Fixing a Screw-Up

 

Chapter Seventeen

I shut the door slowly, my brow furrowed in thought�"what did I do? Did I offend her somehow? I ran through the last few minutes in my head and groaned, burying my face in my hands. “F**k,” I groaned. “The ‘L’ word!”

Brandon stepped out of his room in confusion. “Did your chick leave?” he asked, his hair sticking up crazily in the back. I nodded miserably and went to my room, flopping facedown onto the bed, mentally kicking my own a*s.

My phone rang and, without lifting my head from the pillow, I answered it. “Hello?”

“Aiden? You there?” I flipped onto my back and held the phone better.

“Yeah, Jess, I’m here. What’s up?” I said heavily, staring up at the ceiling.

“I saw I missed a call from you�"hey, are you alright? What’s wrong?” Jess asked.

I groaned, hitting my forehead with my fist. “I did something stupid,” I answered. “I think I scared Sam pretty bad.”

I heard a door close and a metallic creak, like she’d sat on an old mattress, on the other end. “What did you say?” she asked, sounding like she was trying to find the appropriate mixture of intrigue and sympathy.

“You’re gonna think I’m retarded,” I muttered. “I said the ‘L’ word. I don’t know what I was thinking. In fact, there’s no way I was thinking, or else I wouldn’t have said that. She was hanging out here and I said that, and she left.” I pulled an extra pillow on the floor over my head, feeling ashamed.

Jess sighed. “Sam’s a commitment-phobe still, then,” she said sadly. “I was really hoping this was it, you know�"she’s not as stand-offish with you as she used to be with James, so I thought she was starting to really like you.”

I pulled the pillow off and threw it to the floor. “So what do I do? Tell her I’m sorry? Pretend it didn’t happen? I haven’t had that many girlfriends, but I was never the first to say the ‘L’ word,” I said in a rush, staring hopelessly up at the ceiling. “Now she probably thinks I’m a clingy psycho!”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Jess protested. “I bet she’ll act like nothing happened tomorrow.”

I frowned. “I hope you’re right,” I muttered. “Anyway, enough about me�"how was your day? What’d you do?”

Jess was quiet for a few moments. “I went to church and then to lunch with Ethan and his family,” she said. “It was okay.”

I sat up in bed, my eyes narrowed slightly. “He’s not making you change religions or anything too, is he? He doesn’t even seem like the religious type,” I commented warily. Jess laughed at me.

“No, nothing like that. I actually didn’t even go to church much before dating Ethan�"I was so lazy, you know? It makes me sound like a horrible person,” she admitted. “Anyway, we just spent lunch talking about school�"his parents grew up here and his mom was prom queen, so they like to know everything that’s going on.”

I snorted. “Sounds like a lot of fun,” I said. “Did she ever say anything about the homecoming incident?”

“I told her I dropped out of the race. You should have seen her face�"you’d think I committed a felony or something!” Jess laughed, making me smile in spite of my current self-loathing. “She mentioned going for prom queen today, but thankfully only seniors can run for that. You should have heard Ethan�"he made it sound like he could get the rules changed any time he wanted! He kept saying s**t like, ‘we’re going to be the prom king and queen.’”

“So nothing bad happened?” I tried to clarify. “No insults, no criticisms, nothing like that?”

“Nah, the only thing he said was that I needed to take my ACT and SAT over winter break to see where I need to study harder, and that makes sense,” she answered. “You and Matt are too overprotective sometimes! Yes, Ethan messes up sometimes, but he’s human. Everyone makes mistakes, and he always apologizes�"it’d be different if he didn’t.”

I raised an eyebrow, resisting the urge to roll my eyes�"who rolls their eyes at a phone?�"and settled for shaking my head slightly, even know I knew she wasn’t going to be able to see. “Right,” I said dismissively, not wanting to start a fight with her of any kind.

“The only thing you could possibly take wrong was a joke he made about college,” she said earnestly. “I said I hadn’t applied for anything yet, and he joked with his parents that at the rate I was going I’d never get into college!” Jess laughed. “He’s so serious about going to Austin. I’m just a junior!”

I narrowed my eyes slightly. “If you say so,” I answered.              

Jess cleared her throat suspiciously and said, “So, anyway, just don’t act different tomorrow and see what she does, okay?”

“Okay,” I answered half-heartedly, hanging up soon after when I heard her mom calling for her.

I fell back onto the bed, feeling the shame creep up on me again�"the L word? What was I thinking? I thought about Sam, and felt my stomach jump a little. I was a little shocked�"when did that really start happening? I closed my eyes and ran through the odd relationship we had, and that weird warm feeling got stronger.

