Page 122 of The Confidant
Even now, she just seemed to barely be here. When I’d asked her if she was still sick and if she needed to stay back an extra day, she said she was fine.
But she didn’t look fine. She looked like she was half-dead.
The usual vibrancy in her eyes was gone.
And when I reached for her hand where it rested limply on her leg, she seemed to hesitate for a second before letting me hold it.
“Is there something going on that I need to know about?” I asked, scared that what happened with me at church yesterday was causing her to pull away.
She’d told me before I left that she wanted to find a way to make things work out. But maybe as the day had gone on, she’d realized that it would be too hard.
She looked at me with tired eyes. “I just had a really bad day yesterday.”
“Is it because of me?” I rubbed my thumb over her knuckle. “Did me leaving church ruin everything?”
Her eyes filled with tears and her lips started trembling, like she was fighting back huge emotions, but she said, “No. It’s—” She released a shaky breath. “It’s just something my dad talked to me about. And… I don’t know. It’s just, I’m confused now.”
Had Pastor Caldwell told her to break up with me again? Had Xander said something about us, and he decided we had crossed the line?
I wanted to press Scarlett for more information about what exactly had happened with her dad, but I could tell she was in enough pain already that I shouldn’t press her.
So I squeezed her hand instead before pulling her close. As the sun began to rise over the horizon, I kissed the top of her head and just held her as tears silently streamed down her cheeks.
* * *
Scarlett continuedto be withdrawn over the next few days. She wasn’t present in any of our classes. Didn’t seem to really care about our study sessions.
It was like she was in shock or numb, or something.
It actually reminded me a little of how I felt when I got the initial shock of finding that The Fold wasn’t what I’d thought it was.
Was that what had happened to her? Had something in her meeting with her dad cracked her faith?
Or was it something completely different? Maybe a sick relative? Her grandparents were well into their eighties now, so maybe something happened to one of them?
“Do you want to talk about anything?” I asked her when we were hanging out in the common room together Thursday evening. “Is there anything on your mind?”
“I’m just thinking a lot about life after high school and what it will look like for me,” she said with a shrug.
“Yeah?” I asked, wondering if she still saw me in any of those future plans of hers.
She nodded. “Like, I just—I’m not sure it is going to be exactly how I imagined.”
“Really?” My voice came out higher pitched than normal.
Was she going to break up with me then?
Had I just opened up the conversation for her to do that?
She bit her lip and said, “I—”
But she didn’t finish her thought because her phone lit up with a text. And even though I knew her texts were none of my business, when I saw the name at the beginning of the notification, I couldn’t help but read it along with her.
Xander:Still on for dinner at Jacob’s Steakhouse tomorrow so we can talk about everything?
She seemed to finish reading the text at the same time as me, and when she met my gaze, her expression looked guilty.
“You’re meeting Xander for dinner tomorrow?” I asked, deciding to just nip whatever this thing was in the bud.
