Shattered Rose (Winsor Series) - By T L Gray Page 0,16
wondered if I looked as desperate as he appeared.
Truth was, I felt desperate. I had hoped to run into Jake every time we went somewhere, but he never showed. I refused to ask Issy about him, as I already knew her feelings on the subject. With each day that I didn’t hear from him, I started to second-guess everything that had happened.
Thankfully, I had kept the drinking to a minimum, unlike Issy who was truly a fish. It was no wonder she had already blown through her allowance this month and needed to do some serious groveling to her mom. I smiled as I thought of our conversation this morning.
“What will you do if she doesn’t give it to you?” I asked, thinking of my parents’ reaction if I had dared to do the same.
“Oh, well then I’ll just go see my dad. He feels guilty for abandoning our family when I was twelve, so I can usually say a few key words and get what I want.”
“Why not just go there first?”
“Because, there is nothing more excruciating than my stepmom, and how she goes on and on about her and my father’s son, and how perfect he is. Barf. Then I’ll get the lecture about my clothes and hair and how college will be over soon, and I need to get focused. Like I said…only if I’m desperate!” She was randomly balling up her clothes and stuffing them in her duffle bag. My type A instincts were screaming at me to grab her bag away and fold each item she threw in there, but I refrained, suddenly putting two and two together.
“Wait, isn’t your father’s son…your brother?”
“Don’t ever call him that again.” It was the first time I had actually heard a tone from Issy that wasn’t playful, and for a second, I thought I saw a glimpse of hurt in her eyes, but it went away as quickly as it came. “Now you, young Padawan, keep yourself out of trouble while I’m gone.”
I actually laughed out loud. Truth was, I had done nothing but get into trouble since I met Issy. “No worries there.”
The shuffling of books woke me up from my daydream. Class was over. I looked at the board and saw four problems due next Monday. Ugh. I rolled my eyes and wrote them down. For some reason, I hated my classes this year. Last year, my engineering classes were my favorite, but last year I didn’t have a life, so maybe that’s why.
“Hey Avery.” I looked up to see one of my classmates waving me over to the group. “We’re putting together a study group on Saturday morning around ten if you want to come. We figured we could knock out these problems and then focus on our Statics quiz.” The nice thing about engineering was that most of us took the same classes each semester, so we’d end up helping each other a lot throughout the year.
“Sure, that sounds great. I’ll be there,” I said as I made my way out of the room. I really liked that group to study with, but couldn’t really spend too much time with them without being totally bored. They had asked me to go to dinner with them a few times last year, but I just couldn’t do it. I admit that I’m a nerd and like math, but it is not dinner conversation in my opinion. After a while, they stopped asking and just kept me in the loop for study sessions, which felt ideal to me.
I walked through the center of campus on my way home. It was beautiful this time of year. We had no shortage of trees and they were turning every shade of orange, yellow and brown. The grassy center of the quad was covered in students studying, sunbathing or catching a quick power nap. A group of fraternity boys were doing a step routine outside the library that was drawing in a large crowd. Normally, I would have stopped to enjoy the show, but today already seemed like it had lasted a lifetime.
I got home, relishing the silence I hadn’t heard since I moved in, and checked my phone one more time to see if Jake had tried to call. Nothing. How was it that he hadn’t thought to call even once? It didn’t make sense!
I walked in my room and glanced at myself in the mirror. I looked horrible. I hadn’t run in three days, and my pants felt way