Right Where You Left Me

fucked up

"I fucked up," I say.

Linda sits across from me, sipping from a scalding hot mug. She raises a brow and takes a dainty bite of a cookie.

"How so, my dear?" she asks.

I fiddle with my fingers and stare at the gap between my knees. "I let my anger get the better of me and said the wrong thing."

She leans back and stirs her tea with a spoon. "What did you say?"

"You might hate me if you found out what I said," I admit, anxiously gnawing at my nails and lips.

Linda chuckles and lays a hand over mine. "Adya, darling," she tells me. "I could never hate you."

I take a deep breath and spit the words out. "I told Nate that I wish he never came back." I pause. "I didn't mean it, obviously. But I just kind of said it."

Linda doesn't even flinch. "Did you apologize?" she asks.

"No," I say, shaking my head and letting my hair fall to hide my ashamed face. "I ran away and found myself here."

"Here," she teases, raising a brow, "And not at school, where you're supposed to be now."

"No one ever shows up to school," I tell her.

"What do you think you should do with Nate?" she asks me.

"Apologize," I say. "But he's fucking the girl who bullied me. At least, I think he is. He's taking her to a party."

Linda's brows raise again, this time in shock. "Oh," she says. "And he knows she bullied you?"

"Oh, he knows," I scoff. "Sometimes I don't understand him."

"Apologize," Linda advises, "And then confront him. It's the best way. Clean up your side of things, and then address what he's doing wrong."

I nod and thank Linda for the tea.

"Get to school now," she winks.

Unfortunately, I don't take any of her advice.

I don't go to school for the rest of the day. I don't apologize to Nate. And I most certainly do not confront him. I hate confrontation.

Nate and I avoid each other. If I enter the kitchen, he leaves. If he passes me in the hallway, I pretend not to see him. At school, we are strangers.

"That asshole," Alex says as we watch him kiss Kim passionately on the mouth on the other side of the cafeteria. His eyes flicker to me as his lips work at Kim's. He smirks for a millisecond before his face returns to its bored, I-don't-give-a-fuck look.

"Literally," I mutter, turning away and picking up my sandwich to eat. Next to us, Kate hums in agreement.

English class is a whole different nightmare.

We have a substitute teacher, so Kim slips into the class and the teacher doesn't suspect a thing. She pulls up a chair next to Nate and they sit together. They don't even talk to each other. She just giggles and kisses his jaw.

She leans up and whispers something in his ear, and both of their eyes flicker to me. Hers flash with a mean look as she giggles. Nate looks pissed and annoyed. I stand up, grab my bag, and walk out the door.

"Hello, miss!" the teacher says. "Where are you going?"

"To smoke a cigarette," I call back.

Outside, I sit back against the wall and blow smoke into the air. Winter has cast her spell across Woodvale, greeting us with cold and a sprinkle of snow. I turn on my lighter between my hands to try and rub some warmth back into them.

I feel like crying. A crushing sense of loneliness has impeded itself upon me. But I don't cry. I just tilt my head back and take such a long drag off of my cigarette I almost finish the whole thing.

Scary thoughts fill my brain. If I feel empty without Nate, what would I feel like with all of him? What does "all of him" even entail? How did I manage this long without him? It's bad that I rely on someone else for my happiness. It's really, really bad.

nate

I'm not mad at Adya.

Sure, she fucked up. But I fucked up too. But now it's four in the morning, and I'm sitting in bed replaying our conversation. The tears in her eyes. The anger and frustration that continued to build up, and was released in that one sentence.

It's wrong of me to be hooking up with Kim. I know that. But Adya hurt me. And as childish and fucked up as it sounds, I want to get back at her.

I close my eyes and think of that night one week ago, when Adya had her head on my chest.

How did everything go so wrong so fast?