Caught Up In You (4 page)

I want to let it go, I feel like I should
let it go, but I can’t. Because the thing is that I’m a little sick and tired
of guys acting like complete shit heads even when their intentions aren’t to be
that way.

Just look at Nathan, going off and
getting a girlfriend with the snap of his finger. I mean, okay, it didn’t
happen exactly that way, but still. I thought what we had was a little more
special then that. I don’t know where his head was at, but I couldn’t have just
run off with someone just because he was away or something for a while. Well, I
don’t how I would react, but that’s not the point, the point is that he did get
a girlfriend.

And Eric too, showing up like that, acting
like he was going to save the day. Then just taking off! And not even texting
me after to see if I was okay! What a jerk!

So why did I still care about both of
them so much?

I knew why, the heart and mind didn’t
always agree, even if they should.

Either way, I was angry. It’s not like I
could take it out on Nathan though, he didn’t even know why I was so angry with
him. For all he knows I’m the one who’s a jerk for running off to live with my
aunt for three months without so much as a word to him. If I ever tried to let
him know how pissed off and hurt by him I was I would have to explain why I
felt that way. Which we all know can’t happen for many reasons.

I could go off on Eric about how pissed I
was at him for what he pulled yesterday, but I was extra mad right now, and
Eric was nowhere to be found. That left only one real option, Dustin.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have always
liked Dustin. He’s always been perfectly nice to me, but this went beyond
someone never being mean to me. This was about friendship! True friendship! I
was going to march right up to him and ask him what exactly his problem was. I
was going to ask him who he thought he was treating Angelina like that! She was
one of the most genuine people I had ever met!

Just thinking about it was starting to
make me more and more angry. With every step I took toward him I was starting
to feel better and better about my decision. Angelina would probably be so
happy about me defending her honor that she would be thanking me for days,
weeks even. She really was so lucky to have a friend like me. Although I’m sure
she would do the same thing for me to Nathan if she could. But she can’t, not
in this lifetime, anyway.

Dustin’s standing with a few guys from
newspaper but I don’t let that discourage me. Instead, I march right over to
him and push my way through their circle so I’m face to face with him.

Wow, look at me! Where did this fierce
Victoria come from?

“We need to talk,” I say. It comes off as
more of a command than a request, and I instantly feel pleased with myself. It’s
better to let him know who the boss is right from the start.

Only he doesn’t really look scared, just
confused. Well, he clearly has no idea who it is he’s messing with. You can’t
really blame
him,
he’s never seen my fierce side.

“Um, okay, sure. I’ll catch up with you
guys later.” He nods to the guys standing in back of me and I see one of them
roll their eyes at me as they walk away. Ugh, what is everyone’s problem?

Once the coast is clear, I fix my gaze on
Dustin. And for a second I catch myself thinking I should back down a little, I
mean, he looks so innocent and confused. I can’t back down though;
I can’t be fooled by his deer caught in front of headlights routine
!
I have to know better! I have to stay strong! For Angelina, and for women
everywhere!

Yeah, for woman everywhere! Wow, I’m
actually pretty empowering.

“What’s your problem?” I snap.

He takes a step away from me and looks
around for a second as if he can’t believe I’m coming at him this way. Which is
pretty understandable considering I barely know him. He’s still looking around
a few seconds later, like he has to make sure he’s not on some hidden camera
show or something.

“I don’t have one?” It comes out more
like a question than a response, which just annoys me even more than I already
am.

“Clearly you do because you don’t just
going around breaking up with people for no good reason!”

“I agree.”

“You agree? Then why are you doing it?
Angelina’s a really good catch and if you think you’re going to find someone as
loyal or amazing as her you really have another thing coming buddy and you know
what else-“

“I didn’t,” he interrupts me before I can
finish my rant. But the two words are enough to make me slow my roll a little.

“Of course you did!” But I sound unsure
even to myself.

“No, I really didn’t.”

“You, uh, you didn’t?”

Dustin shakes his head then sticks his
hands in his pockets uncomfortably. “No, I didn’t. She broke up with me,
actually.”

Angelina had broken up with Dustin? Why?
She had been just as crazy about Dustin as he was about her. He was lying, he
had to be, but he didn’t really look a liar. He just looked like a confused and
kind of sad boy standing in front of me now. Somewhere deep down inside of me I
knew he was telling the truth.

