Page 15 of Liar
That’s what I assumed, but it wasn’t her.
It was someone I hadn’t spoken to in a long, long time, at least not by myself. And definitely not through a text.
Sawyer.
Hey, Declan.
That’s it. Nothing else in the text. I was almost nervous to open it, because then he’d see my read receipt. My heart started beating fast for an entirely different reason; I knew Sawyer wouldn’t text me out of the blue.
This was it. He was making his move.
Kind of ironic that he’d make his move on me, but he had to smooth things over with me if he had any hope of reconciliation with Ash. I was the one he fucked over for the last year. I was the one who was the brunt of his jokes, who got notes and nooses taped to his door. I was the one who suffered here, and it was because Ash was close to me that she got sucked into his games, too.
My immediate reaction was that I didn’t want to respond. I wanted to pretend I didn’t see my phone light up, leave the message unopened, and go about my day. For once, I held the power here, and I never held such things. The power was never mine. I wasn’t that type of person…was I?
It was so difficult to tell these days.
But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn’t simply let things be. I couldn’t pretend to have never gotten the message. Ash wouldn’t want me to ignore it. She’d want me to respond, to talk to Sawyer, to listen to what he had to say and forgive him. She thought we could all get along again, be one big, happy group of friends.
The problem was, I didn’t know if we were ever happy together.
Sawyer always had his vices. He’d always slept around and drank and partied it up. Travis had always been aloof, the loner of us, always watching—and calculating, apparently. And me? I’d always been the pushover, the one who said everything was okay when it wasn’t.
How could we ever truly be friends after everything that happened? Could Ash really bring us together again?
She’d brought me and Travis together, in more ways than one, and she was happy with us. Would adding Sawyer to the relationship ruin it all?
Will hated Sawyer; I didn’t think that fact would ever change, but I knew my brother hated him for me. I was the reason Will disliked Sawyer so much, so if I showed Will that Sawyer and I had wiped our slates clean, maybe he’d come around. Ash had told me about how upset Will had gotten the other day when she’d brought him up again, so I knew it was up to me.
Me. I held Sawyer’s fate in my hands. How the tables had turned.
With a sigh, I reached for my phone, a small pit forming in my stomach as I unlocked the screen and opened the message. I responded back, just a short hey, what’s up?
It felt insanely weird to text Sawyer. Like I’d stepped out of reality and into a different one, or into last year, before the shit hit the fan.
It wasn’t but a moment later when my phone screen lit up again, his message reading We need to talk. Can we meet tomorrow?
Tomorrow was Friday, and I ran through my schedule quickly in my head. I had a gap for lunch; if Sawyer wanted to meet, we’d meet then. I would not waste my Friday night with him when I could spend it with Ash.
And Travis, and Will—but they were beside the point.
Of course, I had no clue whether or not Sawyer was in class then, but if he really wanted to talk to me, he’d find a way to come.
Sure, I replied. Meet in the union at twelve?
Okay, he said. And that was that. I didn’t reply to him again, and his side was silent, too.
The last thing I wanted to do was meet Sawyer anywhere—and talk about what we would surely talk about, Ash—but I had to. Sawyer meant a lot to Ash. I could tell by the way she spoke of him she hoped he would be a man of his word, that he’d be better this semester. No more games, no more other girls, no more mess-ups.
Would Sawyer be capable of such change? Only time would tell.
A half-hour passed, my attention firmly refocused on finding at least ten sources, when the dorm room door opened and Ash walked in. As I took off my headphones, Ash dropped her backpack to the floor and gave me a kiss on the cheek before sliding her skateboard under her bed. Today’s temperature had been abnormally warm for a January day in Hillcrest, so she’d skated.
I closed my laptop, turning to watch her untie her shoes. Being high tops, she couldn’t just slide them on and off; she actually had to lace them and undo them every single time. Seemed like a lot of work for shoes. After they were off, she slid off her beanie, her blonde and pink hair messy and cute.
God, every part of her was cute.
“How was class?” I asked, sounding the lamest I had in a while, since I was last in her presence. Ash had a way about her that made me feel like an idiot, unworthy of her in every single way.
