Begin Again || Nate Maloley

|| Chapter 19

"Miss Delaney," my teacher's voice shook me out of my nap. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

"Oh, I'm- I'm sorry."

It's been a few days since I last spoke with Nate. Spring semester has already begun. There was a constant battle with myself; not texting or calling because I was scared or telling myself I needed to text him because maybe he needed to hear my voice...but never doing so. Plus, if he wanted to talk to me, he would've attempted, too.

So here I am, the 2nd day of the semester, dozing off in class. My hours of sleep have dwindled down even though Andrea has been resting easier since I moved back in, trying to get back on good terms with me. Everything felt so weird, so fast. I had no interest in sitting in a classroom anymore. I just wanted to explore life...with him at my side. But all that is hanging by a thread because he wants to ruin his life. I'm not sure what I'd do if he got locked up or shot dead. I would probably spend days and nights beating myself up for letting him in.

So many numbers on the board. So many equations that made absolutely no sense. All I could see was Nate's different faces in my head; when he would smile, laugh, how he looked on top of me when he was about to kiss me. That's all that flooded my head, all that my mind wanted to process.

To add on to my eventful day, I had a meeting with the school counselor to discuss graduation.

"I'm afraid you won't have enough credits accumulated to graduate on time," the female counselor - whose name was Skylar - had told me while looking at the computer.

"Wait, what?" I leaned forward in my chair to look at the screen.

"Remember your freshman year when you were dropped from several classes for a low grade point average?"

"Uh...oh, right. I guess I did forget."

But how could I? It was only one of the worst years ever. Dealing with Wesley and depression. And it went on through my sophomore year. There were days I couldn't even get up out of bed, everything hurt so much. It even hurt to muster up the courage to leave him. In a sick and twisted way, I felt wanted. I was always spending the night and cooking for him. We did have some good nights...some very wild nights. The sex was amazing for both of us. But I wasn't good enough to be on his arm around campus. He would walk me to my classes but if you were a random person walking by, you would've never guessed we were together. And it kept running through my mind that even if we were all lovey-dovey in public, people would wonder what the hell he was doing with a girl like me. So no...going to class back then wasn't really the main priority on my list.

"And also the next academic year-"

 "Yeah, I said I remember," I cringed.

"What we could do is sign you up for summer semester again."

"What's funny is that I thought that's what I was doing last summer. What happened to Rosie? She's the one that told me last summer would set me straight."

"Rosie," her face scrunched up. "Yeah, they fired her. She was messing everything up, the school lost a lot of money."

I sighed and leaned back in the chair. I really didn't feel like taking more classes. And I was 80% sure that I didn't care for my major anymore or what I could possibly do with it. There was no more passion, just stress. I realized that I was wasting my time and my patience. But now was not the time to make impulsive decisions.

"Can I think it over and get back to you?"

Skylar nodded. "Sure."

She gave me a copy of my degree audit but I just threw it in the trash bin after I left. It was time to look forward to the other joy in my life...work.