. Whatever,” I mutt
ered, brushing his hand away from me.
Lisa laughed. “Okay. Something’s officially wrong with you.”
“Oh, leave her be, Lis,” Wade said, a note of teasing to his voice. “Even the great Norah Lincoln can’t yell at me every day.”
“Yeah?” I asked him as he retreated down the hallway in the opposite direction. “You wanna bet?”
In typical Wade fashion, he put his hands to his chest like he was clutching his heart. His cronies guffawed around him. He shot me a salacious smirk and a wink, before disappearing into the crowd of students.
“Ugh,” I huffed.
“Well, that could have been worse.”
I looked to Lisa like I was begging her to reconsider her words. “Seriously? The guy is a grade A turd.”
She shrugged. “And yet, you didn’t lose your temper with him.”
Had she not just seen what I’d seen?
“You need to stop giving him free passes,” was the closest I was going to come to telling her she needed to get over him.
“I don’t give him free passes,” she said, thankfully oblivious to my thoughts. “I just don’t think you need to go off at him so often. The world gets by on civility, you know.”
“That’s just what the male agenda wants you to believe.”
“The world’s not going to stop because you don’t win the next round of witty insult roulette, Norah,” she said kindly.
Only, it felt like it was going to stop if I didn’t win it. And that wasn’t even taking into account what might happen if I didn’t even play. Impending doom settled over me at just the thought of it. I knew that the reality would have been far worse had I entertained the notion.
“No,” I lied to my best friend. “But maybe there’ll be one less arsehole in the world.”
Lisa gave me that look of temporary defeat; raised eyebrows and shrugged arms. “Okay. Okay. Fine. I can see you’re in no mood today.”
I knew what she’d left unsaid and glared at her.
“All right,” she said, hands up innocently. “I’ll give tomorrow a pass as well.”
On Thursday, the sense of a secret had turned into the palpable feeling like a visceral tether between Wade and me. I felt like I was running into him constantly, which was weird considering the new super power of sensing when he walked into a room. It was like the super power didn’t just know where he was, but it was making sure I was where he was as well. Like something was drawing us together for some nefarious purpose.
I didn’t care for it.
Lisa was still harping on about me having a crush, but I was ignoring her.
“Oh, that’d be a good song for auditions,” I vaguely registered Lisa saying, my eyes watching Wade through my eyelashes. She sang a few bars of whatever it was.
“I think it would,” Erin said. “Isn’t it a duet?”
“Yeah,” Lisa sighed. “I could ask…”
It was at that moment that Wade moved and started walking towards me.
I felt like the whole jig was up. But I didn’t know what the jig was. For all I knew, the jig was he was about to mention me yelling at my mum in the hospital in front of Lisa.
It wasn’t.
Wade walked right by me, looking at me in question like he knew I wanted to say something and was just waiting on it. But, if I didn’t know what the jig was, I certainly didn’t know what I might have to say to him.
On Friday, I ran into Wade outside the bathrooms in the middle of a lesson. The halls were blissfully empty and there was no one around to see anything more in our interaction than there actually was. Which was nothing.
My brain certainly hadn’t entertained the notion of kissing him with no one around to witness the shame in my fall from grace.
“Hey,” he said softly.
I nodded. “Hi.”
There was a very pregnant pause in which it felt like much more was being said. I couldn’t have even put it all into words. It was more like feelings.
Questions.
Worry.
Bond.
Care.
Something that pulled me to him inexplicably. It wasn’t physical, but it was everything other than physical.
There, in the corridor, I could almost pretend he wasn’t the shallow, egotistical jerk who walked these halls. There was something more sincere in his eyes as he looked at me. It was almost like the Wade of old was looking at me, the guy I used to know.
Tension swirled around us with things unsaid.
I still didn’t know what the things were.
And if I didn’t know what they were, I could hardly decide if I wanted to voice them or not.
Wade seemed on the cusp of voicing something. He chewed the inside of his cheek and his eyes narrowed for a moment. Then, as though he thought better of it, he just nodded.
“I’ll get out of your way ,then,” he said.
“That’s it? No hilarious comment about how we need to stop meeting like this? No quip about following me to the bathroom to flirt with me?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing.”
