The Devil Wears Girl Jeans [BEING EDITED]

The Devil Wears Girl Jeans (Chapter 43)

If I had a dollar for every time I thought about how much I hated school, I could probably buy San Francisco. This feeling usually intensified during French class though, which probably had something to do with the fact that I was forced to awkwardly sit in the same room as Lacey and Aubrey for an entire hour. I had completely blown them off since I started going out with Halden, and now I was forced to play the “am I paranoid or do they hate me” game every single day of my life.

I tossed my backpack on to the floor beside my desk, where Aubrey, Lacey and I had used to sit in a row. Since then, though, they had slowly chosen desks farther and farther away from me until they had eventually ended up sitting on the opposite side of the room. They'd probably thought they were being subtle, but I wasn't stupid. They were mad at me, and I didn't blame them. They had every right to be, which is why I was so surprised when Aubrey entered the room just as the bell rang, clutching two Starbucks cups, and slid into the seat beside me.

“Hartley.” she greeted me brightly, setting one of the cups down in front of me, as if we hadn't been ignoring each other for the last month and a half. If it was anyone else but Aubrey, I would've been suspicious, but Aubrey was such a genuinely good person that I doubted she was planning to do anything. At least, I hoped so.

“Hey, Aub. Long time no see.” I muttered, faking a smile, and she nudged the cup closer to me. I took a sip of what could have easily passed as pond scum, and tasted like pond scum too. Pond scum with lemon and ginger, but pond scum just the same. She seemed to be waiting to see if I liked it though, and so I took one for the team by choking down another sip and smiling.

“Oh good, I'm glad you like it, I had to guess your favorite type of tea because I don't think you ever told me what it was. But anyways, we only have like five minutes until Lacey gets here, and I don-” she stopped herself, but I had a pretty good feeling that I knew what she was about to say.

“What, Aubrey? You don't want her seeing you talk to me?”

“No!” she gasped, looking offended, “Of course not, she's just very... sensitive when it comes to the subject of you. I mean, the three of us were best friends, and then the second Halden came in to the picture, you just kind of left, leaving us in the dust. No hello's in the hall, no texts to see how we're doing, no asking us to hang out. It was like you were completely gone from our lives in a matter of days. She took it really hard, and she's still pretty bitter about it. I'm not too thrilled about it either though, but I mean I get that you like him. I don't think Lacey gets that.”

“I don't get what?” Lacey asked suspiciously, sitting down on the other side of Aubrey, as far from me as possible.

“I was just explaining to Hartley that she needs more balance,” Aubrey explained before turning back to me, “Its not just us who feel neglected, Hart. There's Sammy, and Seth, and Quinn, and...uhm..”

“And Tristan.” Lacey said flatly, making eye contact with me for the first time in months. “You know, everything would be perfect right now if you had just chosen Tristan. We would still be friends, he wouldn't be moping around all the time, and you might actually be happy.”

I couldn't believe it. What was she trying to say? That I'd made the wrong choice? She didn't know anything about what was going on in my life, she hardly had the power to judge me.

“Uh, excuse me, Lacey, but I'm very happy with Halden. I don't know what yo-”

“No,” she said, getting up and swinging her bag over her shoulder, “You aren't. You might think you are, but you aren't.” And then she turned and slunk out of the room, the teacher calling after her as she disappeared down the hall.

“Oh no,” Aubrey said sadly, “There goes her perfect attendance record.”

Lacey was the last person you would expect to have perfect attendance considering she couldn't care less about school, but she had somehow managed to pull it off. The perfect attendance record had always seemed like the stupidest thing to me, since I'd never understood why you should be rewarded for having a ridiculously superior immune system and never getting sick. Like, where was my reward for not setting the school on fire in all the years that I'd been here since we're apparently giving out pointless awards now?

“What the hell just happened?” I asked, still staring at the empty doorway where Lacey had just been.

“She hates the way you treat Tristan. A lot of people do. And I have to say, I agree with a lot of what she just said. I'm telling you, Hartley. Sure, he'll chase you around for a while, but the day'll come when he stops, and moves on. It'll be then that you're gonna wish you had let him catch you.”

Aubrey looked at me sadly for a long time, before raising her hand and asking the teacher if she could go to the bathroom. She sent me one last apologetic look before sliding into the hall, where I heard her footsteps grow fainter as she walked farther and farther away from me, until eventually I couldn't hear them at all. I didn't see Aubrey again that day, and a part of me was relieved. Every single thing she'd told me had been 100% true, and I wondered how I had been so oblivious this entire time.

It wasn't until I got out to the parking lot after school and saw that Tristan had already left without me, that I realized what I was going to have to do.

I was going to have to talk to Tristan, only this time, I was going to do it right.