Tranquil Falls

Making it Right

Tae was standing at her locker, talking to another girl. I stood against the trophy case with Brody nudging me to go talk to her. It was on me this time to make it right with her. In the end, I was the one who had put the knife into our friendship. It was just hard to take those steps. They really were the steps that Collins had been pushing me to take all along, to start repairing relationships and being more truthful.

He would have been so happy, especially since none of this had been my own doing.

Brody gripped my shoulders and shoved me towards Tae's locker. I glared at him over my shoulder before I turned and forced my feet forward.

The girl talking to Tae narrowed her eyes slightly at me as I approached, but I ignored her. I didn't know her and she wasn't someone that I wanted to make amends with.

"Hey," I said softly. Too softly, probably. All of my oxygen felt like it had been sucked out of me.

Tae paused though, in cleaning out her backpack. She slowly turned and looked at me. "Hi."

Progress. I glanced over at the girl, but she didn't take the note to leave. "Can we talk? Privately?"

Tae shrugged, shoving her backpack into the locker and slamming it shut. "I'll see you later, Eve."

I glanced at the girl and then at Brody. He gave me a grin with two thumbs up. I rolled my eyes at him and followed Tae into the library. It was about all the more private of a space we were going to get during the rush before first period.

I followed her into an empty row. She stopped and hugged her books to her chest, leaning back against the shelf. I shoved my hands into my pockets, looking anywhere but at her. Now that I had her in front of me, I didn't even know where to start.

"I'm an ass," I finally said. "Well, that much was obvious when you met me, but I'm an ass who takes everything a little too personally anymore. That wasn't fair to you. I knew that you didn't mean it the way it sounded to me. I just..." I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath. "I've been in a deep place for a really long time, long before my best friend's death. It's a lot of bitterness and hatred and sadness and anger and a lot of other emotions I don't really care to acknowledge right now."

I gave her a small smile. "I'm trying, though. For the first time since Taylor's death and since I started going to therapy, I'm actually trying to move forward and work through a lot of shit, another first for me. I guess that's what happens when one of your big secrets is revealed to the entire school and you lose all of your friends."

She stared at me. I crossed my arms over my chest and rocked back and forth slightly. She dropped her eyes to the floor. I wished at that moment that I could read her mind. I'd hurt her as well. She'd told me she had feelings for me, yet I had gone back to Finley. I wasn't sure if I had really gone back to him. We'd never officially declared that we weren't a thing.

"We're all asses," she said finally. "Sometimes we mean to be and sometimes we don't. We were both equally asses. I was just waiting for one of us to man up and say it out loud because he needed to. You know, for therapy and shit." She smiled softly at me. "You know, Gatlin, sometimes you can save yourself a lot of drama and pain by just speaking up." She stepped forward, putting a hand on my arm.

"This wasn't some fucked up therapy experiment by Collins, was it?" I asked, making a face.

She laughed and shook her head. "No. Definitely not. I do want to apologize, again, for what I said. It was dumb and I wasn't thinking."

"Thinking's overrated," I told her with a shrug. "I've learned that the hard way."

The first bell rang, causing Tae to sigh. "I'm so not ready for first period. You want to hang out at lunch? We can really delve into our feelings," she said, laughing.