was over, and that was how it was going to stay.
“Listen, I don’t mean to be harsh, but I just don’t see the point in dwelling on something that ended years ago. We’ve both moved on. Just let it go.”
He stared at me, hurt and incredulity warring on his face, and I felt like an utter piece of shit.
“I’ll see you around, Julian.”
I turned and left.
6
Julian
Well.
That was…
What even was that?
Other than the culmination of over a decade of wondering and—let’s be honest—pining, while hating myself for doing said wondering and pining, and unsuccessfully trying to convince myself that I was fine if I never spoke to Connor again, but that I’d be totally chill and normal if I did, because I was definitely an adult who had healthy boundaries and didn’t derive two thirds of his emotional fulfillment and sense of self worth from a relationship that had ended, with neither bang nor whimper, just ended, abruptly and without explanation, a decade ago.
Maybe that was enough.
I’d just never, in all that wondering and pining, considered that talking to Connor again would be so anticlimactic. On his part, at least. Because God knew I was even more messed up than before. I’d prepared for anger. For defensiveness. But barely-able-to-muster-up-the-energy-to-answer-me apathy had somehow not ended up on my Seeing Connor Again bingo card.
Probably because I’m an idiot.
It just didn’t make sense. Sure, it had been a while, but what we’d had our senior year of high school hadn’t been the giant pile of nothing Connor seemed to think it was. I knew it meant something to him. The things he’d said—the things he’d done—those things left an imprint on your soul. Or your bones, if you were picky like Connor and didn’t like it when people used words like ‘soul.’
Hell, I didn’t even know him well enough to know if he still complained about things like that anymore.
But what could I do about it? He’d made it clear he didn’t want to talk. And I might not have healthy boundaries or a stable sense of self-worth, but I did have a finely tuned humiliation meter, and I wasn’t going to subject myself to more mortification by pushing the issue further.
I had to let it go, I supposed. Had to let that be the final word on things, that utter non-answer to the question that had plagued me for ten years—why the hell had Connor left me, without even saying goodbye? I had to get used to the fact that I wouldn’t get any more than that.
Because what other option was there?
“We’re going swimming!”
Dustin Leeds was inches away from launching himself into the stratosphere, bouncing up and down on his seat as the bus pulled into the McIntyre Beach parking lot.
“We’re most definitely not going swimming,” I said for what had to be the twentieth time that hour alone. “We’re cleaning up the park and looking at plants.”
“And then going swimming!”
“And then going back to school, so we can write about what we saw.”
“And then coming back here and going swimming!”
I shook my head. “If you can convince your parents that they should take you swimming at a beach that’s in as rough shape as this, more power to you. But that’s their decision.”
“Swimming! Swimming! Swimming!”
I sighed as the bus came to a stop. Some things just weren’t worth arguing about with nine-year-olds.
I shepherded the class off the bus and into the waiting crowd of parent volunteers below. There was no way I was taking twenty-five kids to a veritable landfill of a park with me as the only adult. They’d mostly driven there separately, so the parking lot was full of cars. I saw an open patch of ground on the far side and began herding the class in that direction.
I made it five whole feet before I turned the corner around a tan SUV and walked right into someone.
“I—shoot, sorry.” I took a step back and blinked.
The someone I’d walked into was Connor.
Surprise flashed across his face, followed by suspicion and annoyance. What annoyed me was how the fact that Connor acting like an ass didn’t seem to have made me any less attracted to him. If anything, time had only made the attraction stronger.
Connor’s dark eyes had always been halfway feral, with the ability to steal my breath. His hair was still that shaggy brown mop that resisted any attempts to make it stay in one place, no matter how many times you ran a brush—or your fingers—through it. His