She pressed her lips together, exhaling through her nose. “Because I think the guy really does care about you, Avery. And I think you really care about him. It would be a fucking shame if you guys couldn’t fix this or work this out over some bullshit.”

#

With the semester winding down, I threw myself into finals. With the incomplete in astronomy, I needed to ace all my exams to just to make myself feel somewhat better after making such a crazy decision. More than once over the last week or so, I wanted to punt kick myself in the face for taking an incomplete. In those very rare logical moments, I cursed myself every which way from Sunday. It was a stupid, stupid decision, especially over a boy, but there was nothing I could do now. I’d missed the last two weeks of class and there was no way I could make up for that.

As I finished up my last final of the semester—music—I headed to the train station where my car was parked. Facing the brutal wind that seemed to blow straight in my eyes, I pulled out my cell. There were a couple of unread texts from Cam over the last week, one from the UNKNOWN CALLER who apparently got tired of calling me a whore over voicemail and moved on to texting it. Just like I avoided my cousin’s emails, I did the same with Cam’s texts.

I didn’t delete them though. I’m not sure why. I just couldn’t do it.

There was a missed call from Brit. She wanted to get together before she headed home for winter break. Neither her nor Jacob brought up the stuff with Cam again, but it hung between us every time we were together. After leaving campus, I headed to the grocery store for the long overdue trip. I milled through the aisles, not really finding anything appetizing, but more of just throwing stuff in my cart.

On the way out, I spotted Ollie heading into the pizza joint at the end of the strip mall. We were less than a mile from the apartments, so it wasn’t a surprise to see him there, but I stopped in the middle of the parking lot, my heart pounding. He didn’t look over my way, probably didn’t even see me, but I saw him and I thought of that stupid tortoise.

A lump appeared in my throat and I inhaled sharply. Tears burned the back of my eyes as I forced myself to the back of my car. I unloaded the groceries, focusing on the mundane task until I felt the messy ball of emotion slid back down.

The inevitable happened as I lugged up the last of my groceries.