The Fleeting Happy

Twenty-Three

I think I was too angry to be sad.

The next couple of weeks that followed what might've been my worst fight with Montana yet, I was much too furious to allow myself to cry about what had happened. Maybe some little part of me was forcing myself to stay angry in order to avoid coming to terms with the pain it would surely bring me. I'm not sure.

Either way, these next few weeks sucked.

At school, the tension within my group of friends was at an all-time high.

It seemed as though Montana hadn't mentioned our fight to anybody, which was just fine by me. This was most likely because if she told people about our fight, she would also have to tell people about how we were secretly in love— and I don't think either of us were ready to share that with anybody else yet. And so, despite our not-speaking-to-eachother, we'd come up with a silent, unspoken agreement: we pretend as though the fight never happened around Stef, Carter, Owen, Greene and Diego.

Despite our agreement, there was still the tension between me and Greene. I did feel bad about hurting him, but I refused to apologize until he did. This proved to be catastrophic for the rest of our friends, since the divide we'd created with our breakup only strengthened. It was like this:

Montana was on Greene's side. Mostly because she was upset with me. Every day at lunch, Greene would avoid where we usually hung out under the bleachers and instead sit on the bleachers and Montana would follow him without sparing me a single glance. Carter and Diego were also on Greene's side, because Carter just wanted to appease Montana and Diego had been Greene's best friend since elementary school.

Which left Stef and Owen who stayed under the bleachers with me— probably not even because they liked me better, but because there was an ash tray under the bleachers and Stef was constantly smoking cigarettes. It seemed as though Owen Hart was the only one who really sympathized with me, but even that, I couldn't be sure of.

Needless to say, I was feeling very crappy for a very long time.

"You guys don't have to stay under here with me," I'd told them one day. "I'm probably just gonna take off. I've got stuff to do for class." Lies. The only thing I was going to do was sit in one of the girls' bathroom stalls and cry.

Stef took a drag from her freshly-lit cig. "That's ridiculous. I'm staying."

It took every ounce of my strength not to start sobbing right then and there. The animosity that I'd been putting up with for so long was finally starting to get to me. "I'll, uh, I'll see you guys around." I'd mumbled the last part.

I didn't even look at them before I shouldered my schoolbag and hurried down the football field.

"Rory, wait."

It was Owen. He jogged, catching up to me. "Look. I know it's tough right now, but Greene'll get over it. He ain't a bad guy."

If only Owen knew that it was so much more than that. I took a shaky breath, forcing myself to steady my voice. "I just— I hate what our relationship has done to everybody. Look at us! We're hardly even talking. It's like... like I screwed everything up."

Montana's voice started ringing in my ears: Go back to McAdams... we were just fine without you...

"I hate it too," Owen said. "But when things get tough, you don't start running. You stay and you fix them."

"I just can't bear to go back there right now."

"Okay, so let's take a walk around the track," Owen suggested. "Come on. I just realized that we've never hung out before, just you and me. And you're one of my girl's best friends. That's gotta change."