Images

31

Images

Monroe’s suspension ended Wednesday, and so did the brief respite from his texts: I need to see you. We need to talk, love. Fine, I’ll find you. By lunch, I was either ready to join the spymaster ranks of Inspector Gadget and James Bond, or I was ready to have a double-O meltdown. I’d spent the past four hours attempting to peek around corners or creep in and out of classrooms.

“What are you doing?” Eliza asked. “You’ve been weird all day.”

“Skulking,” I answered, trying to keep my voice light even though my hands were shaking. “And skulduggery.”

“Well, stop it. You’ve already gotten in more than your share of trouble.”

I rolled my eyes at Eliza and they landed on him. Not Monroe him. Him him. The other person I wasn’t prepared to see. The person whose email had spent the past thirty-six hours cycling through my head like one of those scrolling billboards that bends around corners in Times Square.

Fielding wasn’t even walking toward me. I mean, he was headed my direction, but not on the same path. So unless he went on a rule-breaking jog across the lawn, we weren’t going to have to interact.

Didn’t matter. I went full sweaty and dry mouth. My pulse soared. Like the butterflies from my stomach had launched an invasion on my veins, stampeding and leaving me breathless and reckless. And while my brain screamed adrenaline-laced messages to run! and hide! my defiant feet dragged to nearly a stop. My rebel eyes stayed glued to him. And my heart . . . it squished. Or maybe it squashed? Regardless, it beat in ways that made my chest feel too tight.

True to pattern, since I was a five-ish feet of pure panic, Fielding noticed me. His humiliation-seeking radar locked on me and didn’t let go. His brown gaze meshed with my gray-blue, and even from across the lawn, I was caught like burrs tangling up in a golden retriever’s coat. His eyebrows drew in, and his shoulders shifted from their perfect posture—creeping up toward his ears.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to handle it now that too much honesty and vulnerability clogged the air between us. Though it was lopsided vulnerability: all the confessions—all the declarations—had come in one direction, from him to me. And maybe he needed reassurance, needed to hear me say I wouldn’t use that arsenal of emotions and secrets against him.

I offered him a thumbs-up—and immediately regretted it. Completely uncool. There was a good reason that the last time I’d done a non-emoji version of the thumbs-up was when I was eight and posing next to a birthday cake. But this realization came a few seconds too late—because his eyes had dipped from mine to my hand before pulling back up.

Then again, maybe me in goober form was what he needed? Because the left corner of his mouth lifted in response. Not a smile. Not really. But it was in the smile family—a second cousin twice removed or something. And the drum inside my chest didn’t care about the difference. It squished. This was definitely a squish. One so powerful it made me stumble over my feet, or a sidewalk tile, or the idea that I’d been a shortsighted idiot when it came to him.

Curtis caught my arm. “Whoa, short stack. Steady there.”

I didn’t feel steady at all. My worldview was going through seismic shifts—it felt only right that the ground beneath my feet should be tilting as well. I felt like Lizzy must have when she took a walk after reading Darcy’s letter and realized how wrong she’d been about so much. How wrong she’d been about Darcy and his feelings. It took me an extra second or two to find my balance and the courage to look back over to where Fielding had been standing. By the time I did, the moment had passed. He had continued on his way.

I’d just come from English class, where Ms. Gregoire had handed out copies of the letters we’d written about Romeo and Juliet on the first day of class. “Now that we’ve finished reading the play,” she’d said, “I’d like you all to reread and write a response to your reflections from our first day together.”

Instead of handing me a letter, she’d paused at my desk. “Since you and I have already discussed the evolution of your feelings about the play, Merri, I know this assignment will be more personally meaningful if you focus on Pride and Prejudice instead. Even if you’re not quite finished yet.”

Since the very thought of anything Romeo-related made me want to run for the closest paper shredder, I was game. I’d wanted to write about Lizzy’s initial bias against Darcy, or about the chapters I’d read last night, where Lizzy returns home and fills Jane in on everything that had gone down with her and Darcy while she was at Hunsford. How I still hadn’t found the words or time to tell my sisters or Eliza about Fielding’s Darcy-style declaration and email. Lilly, because she’d been spending the night at Trent’s lately. Rory, because our relationship wasn’t really the secret-sharing type. And Eliza . . . honestly, because I thought she’d take my side. And I didn’t think I deserved it. I wanted a Jane-like reaction. Jane had worried about Darcy’s hurt feelings and disappointment. The good news, I’d reassured myself as I wrote page-filling nonsense about the trip to Derbyshire that Lizzy had been invited to take with her aunt and uncle, was that Fielding barely knew me. It’s not like he could really care that much about my rejection. As he’d written, I was “a mistake.” He’d probably already moved on to Ava.

I may have even shot her a glare across the classroom as I thought this; if so, she’d definitely smirked in return.

The whole time I’d been pretending to do the assignment, I’d had a sinking feeling in my stomach. It was the type of plunge that occurred when I was standing on the end of our diving board and Rory or Toby snuck up behind me and bounced. Like gravity was no longer something I understood—like it was too late to slow down, go back, or change the crash-splash outcome. It felt a lot like the moment I’d just experienced on the path with Fielding—one I was still experiencing, as I scanned the yard for any glimpse of his back.