The New Boy [boyxboy]

Chapter Seventeen

A/N: This is dedicated to RosiewithaPassion because she's gonna do a Dexter-style flash mob at her school! (Now you have to do it! XD)

We both whipped our heads around to see Gary standing there, and after a split second he turned around and walked off quickly, disappearing around the corner before I could even begin to think of what to say.

                Dexter stood back from me, looking perplexed, one hand scratching the back of his head, and I looked at him helplessly.

                ‘Go,’ he suggested, like the wonderful person he is. Of course he would want to make sure Gary was okay before we did anything else. Of course my feeling like we should just run away and lock ourselves up in a bedroom for the rest of our lives and never face the world was selfish. Of course I had to go.

                ‘Um. I’ll see you later,’ I said, dithered for a second, wondering whether to kiss him goodbye or anything, but then bolted. I’m not gonna lie, part of me thought about bolting and going straight home and not facing either of them for a while, but I tried to reason myself out of it. I had nothing to feel guilty about.

                Did I? I mean, I know Gary and I had talked, and he’d apologised, and we’d parted on good terms, but we’d never said we were getting back together, did we? Though I guess I could have made it clearer that that wasn’t what I wanted. I had let him kiss me on the cheek when I got out of his car and didn’t say anything about it, but it’s not like I had kissed him back either. I hadn’t flirted with him that day, I hadn’t made any promises.

                But I guess insisting that he skip school with me isn’t the most platonic suggestion you can make to someone who’s had his hand down your pants.

                ‘Gary!’ I called when I saw him, disappearing into a bathroom. The same one he’d tried to make out with me in the first day Dexter and Teegan came to school.

                He ignored me and I pushed my way in after him, locking the door once I was sure it was only the two of us in there, even though I’d get in heaps of trouble if I got caught.

                ‘Gary,’ I said again, more softly this time. He was standing staring out the window with his back to me, his shoulders tensed. I wondered if he was gonna go psycho on me and kill me and thought that maybe I shouldn’t have locked the door after all, but then I thought maybe I’ve been watching too many movies and that even though that happens in films all the time it didn’t mean it was going to happen to me.

                I walked up behind him slowly and tentatively put my hand on his shoulder; he jerked violently like he hadn’t been expecting it and I took my hand back, feeling like complete shit. That was the first time ever that Gary hadn’t welcomed my touch.

                ‘I’m sorry,’ I said hopelessly. I didn’t have anything else to say. I couldn’t say it hadn’t meant anything when I’d kissed Dexter, because it had. I couldn’t say it wasn’t what he thought it had been, because it had. I couldn’t say it wouldn’t happen again, because I hoped it would.

                After a second Gary turned around and I felt even worse when I saw his eyes were wet. He wasn’t crying – not yet anyway – but he was on the verge of it. It wasn’t just sadness I saw in his eyes and on his face though, there was also a hint of something else, like determination. I soon found out why.

                ‘Are you going out with him now?’ he demanded. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

                I hesitated. ‘No,’ I said finally, even though I hoped that was where it was going.