 
I instantly feel awful. Not only because I look like the fool
who accused him of something he didn’t do, but this means that Angelina lied to
me. She lied right to my face about Dustin breaking up with her and why he
broke up with her, and that really affected me. She had never lied to me. We
had never lied to each other for as long as I could remember. This all made no
sense to me. And I had learned enough in the past months to realize that trying
to make sense of it without talking to Angelina was going to do nothing for me,
except drive me crazy.

“Why?” I ask. The words come out as more
of a whisper than a question. I know its wrong of me to ask. I know I should
wait and talk to Angelina, but for some reason I need to know what Dustin has
to say. If only to make sure I get the full story, if only to make sure I can
shed at least a little light on the whole situation.

Dustin looks unsure for a second, like
maybe he should think better of what he’s about to say, eventually he talks
anyway.”She just wasn’t the same after you left. It was really hard for her to
snap out of her own thoughts. At first, she just refused to believe that you
would take off without so much as a word to her. She thought something deeper
was going on, like a conspiracy or something. She was starting to talk crazy.”

Shit. I didn’t like the direction this
was going. Starting to talk crazy. That was the thing about Angelina; she
wasn’t stupid. Like I said, we had never lied to one another or kept things
from one another so it makes sense that her first conclusion was that something
had gone wrong.

“Crazy how?” I try to sound unconcerned.
Like whatever he has to say about it totally isn’t a big deal. The last thing I
need to do is give off the vibe that there was any truth to what Angelina was
saying. Even though there was. I mean, what I had been through had been pretty
crazy.

Dustin waves his hand half-heartedly in
the air like it was no big deal. “Just that there had to be more behind you
leaving, she was convinced if it was by choice you would have told her,” he
says. I feel like he’s waiting for me to jump in and explain why I did leave
without telling her, but I don’t. After a few seconds he keeps going. “What it
comes down to is that she was having trouble excepting the fact that you left
and eventually it started to get to her. I guess she got tired of me always
trying to make her address what was really making her act so cold and detached
because one day she just told me she needed to focus on her self for a while.”

It hurts me to hear him describe what
Angelina was going through while I had been away. All this time I had been so
concerned about myself, with what I had been living with everyday in there, I
hadn’t even stopped to think about how it had affected one of the only people
back here who really cared about me.

I want to tell him I’m sorry, I want to
tell him how I didn’t know what had really happened. Mostly though, I want to
ask him more about Angelina in the time I had been away. It killed me to hear
about it but I wanted to be able to understand what had happened to her in
those three months. She deserved that from me. She deserved my knowledge of her
life in that time. She deserved my understanding.

But the bell rings just then and kids
start flooding around us in every which direction hurrying to get to their
first class. Dustin keeps his gaze on me for a second longer and then he just shrugs
a little and after a few seconds turns and shuffles off down the hall. He
doesn’t say bye, he doesn’t offer any further explanation. He just turns his
back on me, just like so many others before him.

Chapter
Five

I stand there, in the middle of the hallway,
for a few moments. Even if I ran now, it wouldn’t matter, I was going to be late
for my first period class either way. Besides, all I wanted to do was find
Angelina and talk to her. I was already feeling bad about to many situations in
my life; I didn’t need another one added to the list, especially one involving
my best friend.

By the time I start heading up the stairs
and toward my locker the halls are already pretty much cleared out. Besides a
few last minute kids running by trying to make it seconds before the late bell
and a few drifters headed to their lockers, it’s just me.

Well, my thoughts and me. Which is
perfectly fine. Clearly there are enough of them to keep me occupied for a
while. As if everything else that’s racing through my brain isn’t enough, now I
somehow feel responsible for what happened between Angelina and Dustin.

But I don’t have time to think about any
of my million and ten problems for very long because as I near my locker I come
head on with one of my biggest ones.

There, standing at my locker with a scowl
on his face, is Nathan.

My stomach does a flip the second my eyes
land on him. Suddenly, I feel like I might throw up. I somehow manage to walk
closer to him without having to stop and lean against one of the lockers for
support.

Even with a miserable expression on his
face, he still manages to look absolutely flawlessly sexy. His hair looks like
it hasn’t been cut in a while and he has the whole dark and scruffy thing going
on. Some guys can’t pull it off but he manages too without a problem.

He’s wearing a pair of dark jeans and as
I get closer I can see the Michael Jordan symbol in the top right hand corner
of his zip up. The dark blue color of his shirt matches the pair of basketball
sneakers he has on to a T. As always, I feel out of my element compared to him.

The nasty look remains glued to his
face
as I get closer to him. I immediately wish that I could
see him happy to see me, just one more time. But the voice in the back of my
head reminds me that that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

With each step towards him the books I’m
carrying seem to get heavier and heavier and the sound of my pounding heart louder
and louder as it echoes in and out of my brain.