“Well, what do you know,” I murmured to myself with a strange smile on my face. “Maybe I do really love her.” Sam would hopefully calm down if I just gave her some space�"by the time I saw her at lunch tomorrow, everything could be fine and I could learn to keep my mouth shut until Sam either felt the same way or she got used to the idea. Either way, I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice�"I could wait until she said it to me.

I whittled the lazy day away on the computer before falling asleep early, pumping myself up for the next day.

The next day at lunch, Sam kept her eyes on her food and picked at it slowly. I tried to pretend I didn’t notice, but Jess saw right through it all and tried to get us to talk by starting conversations that lasted only a few seconds. Matt’s eyes darted between us, a confused look on his face as this went on. James eyed us speculatively, the badly-disguised hope in them making me want to punch his lights out.

I cleared my throat nervously, my fingers tapping out an uneven rhythm on the wooden tabletop. “Um, Matt, when’s that essay over Huckleberry Finn due?” I asked, hoping to break the silence enough to get conversations going after this.

Matt’s eyes widened in surprise. “I forgot about that assignment! I think it’s due Wednesday�"wanna work on it after school? I’ll never get anything done on my own,” he moaned, his shoulders slumping noticeably. I winced�"good thing I’d brought that up, then, if he was this close to forgetting entirely about it!

“I haven’t started it either, but Lantham only wants two pages. That shouldn’t be too hard,” I said reassuringly, digging into my bag for the papers detailing what the teacher wanted. “If she didn’t make the margins too narrow, we could fudge it a little, make the font larger…” I tugged the sheet out, ripping off a corner in my haste, and spread it in front of me so that Matt could see it well, smoothing out the wrinkles.

We leaned over it, and Matt sighed and pointed out the due date�"Wednesday. I sighed heavily, sitting back and crossing my arms over my faded black Metallica t-shirt.

“Well, that sucks,” Matt said, leaning back dejectedly in his chair. I made a face and put the offending sheet back into my bag. “We can meet at my place�"it’s closer to the school, and Isabella’s got dance classes until four-thirty.”

Jess smiled at the mention of Matt’s little sister. “Is she still just dancing ballet?” she asked, tucking a loose fist under her chin.

Matt shrugged. “She tries,” he said. “I think she looks kinda funny up there, but that’s me.” Jess reached across the able and swatted him, struggling to keep a semi-stern look on her face as the rest of us stifled laughter.

“She’s only eight, Matt!” Jess scolded, a hint of a smile on her face. Sam snorted in her efforts to keep from laughing, practically shoving her fist into her mouth to keep another chuckle from escaping.

The bell rang and high-pitched squeals sounded as the metal legs of the chairs scraped against the dirty linoleum floor, mixing with the babble of the students pouring out of the classrooms and cafeteria. I waved goodbye to Matt and Jess, managing to give Sam a quick one-armed squeeze before she wriggled away and disappeared into the crowd.

The day seemed to stretch on endlessly until art class. It whizzed by so quickly it felt like I’d barely sat down before the final bell rang. I threw my stuff into my bag haphazardly, my eyes on Sam. I rushed to the door just as she got there, getting her attention by nudging her slightly.

“Oh… Hey, Aiden,” she said, smiling briefly at me.

“I need to talk to you,” I said quickly, hoping she didn’t run for the hills. I led her to a relatively quiet corner by the freshman lockers and nervously ran my fingers through my hair as she looked at me uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m sorry. I wasn’t even thinking. I don’t want things to get weird between us,” I said in a rush.

Sam nodded, clutching her sketchpad closer to her. “Just�"please don’t say that again,” she said softly, her eyes on the floor. “That really freaks me out. This is just high school.”

I remembered Sam saying high school wasn’t the time to “declare your undying love for someone” and heat flooded my face�"I didn’t want her to think I was turning into James, and it’d be the same situation all over again! “I know. I’m sorry.”

“You better be,” she said, smiling slightly. “I’ll see you later.” She walked away, glancing back over her shoulder once before disappearing around the corner.

I sagged against a nearby pillar and let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “Well, that went well,” I muttered to myself, pushing off the pillar and following the crowd heading for the exit. I squinted, meaking a mental note to get some sunglasses, and walked toward my car in the half-empty student parking lot.

I sank into the faded fabric of the Taurus, shifting uncomfortably as the stifling heat overwhelmed me and drove home, lowering the windows to relieve the stuffiness. I felt somewhat conflicted�"I was pretty sure Sam wasn’t entirely convinced the whole “love” thing had been a slipup on my part, but at least I’d done something about it.

Hoping I wasn’t turning into James in Sam’s eyes, I shrugged off the whole thing and drove home, turning the radio up in an effort to drown out the doubts voicing themselves in my mind.

Reviews

[Wildecat]

Personally I really liked this story. I am very impressed. Nice work.