Page 98 of Broken Ties (Rixon High 4)

Poppy

It was easierto avoid Aaron than I anticipated. But maybe that was because he was avoiding me too.

There was no escaping him for the couple of classes we shared, but over the next couple of days, I made sure to arrive early and then avoided all eye contact. Petty, maybe. Necessary, absolutely.

My head and heart were at war. On the one hand, I wanted to clear the air and act maturely about everything. So he didn’t feel the same? Fine. But he’d kissed me. He’d followed me and Eli into the movie theater like some possessive stalker.

He’d done that.

And then he’d tried to retract it all as if it meant nothing.

I couldn’t just forget that.

I also couldn’t ignore the giant hole he left in my life. We’d been Aaron and Poppy for so long, and now he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t the first person I texted when I saw or heard something funny. He wasn’t the guy who made me laugh at lunch or held the door open for me around school.

I’d always imagined the day he finally realized he felt the same about me, but I hadn’t ever wanted it to happen like this.

“Poppy?”

My name on Eli’s lips made me jolt out of my reverie, and blink over at him. “Yeah?”

“You were completely zoned out for a second.”

“Sorry. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

It was a half-truth woven with a lie. Like most of the things that came out of my mouth these days.

But I was determined to give Eli a chance. To force myself to be open to the idea of dating someone else. And Eli made me laugh. In fact, the more time we spent together, the more I realized we had a lot in common.

He adored his family, I adored my family. He liked football, I liked football. He was an athlete, I was an athlete. He didn’t take himself too seriously but he was serious about the important things in life. Just. Like. Me.

On paper, we were a match made in heaven. But when your heart belonged to another it made it difficult to let someone new in.

Aaron didn’t care.

So why did I?

Why did it feel like a betrayal every time I was with Eli?

“You and Aaron still haven’t made up, huh?”

“It’s complicated.” I sighed.

“Tell me about it. Leo got pissed when I told him I’d invited you to Homecoming.”

“He did?”

“Yeah.” He blew out a steady breath. “We had this pact… Before Leo moved to a different school, we promised to spend all lame high school rites of passages together. Like a giant ‘fuck you’ to the establishment or something. It sounds so stupid now but at the time we thought we were so fucking cool.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid to me.” I gave him a weak smile.

“Let me guess, you and Bennet made a similar pact.”

“Kind of,” I murmured, certain he didn’t want to hear about our pact.

“When you’re younger you think you have it all figured out. But then you grow up and everything starts to change.”

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