Moment of Truth - Kasie West Page 0,12
doesn’t know anything, we need to work our way down this list. Someone has to know something. Right?”
“Agreed,” she said with a nod.
My stomach twisted in a knot. I had to talk to Robert. The guy I’d been avoiding for the last month. This would not be fun.
Six
My heart fluttered at the sight of Robert. So I had been right to avoid him for the last month, but it obviously wasn’t long enough—there were still feelings lingering under the surface that I needed to stomp out for good. His blond hair seemed longer than I remembered, and his shoulders broader. His skin glowed with a tan from all his time running or at the beach. He liked the beach. I had successfully not thought about that and many other things about him and here we were heading straight for his car in the parking lot. I wanted to turn around and leave, but right as I stopped to do so, he looked up and met my eyes. If I left now, he’d know he still had an effect on me. He would not have an effect on me.
Amelia gave an excited bounce next to me. I self-consciously smoothed back my hair. Why had we decided to find him right after swim practice? He had track after school, so I figured there would be less people around, but I hadn’t thought about how I’d look. A piece of wet hair stuck to my temple. I tucked it behind my ear, feeling heat creep up my cheeks. It wasn’t like Robert hadn’t seen me like this before. But still, here he was after a month, looking amazing. I wanted to look amazing too. Or at least a couple steps up from awful.
“Hey, Robert,” Amelia said.
He gave my body a quick look up and down, as if checking to see if he had made the right decision. He must’ve decided he had because he didn’t even smile. “Hi, Amelia. Hadley.”
“So we were online the other day and noticed you follow Heath Hall,” Amelia spit out.
Wow. No buildup at all. Just straight to the topic. I widened my eyes at her. She just smiled. She totally got away with stuff like that because she was so cute, even with her wet hair and swim sweats.
Robert laughed. “He’s not the real one.”
I furrowed my brow. “There is no real one. He’s a movie character.”
Amelia elbowed me. “We were just wondering if you knew who he really was,” she said.
Robert met my eyes then and held my stare for a three count, my cheeks completing their transformation to red, before Amelia interrupted by asking again, “So? Do you know him?”
“Yes . . . sort of. He goes here.”
“That’s what we’d heard.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you. You have to figure that out on your own.”
“Figure it out?” I asked.
“Yes.” But that’s all he said.
I wondered if he would’ve told Amelia had she asked the question, if he was holding back the info because it was me who wanted to know. It wasn’t the best breakup. Even though he was the breaker-upper, it had been obvious that night that he thought I’d tell him that he was more important than swimming. That I’d beg him not to go, promise not to practice as much or that I’d spend more time with him or something. But I hadn’t. Because it wasn’t true. “Why is his identity some secret?”
A loud voice called from across the parking lot, “Robert!”
He whirled toward the sound, then let out a yodel. And without even a backward glance at us to say goodbye, he bounded over to his friend and they bumped chests.
I took in a deep breath and willed my body to return to its normal state.
Amelia ran the toe of her shoe along a crack in the asphalt and then, as if it was the one withholding information from us, looked up with a scowl. “That was useless. He only told us information we already knew.” She studied my face. “Your cheeks are red.”
I tugged at the neck of my hoodie. “I’m hot.”
She squinted her eyes and focused on something over my shoulder, probably Robert. Then her eyes lit up. “Do you still like Robert? Is that why you’re so flustered?”
“Can we walk away from his car before he comes back?”
“Of course.” We headed for her car, the only one left in the back row of the parking lot. “So tell me, what’s going on? If you still like him,