He snorted a laugh as he looked up at me. I had to admit that those grey eyes looked nice when they were full of that sincere humour. They always had.
“Fair call, Lincoln. Fair call.”
“You still planning on Law?” I asked him.
He shrugged as he stole one of my fries. “Dunno. I put it as a preference still. But…” Another shrug. “I don’t know anymore.”
“You lost your place in the world?” I asked him.
He scoffed and there was the humour. “Me? Never.”
“So, what changed your mind?”
“Hollard’s sister graduated law a few years ago and said the prospects are shit. Like worse than shit. Too many grads, not enough jobs and the ones there are pay you barely minimum wage for the hours you actually work.” He looked at me, all cavalier humour. “Call me crazy, but I kinda hope for more after seven years of study.”
I nodded. “Look as much as I want to call you crazy…”
“Well,” he said, sounding pleasantly surprised. “If even Norah Lincoln can’t make an insult of it, it must be true.”
“Or, maybe I’m trying not to be a total dick after you bought me onion rings.”
He cracked a wide smile, pushing happy creases into his cheeks and lighting up his eyes. “The onion rings,” he said, matter-of-fact. “They get you every time.”
For once, I not only couldn’t argue with him, I chose not to.
Chapter Ten
The next week at school, I was telling myself that everything was fine.
Except, this time, it was for a whole other reason.
And I had to remind myself of it again as I saw Wade in the corridor. Again. It wasn’t surprising; we both spent pretty much all our free time in the Common Room, our lockers were close by, and we had a few of the same classes. It was difficult to go to school with someone and avoid them. Especially when you couldn’t be seen actively trying to avoid them.
But especially when just the sight of them got you flustered.
Not in the whole ‘he makes my heart skip and sing’ kind of flustered.
It was the ‘there’s something going on here and shouldn’t be’ kind of flustered.
I’d avoided it on Friday. It had been easy. But then there had been a whole weekend of me ruminating on it. I didn’t quite know what the ‘it’ was in this instance, but it had been front and centre in my head. The upside was that I hadn’t spent a huge amount of time thinking about my parents’ impending divorce. The downside was that I’d spent far too long thinking about my best friend’s ex-boyfriend. Even in an objectively innocent way – which, to be honest, it hadn’t been all the time – it still felt wrong.
As he walked by, Wade gave me a small smile and a nod.
As far as interactions went, it seemed fairly harmless. What was a nod and a smile from a guy who gave them out more freely than trees gave us oxygen to breathe? It was nothing. The fact it was directed at me was nothing.
“Hi, Wade,” Lisa said chirpily.
He gave her a nod. “Lisa.”
Lisa turned to me with a huge grin. Like, I know he has a nice smile, but come the hell on woman? Did she have no self-respect? No shred of dignity? To be excited because he spared her a smile?
No.
I was being too harsh on her.
Her reaction to him hadn’t changed in the last few weeks.
The person who’d changed was me. And I’d gone from a proud founding member of SOILED to a short-tempered hermit whose skin was starting to crawl at the very idea of inane human interaction.
“What is wrong with me?” I heard myself mutter.
“Beats me,” Lisa answered. “But I’m not hating this whole less antagonistic Norah thing.”
To take my mind off wanting to throw a very rude comment in the direction of my best friend – because, really, that wasn’t fair on her – I instead decided to continue on with my previous week’s resolution about finding her a man.
“How was your date with Hollard?” I asked her.
“Did we talk about this on Saturday?” she asked.
I blinked. “Did we?”
“I’m sure we did. Erin made some comment about… Here, let me find it.”
Well, didn’t I feel like an awesome best friend? How many things had she told me in the last few weeks – nay, our lives – and I’d forgotten them or not even paid attention.
“No. No need,” I said. “I remember now.”
She laughed. “You’re not required to remember my random date waffle. There isn’t going to be a test.”
I felt like that in itself was a test. A friendship test. And I wasn’t doing so good.
I promised myself I was going to do better. My world may have been imploding, but there wouldn’t be anything to hold on for if I lost Lisa because I was too wrapped up in my own shit.
“Anyway,” she continued as we started walking to class, which thankfully saved me from trying to salvage myself. “Hollard was fine. No complaints. There just wasn’t any…”
“Spark?” I offered.
She shrugged. “Sure.
“I thought you were the self-proclaimed romantic?” I asked her.
“Well, out of the two of us…” She looked me over like she was trying and failing to find a single romantic molecule in my body. “Yes.”
I laughed. “Fair.”
Lisa looked down at her books. “Oh, bugger. I’ve got the wrong books. Meet you there?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
I turned into the Common Room to cut through to our classroom.
I looked back for a second to see Lisa talking to Dave outside the Common Room window. Based on her body language, any potential between them would only be found after a five-year long excavation. And even that wasn’t a guarantee.
Not worth anyone’s time.
So, Dave was a bust.
Who else might she go for?
