Page 76 of It Was Always You

"Great. I'll see you in a week!"

I nodded. "Au revoir."

She blew me a kiss through the phone. "A bientôt."

I wentthrough every combination of jeans and boots I had after getting off the phone with Juliette. I stillwasn't convinced that her plan would even work, but I figured it was worth a shot. It wasn't like I had anything to lose.

After pulling on a pair of black skinny jeans and my cute boots with the fringe, I went into my bathroom to see what I had to work with as far as cosmetics. I found an old tube of mascara in the back of my drawer, ran it through my lashes a few times—only having to clean up with makeup remover once—and then I added some brown eyeshadow and lip gloss, and called it good. I was wearing more makeup than I had worn in months. I hoped it wouldn't look like I was trying too hard.

I pulled my hair down from the ponytail it had been in all day and blow-dried it to get the kinks out. I didn't own a curling iron, so the straight look would just have to do.

Once I was sufficiently dolled up, to my low expectations anyway, I grabbed my trumpet and met Easton downstairs to head to the game.

He stared at me for a minute. "You look different."

I looked around awkwardly. "Yep."

And that was all we said on the subject of my altered appearance. I hoped Easton wouldn't realize that I was trying to get his best friend back.

When I got to the gym, the pep band was already mostly set up. I took my seat on the end—the place I had sat earlier this week next to Harrison—and got myselfready to play the part of a super confident girl who had just broken up with her hot boyfriend.

"Will Noah be joining us again?" Harrison asked as I opened my trumpet case.

He apparently hadn't noticed our quiet breaking apart during lunch time. There had been quite a few questions for me about it through the rest of the day, but mostly from sophomores and people I'd usually talked to at school.

I swallowed. "No, he won't be. We broke up."

Harrison's blonde eyebrows arched. "Really? That's surprising."

I nodded. "Yeah, it just wasn't meant to be, I guess."

"Sorry to hear that. It looks like you two got along really great," Harrison said.

And we had. Things had been amazing. And before I could prepare myself for it, a wave of emotion chose right then to hit me. I hadn't cried in years, but now, sitting in the crowded gym, my eyes suddenly decided it was time to finally let out the emotions I’d always liked to keep bottled up.

I shook my head to try to push the urge away.

But then I saw him. Noah.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, just like he had been at the last game, searching the crowd. But he wasn't looking for me like he had been last time. He did a little head nod after a second, and then walked over towhere Easton was waving at him—right on the row in front of the cheerleaders.

His usual spot. It was the final sign that the world had officially gone back to normal.

"That's got to be rough, seeing him right after your break-up," Harrison said quietly.

I nodded and wiped at my eyes. "Yeah."

"I'm lucky my ex goes to another school," Harrison said.

I turned my gaze away from Noah to peer at Harrison. "Yourex-girlfriend? Did you just break up, too?"

He let out a long breath. "We broke up Wednesday night."

My lips pulled down into a frown. "I'm sorry to hear that. She seemed like she was a really nice girl."

Okay, so it was kind of a lie. I had hated her when I'd seen her on Friday. But I was over him now, so I didn't really need to let him know that I’d been jealous.

"I should've known it was gonna happen. Turns out her ex-boyfriend found out that she had moved on and he didn't like it. So he asked her to take him back, and she did."

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