Page 12 of A Totally Platonic Thing
I slammed the door shut and wobble-jogged toward my car.
“Chris!”
Oh, for God’s fucking sake, whatnow?
I turned, half blinded by the sun reflecting off all the cars.
Something flew through the air, something jingling and glittery, and I whapped it away from my face. “Ow!” My hand stung, and something rattled to the ground. “Ow, fucking…Aidan, what the hell are youdoing?” I wailed.
Aidan was standing by his car and leaning over the roof, frowning. And starting to look a little worried. “Dude, your keys. Are you even good to drive?”
I swooped down and picked them up, fighting a wave of lightheadedness, my cheeks burning all over again.
“Yep. Thanks. See you. Thanks.”
My head swimming, I managed to stagger to my car, get the door open, and collapse, my throbbing head leaning on the steering wheel.
Oh, God. I had a few hours to get my shit together before Lucas came home, and I had to figure out what to do.
Fuck. Me. How long had Lucas been gritting his teeth and putting up with me coming around and embarrassing him in front of his fellow students and his professors and everyone? How long had I been making a fool out of both of us?
It ached worse than the hangover to think about all of the intimacy between us being something Lucas tolerated to be nice, whereas for me…for me it was everything.
Strike all my other plans. Curling up in bed with a blanket over my head seemed like the only option left. I should’ve stuck to that in the first place.
Getting out of bed wasseriouslyoverrated.
Chapter Three
Lucas
By the time I finally got out of the lab that evening, I was so goddamn tired I could hardly drag myself to the car. I didn’t have the energy to be angry anymore.
And even if I had, I didn’t have the heart for it. Chris had been completely dead to the world when I’d gotten up that morning. Even though I felt weird and creepy, I’d stood by his bed for a minute, looking down at his flushed, sweaty face, his dark hair fanned out on his pillow, his mouth open a little, lips all soft.
He’d looked kind of small and pitiful and miserable, and I’d cracked. Like I knew I would. I had to resist the urge to stroke his hair off his forehead, smooth out the furrow between his brows with my thumb.
Dammit. I seriously couldn’t stay mad at him. Especially not after the million times he’d been nothing but good-natured when I annoyed him or acted like kind of a dick, the way you did sometimes when you knew someone so well and lived with him long enough for your rough edges to show.
Or that time he’d canceled a date to help me replace the radiator on my car because I could afford the part but not the mechanic.
We’d done it in the rain, because of course my car had broken down on one of Santa Rafaela’s six and a half rainy days out of the year. And it’d been at night, because of course I had to leave at the ass-crack of dawn to get me, two fellow students, and a robot to a town up the coast for a competition we were in.
Chris didn’t know a radiator from an alternator, but he’d watched three YouTube videos so he could get the gist. He’d also gotten soaked to the skin and spent two days in bed with a cold.
We just had too much water under the bridge at this point for me to hold a grudge, bottom line.
I stopped on the edge of the parking lot and perched on a waist-height wall under a clump of eucalyptus trees, breathing deeply to get something in my lungs other than the smell of singed plastic. I pulled out my phone and shot Chris a text. Jesus, it was already almost nine. I should’ve been home way earlier, but something had exploded, literally, on Amanda’s senior project. And she was one of my closest friends in the department, plus she’d bailed me out a couple of times earlier in the quarter. All of us in the lab pitched in to help.
It still took hours to clean up and fix.
Chris didn’t reply to my text. I sat there, too dazed to even walk to the car, watching moths flutter around the lights in the parking lot.
I tried calling him, and it rang a few times and then went to voicemail. Dammit. Okay, so now I was officially worried. I sent Aidan a quick text asking if he’d seen Chris at Aeon and headed for the car, feeling a lot more awake.
My phone dinged.Not here. Have him call you if he shows up
I sent back a thumbs-up and shot a message to Sebastian, realizing as I did that I’d contacted the bouncer at Chris’s favorite bar before I even thought of checking in with his best friend.