I decided to try to get my mind off my parents and off Wade by focussing all my energy on trying to find a guy who liked Lisa and who Lisa might be interested in.
It was easier said than done.
Lisa went about all her interactions with a kindness and openness that made it very difficult to work out if she could entertain a crush on the other person, or if she was just being her usually nice self. She always had a smile and a laugh for everyone, even someone I knew she didn’t really like.
I spent all morning watching her interactions with various people.
The closest she came to flirting was with me when she wanted some of my doughnut at Recess. In her defence, she was good. Like really good. All I needed to do was find her a guy to turn that attention on, then he could be the one forfeiting half a chocolate doughnut instead of me.
By lunch, I had no prospects and I needed to leave her side in order to get reference materials. I’d have said it wasn’t worth it because I wouldn’t have used them anyway. But my studies were being given a heck of a lot more attention when the alternative was sitting in the middle of the tensions between my parents.
“Yeah, I’ll meet you back in the Common Room,” I told Lisa with a distracted smile before I pushed my way into the library.
Typically for early lunch, it was fairly deserted. I nodded to the librarian on duty and made my way to the history section, thanking all the lucky stars that Year 12s basically had free reign of the library. Would I have been allowed in there at the start of lunch in Year 11? Not at all. But in Year 12, my studies were far more important and thus I could go searching for knowledge at every opportunity.
Unlike Lisa, I took very few opportunities. As in, as few as possible. I only came into the library when it was completely unavoidable.
“Hey,” I heard and looked up.
Wade was already in the aisle I wanted to be in. Stood to reason that the one singular time I was in the library for probably that term, he was exactly where I needed to be. And I’d been doing so well
at avoiding him that day.
“Oh, uh. Hey.” I nodded.
There went that…feeling again.
The air seemed all thick between us with something I was not willing to look at closely enough to put into words. Not when I was supposed to be feeling nothing for him but contempt, annoyance and dislike.
But, looking at him, I couldn’t help it.
I felt settled at the same time I felt even more agitated. It made no logical sense. It felt weird and wrong and right. It felt addictive.
All I could think about was how I felt with him at Maccas. How I’d been able to forget everything for a while. How I’d been able to breathe for what felt like the first time in forever.
Wade looked me over. “How are you?”
I knew he was asking specifically and sincerely, but I wasn’t quite able to stop my brain’s habit of snarking back at him.
“You looking for evidence I’m not okay?” I asked him. “You think you can see that on a person?”
There went that look in his eyes again. The one that was a little dark. A little sad.
He nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
Suddenly, I was looking at him like I thought I might be able to find something on his person that would tell me if he was okay or not. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I didn’t know why I was looking for something.
Why would there be anything on Wade to show he wasn’t okay when he was always okay?
“Can you see anything?”
I wanted to know what he could see on me. If he could see anything, maybe Lisa could see something and that was the last thing I wanted.
His eyes narrowed. “Is there anything to see?” he asked, his voice rough. I just couldn’t tell if it was disapproving or panicked.
I blinked. “I…don’t think so. Should there be?”
He didn’t say anything straight away. He looked at me like he was trying to make a decision. He’d looked at me like that quite a bit in the last couple of weeks. I wasn’t sure I cared for it but, at the same time, I knew I did.
Finally, he took a deep breath and shook his head. “No. No, there shouldn’t.”
I nodded, feeling a sense of relief sweep me. “Oh, okay. Good. I just…”
“Don’t want people to know?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He looked me over again. “You’re holding up okay?”
I wasn’t sure why he was so obsessed with my being okay.
“Is this you caring again?” I asked him, but I kept the animosity from my voice and tried to make it more playful.
One side of his lips quirked up. “You going to tell me to stop again?”
I pretended to think about it. “Hm…”
“Because you should know now that I won’t.”
“You won’t?”
He stepped towards me. “No. I won’t.”
“You really don’t like doing what you’re told, do you?”
His eyes flashed with a mischievous glee. “I wouldn’t say no to being ordered around.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“That all depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you’re the one doing the ordering.”
Somehow, during that exchange, we’d both moved closer and we were now standing a mere hand’s width apart. Less. Wade was looking down at me will all the charisma and cocky confidence of the easily charming.
For once, I didn’t want to wipe the look off his face.
For once, I was falling for it.
No. Not falling for it. Going along with it.
Wilfully allowing it to happen.
“You want me to order you around?” I asked him, hearing the cheekiness in my tone.
My eyes darted to his mouth as he ran his tongue along his teeth as though he was fighting a full-blown smile. But it was there in his eyes. The glint in them was familiar. Achingly familiar. I felt like I remembered it to the depths of my soul. But I couldn’t quite remember it.
My brain was telling me I’d never seen him look at me like that.
My feelings were telling me something else entirely.
I didn’t have time to dwell on it as he answered.
“Not if you’re just going to tell me to piss off and stop caring about you.”