“You – Wade Phillips–”
“I do know who I am.”
“–have nothing?” I finished like he hadn’t interrupted.
He shrugged. “What can I say, Lincoln? It’s been a long week and I’m exhausted.”
I had the sudden, fleeting moment of panic that his gran had taken a one-way trip to the basement of the hospital. I felt my brows furrow.
“Your gran’s okay?” I asked.
He nodded. “She’s not dead.”
“I didn’t mean–”
“Relax,” he chuckled. “Your face said it all.”
Now I frowned again. “What do you know about what my face says?”
“More than you want me to,” was all he said before he sauntered into the boys’ toilet.
I had half a mind to follow him, but it wasn’t just the idea of walking into the boys’ loo that put me off.
“There is nothing intriguing about Wade Phillips,” I muttered to myself as I went back to class. “There is nothing more in there. No connection. No secret. No need to talk about anything. He’s still a shallow idiot.”
And I was going to keep reminding myself for as long as it took.
And, through it all, there was me that week at home worrying about my dad and trying to pretend I wasn’t angry with my mum, so my brother caught more flack than anyone else because what did it matter if I was grouchy with him once in a while?
Dad should have been home on Tuesday, but he’d come down with a few fevers and they had to keep him in for observation for something like seventy-two hours after the last fever while they pumped him full of IV anti-biotics and hoped one did the job.
Mum was the dutiful wife – to the outside world – and visited him every night. At least, that’s what she said she was doing. I couldn’t bear to go and watch them being weird and awkward with each other to verify her claims. When I spoke to Dad on the phone each night before bed, he mentioned her visiting once or twice. Which meant I never got up the nerve to visit him in person.
Being Dad, he didn’t mind. Even when it was Sunday and I hadn’t seen him for over a week. The pessimist in me figured I’d best get used to not seeing him for prolonged periods of time for when I was splitting my time between two houses.
“It’s super boring anyway,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. We can keep having our nice chats, or you can come in and we’ll make awkward small talk while avoiding all the random beeps and whirs of the machines.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, then. Any idea when you’re coming home?”
“The last I heard, they were cautiously optimistic about tomorrow. No fever since Friday so fingers crossed.”
That would be good. He’d be home and everything would go back to normal.
Which only served to remind me what my ne
w normal was. With Mum back to dancing during the ironing, I’d let myself be distracted from the truth by a preferential possibility.
“That’s awesome. They found an antibiotic that works, then?”
“They think so. I’ve got more bloods in the morning and then we’ll see what’s what.”
“It’ll be good to have you home.”
I wasn’t lying. As much as I wasn’t looking forward to tension his return would bring, it would still be good to have him home.
“It’ll be good to be home,” he said.
“You’ll let me know how everything goes?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Okay.”
“Now, you’d best head to bed, hadn’t you?”
I looked at the time and smiled if he really thought I got to bed that early, even when he was home. “Sure, Dad.”
“Good girl. Night, Norah.”
“Night, Dad. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I hung up and took a deep breath.
Holding the tears at bay had been easy while I was talking to him. Now I was alone in my room with the door closed, they didn’t seem to feel like being quite so courteous. Not really knowing what else to do or even really why there were coming, I let them fall.
Chapter Seven
Dad’s fever had come back on Monday morning, like it knew how much I was looking forward to him being home and it really wanted me to get used to not having him around.
So, I’d hiked up my big girl pants and gone in to see him on Tuesday after school all alone. Mum would still be at work and Koby was at uni until eight, so I had him all to myself.
“How’s it been at home?” he asked me.
It wasn’t like he didn’t ask me this every time I talked to him or anything.
I shrugged as I ate the jelly he’d saved for me. “Same old, same old. I guess,” I answered, well aware it was in fact not at all the same old.
“Good. You and Koby surviving on Mum’s cooking okay?”
I huffed a laugh. “Koby keeps taking over from her, so we’re doing okay.”
Dad had always cooked. So far as I knew, Mum had been useless at cooking since before she even moved out of home.
“Good,” Dad chuckled. “Good. I worried you’d be stuck eating pizza every night of the week.”
the Art of Breaking Up Page 6