When I finally reach him, I allow myself
to feel relief for a split second. Thank god I didn’t trip or faint. Thank god
I didn’t make a complete and total fool of myself in some other way. Then I
remember that I have to keep my composer through a whole conversation with him,
my heart starts racing again. Breathe. I find myself thinking over and over.

I start to flip the dial to my locker
without looking at him. Luckily it pops open on the first try.

“What’s up?” I’m shooting for casual, but
it comes out more like a half squeak.

Nathan rolls his eyes and mumbles
something I can’t make out under his breath. “What’s your status on this
article you’re writing about me?”

“My status?” What did he mean what was my
status? I had just gotten the assignment yesterday. We didn’t even have another
newspaper meeting to discuss the topic further for a few days.

He adjusts the straps on his book bag
pulling it closer to him and makes a big show of sighing loudly. “Yeah, let’s
get this show on the road. No need to drag your feet, feel me?”

Did he really just say feel me? “Did you
really just say feel me?”

“Victoria, focus, the article. What’s
taking you so long to get going?”

He’s looking at me like I’m one of the
stupidest people he’s ever come across in his life, and it kills. I don’t want
to be stupid to him. I just want him to care about me again.

“It’s been a day, Nathan.”

“Typical response.” He reaches into his
pocket and pulls out his cell phone pretending that whatever is on his screen
is way more important at the moment than anything I could possibly have to say.

I pretend to be really focused on putting
my books in my locker and finding what I need for my first class. “Not really,
I had a busy night last night. I haven’t had much time to think about it.”

This is kind of true, I did have a busy
day yesterday what with meeting my new therapist and the random run in with
Eric. Not that any of that stopped me from thinking about Nathan and the
article nonstop.

“You were to busy?” Nathan scoffs like
the idea is laughable.

I roll my eyes. Clearly, this was going
nowhere. “Look, I’ll come up with some ideas by the next newspaper meeting and
run them by everyone and we will take it from there, okay?”

“No, not okay,” he says forcefully.

I slam my locker door shut and turn my
complete attention to him for the first time since our conversation started.
“Why not?”

I’m getting annoyed now, and I think he
can tell because he takes a few seconds to answer. It’s like he’s trying to
push me over the edge.

He ignores my question completely. “We can’t
tell your dad or my mom you’re writing this article until it comes out. They’re
not over the whole you ditching our family and taking off with your aunt
without so much as a call for months thing.”

Here’s the thing, I should tell him right
here and now that I can’t do it. I know I should, I should tell him I feel like
it would be a conflict of interest. That with all the other schoolwork I have
to make up it leaves me no time to concentrate on his article. I should come up
with any excuse I possibly can to get out of it, because above all the tings
I’m not supposed to be doing since I got out of the wellness center, talking to
Nathan is at the top of the list.

But I don’t, I don’t say that, I don’t
even begin to say that. Because the truth is that as much as writing this
article terrifies me, the thought of not writing it terrifies me more. The
thought of not being around him at all again is almost more than I can take. I
know it’s stupid, I know it’s like placing your deepest desire right in front
of you, only to slide it just out of your reach. I know it’s like being close
to a forbidden fruit that you can never really have no matter how bad you want
it. But I don’t care, I didn’t mean for it to happen, I didn’t want it to
happen. But I had gotten attached to Nathan, obsessed even, and having him
close was enough. Sure, it wasn’t in the way that I really wanted him. But it
was better than nothing.

So all I find myself saying aloud is
“Okay.”

Nathan nods and turns around starting to
walk down the hall. “Great, so I’ll be over after practice, and we can figure
out all the details.”

“Wait, what!” I run to catch up with him
but his athletic legs are much faster than mine, and by the time I reach him
he’s already half way down the hall. I reach out and put my hand on his arm in
an effort to stop him and luckily it works. It takes every inch of
concentration left in my body to ignore the surge of energy that flows through
me just at the small amount of contact our bodies have, but somehow I manage it.

“Why would you come over after school?” I
drop my hand from his arm reluctantly.

He stops and allows his body to turn
toward mine. Ugh, I want to reach out and touch his face so bad.

“Because, I just talked to Angelina, and
she put things into perspective for me.”

Oh great! What in the world did that
mean? What the hell did he mean she had put things in perspective for him?
There was no way she had told him the truth about where I had been. She would
never ever do that to me. No, she knew better, she knew way better. Didn’t
she?
                

