The Deal With Byrd and O'Neill

Chapter 8

Mason

"I understand you were dying for the opportunity to kiss me, but I told you it was a bad idea," Zoey said lazily from her bed, while I paced around the room.

I growled in frustration. "I thought everything would be fixed, that things would finally go back to before that idiot Noel decided to mess it up." 

"I'll admit it is kind of weird that Cody's suddenly, like, fallen off the planet..." Yue fingered her nose piercing, looking thoughtful. "He says he's busy with the competition, but he usually doesn't phase out on you even when he's busy, does he?" 

"Exactly!" I said. "He never gave me the radio silence treatment before a big competition. I don't understand why he's shutting me out now." 

Granted, Cody hadn't gone entirely off grid. He still gave me short replies when I asked him things via text, but only if I texted him first. And he gave one word replies if he could get away with it, which felt an awful lot like snubbing. Hadn't been able to catch him on the phone either.

"He could be telling the truth you know," Zoey said. "I don't know a damn thing about swimming, but a regional meet sounds a lot more important than some random race. Maybe he is actually busy."

"I can't begin to understand the kind of pressure he's under for that," I agreed. "But you don't understand either. Codes has never gotten distant. Seriously, fuck Noel." 

Zoey snorted. "I don't think you can pin the blame on Noel anymore. You really went far out of your way to make sure Noel's game plan was thrown under a bus." 

"Yeah, well, it obviously didn't work."

"You're just being paranoid," Yue added, taking Zoey's side and making me throw up my hands in the air and dropping them to my side again.  

"It's not just the digital radio silence! Another very weird thing happened today: Cody said he was at the pool, so I tried swinging by after his training. But Britt and the others said Cody wasn't even there. How do you explain that?" 

"That could be true," Zoey said. "Maybe he left early." 

I crossed my arms. "It was still really odd though," I persisted, "the way they acted - like I couldn't leave fast enough."

I'd met Cody's swimming team friends before, obviously. It was kind of hard to avoid them considering they were such a big part of Cody's life. They'd always seemed like decent people to me. I mean, both coach Sparta and Dylan needed a mute button sometimes, and Britt was kind of vain, but their hearts seemed to be in the right place. They were practically ushering me out the pool doors today though, and I'm not sure what I'd done to deserve that treatment.