Denial

Chapter 9

Nash's POV

I spent the entire day at school stressed out about everything; about my girlfriend Hannah and her extreme rage since I've been avoiding her, about Cooper and how I haven't talked to him all week even though we're 'best friends', and about Cam.

Cam was the subject that stressed me out the most because I really really don't even remotely enjoy Cooper, and I love Hannah and all but of course I'm

not in love with her, and sometimes it's just easy to forget to talk to friends.

Since recieving the angry texts and shouting voicemails from Hannah, I had been dodging her in the hall all day, walking the opposite direction of her any time I saw her, even if it wasn't where I was supposed to go. And the fact that we took all our classes in the same hall didn't help either. For that reason I ended up being late to nearly every class, and was definateley going to have to go to detention at least once.

I know I shouldn't have avoided her, and I knew I was only postponing the inevitable break up, but I just couldn't face her with no excuse to explain avoiding her. I didn't want to break up and break her heart and make every girl in school hate me and, I know this is a dumb reason, but I didn't want to lose my popularity. Everyone loves me, I don't want to turn into the jerk asshole douchebag that dumps his girlfriend of two and a half years for no explainable reason at all.

So my options were to dump Hannah, free her to date a guy who would love her and respond to her texts and buy her flowers and kiss her and mean it but lose the love of the entire student body, or stay trapped and guilty for being a bad fit for her and stay popular but miserable. I knew I had to do the right thing. I just had to wait until it was the perfect time, the weekend, so she could cry in the peace and comfort of her own room and not feel guilty about drowning her sorrows in multiple tubs of Nutella. Plus, it would give everyone a couple of days to calm down after they see her relationship status change to single.

I just had to work up the guts to actually do it.

I walked into Physics ten minutes late, tardy slip in tow, and slid into my seat at the back of class. "Nash, homework on my desk, right now," barked Mr. Stevens. "Yes sir," I mumbled under my breath before quietly walking to the front of the class to turn in my unfinished homework. He began his lecture as I sat back down and began daydreaming about you-know-who again.

"Psst," someone whispered. "Psssssssst!" again. "PSSSSSSST!" I turned to the girl sitting next to me. She had dark almost black but still just barely brown hair flying around her in messy curls like she had just woken up. She had a silver nose ring and smudged eyeliner like she'd slept with it on, but the bags under her eyes made it look like she hadn't slept in weeks. Kinley, right. It took me a minute to get out of my daydream and realize who was trying to talk to me.

"Yeah?," I whispered back, confused because for the entire semester we've been seated together, she's never talked. "What do you think you're doing hanging out with Cam? Are you planning some joke or prank or something because it's not fucking funny if you are," she growled. "What?!" I whisper-shouted, "I just met him yesterday, he's nice we're friends I swear I'm not up to anything." "You better not be, you'll regret it," she threatened, even though she wasn't very intimidating.

She returned her attention back to the front of the class but I kept talking,"Wait, Kinley do you have Cam's number? I mean of course you do you're his best friend. Um, can I have it I mean if you don't think I'm up to something or anything but I mean if you think I am you don't have to gi-" "Shut up," she interrupted, before slipping me a scrap of paper with his number written down in pencil. "Thanks," I mumbled. I grabbed my phone and started texting Cam from behind my textbook to make it look like I was reading.