I grinned. “Oh, well. Shame then, because I definitely don’t have anything else I want you to do.”
I didn’t have to school my tone. We both knew I was being facetious. We both knew I didn’t actually want him to piss off and stop caring.
No.
Just then, I wanted him to do the opposite of piss off. I wanted him to be very much closer to me.
His eyes searched mine, the humour in them making the grey bright and warm. “That is a shame.”
The air around us was supercharged. There wasn’t just this thing, this secret, hanging between us. There was something more. More than more.
My heart tumbled around in my chest and I felt myself bite my lip. I couldn’t be sure if I was trying to censor a smile or trying to control what I had a feeling they were about to do.
But it seemed there was no stopping them.
It was like watching the barrier around the Ice Arena rink hurtling towards you and knowing slamming into it was as foolish as it was inevitable; it was the only way to stop.
My hand was on Wade’s chest as he cupped my cheek and our lips met.
Sparks may as well have literally flown the moment we touched.
I felt as though a switch flipped inside me.
We stepped closer, our bodies bumping against each other.
Wade’s hand went to my waist and I wrapped my arms around his neck, my hands finding their way to his hair. It was softer than I expected. Like awesomely soft.
My heart didn’t pound. It didn’t thud. It didn’t flutter erratically. It beat strong and deep and heavy. There was no nervousness. There was no panic. There was no worry. All was quiet in my head. Peaceful. Relaxed.
“Norah?” came Lisa’s upbeat call and I heard the librarian’s muffled ‘sh’ follow her.
I pulled away from Wade like I’d been zapped, pushing against him to put more distance between us.
What in the hell had I been thinking?
Wade’s face was a mixture of humour and confusion, tinged with something very much like wonder. I did not have time for that.
“Norah?” She was closer now, like dangerously close.
I didn’t have time to say anything to Wade, and I didn’t know what I would have said to him anyway. I just slithered in the opposite direction to Lisa’s voice. I’d just plastered my back to the end of the aisle when I heard it again.
“Oh, Wade.” She gave this chuckle that was half nervous and half excited and just a little bit pleasantly surprised.
“Lisa,” he answered.
“You haven’t seen Norah around anywhere, have you?”
I snuck a look around the end of the bookshelf to see Lisa mid-hair-flip.
At that point, I could have danced around naked with flaming tassels on my tits and I doubted Lisa would notice I was there. So avidly was she staring at Wade. Bloody hell, but it was ten times worse than when I was with her. I was sure of it. The forlornly wondrous look on her face with a smidgen of hope as she gazed up into his eyes.
Gag me.
Wade looked in my direction and I whipped my head out of view.
“Norah?” he asked.
“She literally just came in here,” Lisa said.
“Then, I’m sure she’s in here somewhere.”
I heard Lisa sigh. “Trust her to have no idea where the History books are.”
Indignation rose up in me, but I stamped it down. After all it was a fair call. Plus, I’d just had my tongue down her ex’s throat, so I didn’t really have any right to be indignant nor any wish for her to see me in any vicinity near Wade.
Seeing him again was
going to be bad enough. Seeing her and him at the same time right now? No thanks.
I snuck away while they were talking, wondering when they’d become such good friends to actually strike up a conversation at random in the library.
A few rows later, I stuck my head out from the aisle to see if Lisa was still busy. Not seeing her, I hurried across the library towards the doors.
“No running in the library,” the librarian said, eyeing me over her glasses.
“Shh,” was my super mature response to that as I rushed to the doors.
I pressed both hands against them and smacked my face into the glass.
“They open in,” the librarian offered from behind me.
I turned to her with a withering smile of belligerent thanks before grabbing the handle and yanking it towards me.
I didn’t breathe easy again until I was halfway to the Common Room.
By then, the likelihood of Lisa realising I’d been anywhere near Wade, let alone kissing him, was slim so I could relax somewhat.
Except, I couldn’t really relax.
And, I sort of did relax.
The memory of Wade’s kiss was fresh in my mind and it wound me up at the same time it gave me that sense of peace.
I dropped into my usual chair in the Common Room, my fingers brushing my lips gently. I refused to dwell on Wade’s kiss. Not only was there no point, I didn’t want to. I didn’t like Wade. I was so far from wanting to kiss him that it was ridiculous.
But then, if that was true, why did I keep reliving it my head for the rest of the day?
Chapter Eleven
All week, I’d felt like I’d just run a marathon. My breath was always on the cusp of being out of reach, and my heart cycled through pounding, fluttering, and this awkward jolt like it had to remind me it was there.
Like, I know, I can constantly feel you!
Was I nervous? Was I feeling so guilty I may as well have it stamped on my forehead? Did I jump every time I noticed my mind had wandered and Lisa had to vie for my attention?
Little bit.
So much for being a better friend.
But, was I more obsessed over my guilt at kissing my best friend’s ex-boyfriend that I’d barely thought about my parents’ issues all week?
the Art of Breaking Up Page 9