“Oh, how exactly did she do that?” I’m
again failing at my attempt to sound casual.

“She was just telling me how I shouldn’t
leave the fate of this article up to you and some teacher, I need to be really
involved in it, and we need to get started right away. I mean scouts from all
over could be reading this, I need to make sure my best light is coming out.”

I was going to kill Angelina.

“And you want me to, um, write that?
About your best light?
But why, you don’t even like me?” I
know I shouldn’t ask it, but I can’t help it. It’s something that has been
bothering me since I left newspaper yesterday. Why hadn’t Nathan put up more of
a fight about me writing this article?

Nathans face softens for a split second,
but then the same guarded expression comes over him again. “Yeah, well, like I
said this article needs to me perfect. And I figure you owe me.”

Then he’s walking off down the hall
again.

“Nathan,” I call out desperately. “My
address!”

“Angelina already took care of it.” He
rounds the corner and out of my sight.

Right.

***

Angelina is conveniently missing in
action. I mean she’s literally missing. After Nathan left me standing startled
in the middle of the hallway, I texted her right away. Which she didn’t answer,
just like she didn’t respond to any of the other dozen text messages I sent her
through out the day. I knew she was dodging me because she assumed I was pissed
about the Nathan thing, which I was and wasn’t. (Was because me being in
contact with him was a complete and total disaster for many reasons, one of
being that he was currently on his way over to my house or hotel or whatever
you want to call it, wasn’t because I secretly loved the thought of spending
any type of time with him. Even if it was just for an article.)

But still, I needed to talk to her, and
soon. It wasn’t just about the Nathan thing that was bothering me. It was the
Dustin situation too. I had enough to worry about, I wanted to solve one of the
few problems I actually could as fast as possible.

I take my phone out and send her one last
text, hoping that she’ll finally answer. I had searched the halls for her all
day but never found her, and she wasn’t in lunch. Had she gone home sick or
something?

Ugh, I was driving myself crazy.

I look at myself in the mirror for what
feels like the hundredth time and glance at the clock. He should be here any
second, if he was even coming. Part of me felt like this was some joke he was
planning, like let’s see how long Victoria will actually wait around and think
I’m actually coming. Yeah, that would be real hilarious.

It took me forever to decide if I should
change or not. I didn’t want him to think I was only changing so that I would
look extra good for him, but on the other hand I really wanted to change so I
could look extra good for him. Finally, I decided on a pair of black leggings
with an oversized gray shirt that had this really pretty pattern down the
sleeves allowing just the right amount of skin to show. My hair was blow dried
straight thanks to the shower I had taken as soon as I had gotten home, and my
make up freshly applied. I was going for subtle. Like this was the kind of
thing I changed into everyday when I got home from school. Then I thought about
the fact that I used to live with Nathan and how he probably knew this wasn’t
the kind of thing I ever changed into when I got home from school, but oh well.
Maybe if I felt somewhat attractive it would help me to not be a complete and
total fool around him.

I breathe in and out, trying to force
myself to relax. It was insane how just the thought of being around him made me
this nervous. He was the only boy I’d ever really kissed for goodness sake. I
should be more comfortable around him than this. Yet here I am, my stomach in
knots and my palms sweating.

I wipe my hands on my leggings and check
the clock one more time. Where was he anyway? You would think his fancy car
would get him here a hell of a lot faster then it was.

My aunt had some meeting with a client in
the city tonight. Apparently she was considering expanding and buying into more
real estate, so she wouldn’t be home until late. But what if she got out early?
And then she came home? Would she flip out at the sight of Nathan being here? I
should have tried to explain it to her, but I knew she wouldn’t get it. So much
could go wrong with this plan.

Why hadn’t I told Nathan we would have to
meet somewhere? That there was no way we could do it here. It’s not like he
gave me a chance as he was practically running away from me this morning, but
still. I could have found him throughout the day to change the plan around. It
just hadn’t occurred to me at the time.

The sound of the elevator coming to life forces
me out of my thoughts and makes me jump about ten feet off the ground.

“Damn,” I curse myself, making my way
down the hall and toward the front of our suite. I take a deep breath and
compose myself, painting a breezy smile on my
face
as
the doors to the elevator break open.

It’s the perfect first impression, for
the completely wrong person. That’s because it’s not Nathan standing in the
middle of the elevator.

It’s Eric.

My first reaction is to jump into his
arms and give him a huge hug, but then I remember what a jerk he is. Just
showing up here out of nowhere and then not even texting me or calling me all
last night or today.