Page 185 of Something Rad
“What is with everyone dying to talk to me today?” I ask.
Robbie stiffens, his shoulders falling. “What are you talking about?”
I tilt my head at him, trying to understand. I’m not sure what. Butanythingwould be nice about now. When I don’t say anything, Robbie speaks up again.
“Alice? You’re talking about Alice?” he asks, his voice low.
My brows knit together as I stare up at him. “Yeah… How did you know that?”
He doesn’t answer my question, instead asking another one of his own. “Did she say anything to you yet?”
“Um, well…no. She hadn’t gotten the chance to.”
Robbie visibly relaxes just a fraction, and, somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better.
“Why do you ask?” I question him. “What would she be telling me?”
Principal Whileyman’s voice comes over the microphone again as Robbie just looks at me, his mouth open, but no answers coming out. He announces that the final category ofBest All–Aroundis up.
Robbie’s hand is still wrapped around my wrist, and I hate that I can still register the electricity it sends up my arm. Even right now, as I know I should pull away, that feeling makes me not want to. Fortunately, my mind is able to win the battle against my heart, and I slip myself from his grasp.
Or at least I try. Robbie doesn’t let me, holding on even tighter to me. I glance up at him and find a look in his eyes I can’t decipher. It’s some kind of mixture of panic and sheer desperation.
“I have to go take this photo, Robbie.”
He doesn’t move a muscle.
“Let me go, please,” I say.
Robbie’s throat bobs once before he finally releases me, unwrapping one finger at a time from my wrist. As he gets down to his last finger, I prepare myself to bolt, but he pauses his movement.
“Cooper,” he mutters.
I look up at him, exasperated and so confused.
“I’m begging you,” he says.
“Begging me towhat?” I ask him, irritation clear in my tone.
He presses his lips together tightly, shaking his head before speaking again.
“Don’t listen to Alice.”
My heart instantly drops to my stomach. I yank my hand out of Robbie’s grasp. “What?”
“Cooper, she–”
“Robbie Summers!Please make your way back to the stage.”
thirty-eight
ROBBIE
I just need her to listen.
I fucked up, but it’s not too late. It can’t be too late. I don’t want to be a fuck up. I don’thaveto be a fuck up. She’s the only person that’s ever made me feel that way.
I can’t let her get away just because Paul Strothers succeeded at getting under my skin and made me break. I meant what I said to him, at least in the first part of my heated response. But now that I’ve had the time to replay it a hundred times over, I understand how bad it could sound. How I didn’t choose my words very carefully. It’s hard to choose your words when they’re flying out of your mouth faster than your brain can process them.
