Attention What If

Chapter 57

POV: Darleen

"And here is the best part of the library," I finish my tour for Kenzie.

"Why is it the best part?" she asks in confusion.

"Because this is where all the free shirts come from. If you study here, you'll always get first dibs."

"Darleen Grayson, you have money to wipe your ass with. Why do you want free shirts?" She crosses her arms.

"Don't look at me like that," I laugh. "I never know what to buy at the school swag shop, so the free stuff saves me from making a decision."

She shakes her head at me.

"Don't judge me," I pull her into my arms and smile.

"Rich stealing from the poor, and here I thought you were different." She teases.

"Shut up," I giggle.

She pecks me on the lips.

I melt into her.

She smiles.

Her phone buzzes, and we pull apart.

"Told you, see." She shows me the text from Skylar.

It says, 'I'm hungry, feed me now.'

I giggle.

"She only said yes because it was you; if I had asked, she would have made a million different excuses," I say.

"True, come on. I'm hungry too." She pulls me back to the rec center.

As we get there, we see Vida and Skylar arguing.

"You were drunk!" Skylar shouts at her.

"I may have been drunk, but I know what you said!"

"Uh... hey..." I say awkwardly as I approach.

Skylar sighs.

"Hey," Vida eyes us.

"Everything okay?" Kenzie asks.

"Skylar thinks she should stay single forever for what she did to Darleen."

"Vida!" Skylar grabs her and pulls her away from us.

I blink in surprise.

"I'm not going to drop it," Vida says to her. "What you said last night was fucked up. I may have been too drunk to process it then, but I'm not drunk now."

"Why are you making this a big deal!?" Skylar shouts at her.

"Because I'm still in love with you!" Vida shouts back.

They both go silent, and Skylar looks away from Vida. Vida makes a face of pain, one I can tell she's made many times before. I glance at Kenzie and she looks at me, all four us standing in the giant awkward pause.

"Um, I'll see you guys later." Skylar grabs her bag off the floor and walks off.

"Skylar!" Vida calls after her, but Skylar ignores her.

"You need to fix this!" Vida whirls on me.

"Me!?" I say in surprise.

"Yes, you! You're the reason she keeps holding herself back. Tell her she can move on. Tell her you are over her for good and are madly in love with Kenzie now, so she can stop holding on to whatever fucked hope she has in her head."

"Whoa, you need to calm down." Kenzie gets between us.

"I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this," Vida sobs before storming off.

I sigh.

"Come on, let's go find Skylar." Kenzie grabs my hand and pulls me in the direction Skylar went.

"We shouldn't get involved," I say.

"We have to. Vida's right, what happened between you and Skylar was never really resolved. You have to talk to her."

"Kenzie," I pull my hand back.

"I'm sure once you explain it—"

"Kenzie, stop!" I yank my hand back, causing her to pause. "I'm not ready to talk about that, okay." I get defensive.

She turns to me in confusion.

"I can't do that, okay... I can't tell her to move on." I look down in shame.

"You still have feelings for her?" She asks.

"Don't you? Skylar isn't exactly easy to get over." I point out.

She sighs in defeat because she knows I'm right. I know she also still has feelings for Skylar.

"All that Skylar stuff... It's still hard for me to talk about. I'm still working on it in therapy." I say softly.

"What's your therapist say?" she steps closer to me and grabs my hands in hers.

"That I need to talk to Skylar, that I need to sort out my feelings out loud, and that if I can't do that, then I need to come to terms with leaving things unresolved."

"Now is your chance to talk to her. It's been over a year, what happened, happened... but maybe now is your chance to finally heal and move on," she suggests.

"What if I don't want to heal..." My eyes water.

"What?" she asks in confusion.

"What if I don't want to move on?" I meet her eyes.

"What are you saying? Do you want to break up with me?" Her voice shakes.

"No, of course not," I assure her.

"Then help me understand." She squeezes my hands.

"You like Skylar, I like Skylar... maybe... the three of us..."

"One problem, Skylar doesn't like me. Not like that." She says.

I sigh.

"What you want is complicated. Very complicated. I don't know if the 3 of us can make that work." She says honestly.

"Yeah," I shake my head. "You're right, I should just... move on."

She hugs me.

I rest my head on her shoulder.

"If you want, I can go talk to Skylar for you," She suggests as she pulls away from me.

"No, let's do it together." I wipe my face and take a deep breath.

She nods.

I grab her hand, and together we once again walk off to find Skylar.