I made my way to English in a daze. I didn't even realize when I first walked in that class had already started. "Thank you for joining us, Miss West," Mr. Mason said in a disparaging tone.
I flushed and hurried to my seat. It wasn't till class ended that I realized Mike wasn't sitting in his usual seat next to me. I felt a twinge of guilt. . . and relief. But he and Eric both met me at the door as usual, so I figured I wasn't totally unforgiven. Mike seemed to become more himself as we walked, gaining enthusiasm as he talked about the weather report for this weekend. The rain was supposed to take a minor break, and so maybe his beach trip would be possible.
I tried to sound eager, to make up for disappointing him yesterday. It was hard; rain or no rain, it would still only be in the high forties, if we were lucky. The rest of the morning passed in a blur.
It was difficult to believe that I hadn't just imagined what Edward had said, and the way his eyes had looked. Maybe it was just a very convincing dream that I'd confused with reality. That seemed more probable than that I really appealed to him on any level.
So I was impatient and beyond confused and somewhat nervous as Jessica and I entered the cafeteria. I wanted to see his face, to see if he'd gone back to the cold, indifferent person I'd known for the last several weeks – my head was starting to ache with how much whiplash I had gone through in just one morning. I hoped I had just imagined it – I wouldn't be surprised if I had.
Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans — Lauren and Angela had asked the other boys and they were all going together — completely unaware of my inattention. Disappointment flooded through me as my eyes unerringly focused on his table. The other four Cullens were there, but he was absent. Had he gone home?
I followed the still-babbling Jessica through the line, somewhat disappointed. I decided to chew idly on my turkey-bacon-everything sandwich Charlie had offered me from The Lodge from him being on duty last night this morning. I was starting to really like Charlie.
"Edward Cullen is staring at you again," Jessica said, finally breaking through my abstraction with his name. "I wonder why he's sitting alone today." My head snapped up. "He's never done that before," she trailed off.
