Page 61 of Busted Dreams

“No,” I answered quickly, too quickly. Even I didn’t believe me.

He squinted. I remained as blasé as I could.

“Okay, here’s the deal. Astrid can date whoever she wants.” The last few words came out strangled, but he pushed forward. “I’m not going to help you though. Not when I want to be the last one standing.” Done with what he had to say, he continued going through the mail. “Go on. If you don’t leave now, you two will be late.”

Not waiting for him to change his mind or look more closely at my motives, I dashed back to my bedroom to get my bag. Then I was gone, out the door without another word.

My palms itched the closer I got to her place. Or Rhys’ place. Did Beck text her to tell her I was coming? If he didn’t, would she be disappointed to see me?

I pulled into the driveway, ready to hurl as soon as I put the car in park. This was a bad idea. What had I been thinking? Astrid was dating my brother. No way would she want me taking over some of that time, whether I liked her or not.

Nope, I couldn’t do this. Grabbing my phone from the passenger seat, I opened Beck’s text thread to let him know I was a chicken shit.

And…Astrid opened the door.

She smiled, awkwardly waving and giving me the one-minute signal as she ran back inside. Okay, I could work with this. There wasn’t a bit of anger or upset anywhere on her that suggested she didn’t want to ride to school with me.

A minute later, she came running out, her wavy hair bouncing behind her under a wide-brimmed hippy hat. She held a hand on top of her head to hold it down as she ran. When she swung the passenger door open, she smiled huge and slid in, carefully placing her bag on her lap.

“Hey, so what’s up?” she said as she bundled her bag in her arms.

“Not much.” I put the car in reverse, not quite sure at all how to tell her I wanted to be with her when I opened my letter. It wasn’t like she would laugh at me, that wasn’t who she was.

“Okay,” she drew out. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her casting odd glances my way. If I didn’t come clean, she was going to think I was cracked.

“We’ll be at school in just a few minutes. I’ll tell you as soon as we park. We’ll have…” I flicked my gaze to the time, and groaned. “No time. We’ll have absolutely no time to talk at all.”

She reached across and took my hand in hers. It startled me enough that I jerked my hand back.

“Sorry,” she said awkwardly.

“No, I’m sorry. You surprised me.” Taking her hand back, I threaded our fingers together and held them in the air, not sure what to do with them. She took pity on me and tugged them to her lap. She cupped her other hand over the back of mine as if I would snatch it back at any minute.

“Are you okay? We haven’t really talked about what happened a few weeks ago, but I’m here if you need someone to listen.” She started out concerned, but ended on a strange note. Not sure what she meant, I ignored it. I was throwing bizarre signals, and she was completely misreading the reason behind wanting to see her.

“No, it’s nothing like that. The stress of senior year is getting to me when I let myself stop long enough to think about it, but that isn’t why I picked you up today.” Then, as if the world was conspiring against me, I pulled into my usual parking spot just in time for the first bell to ring. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your first class.”

The parking lot was a constant stream of students heading toward the building, and we needed to be a part of it. At least for Astrid, there were so many people we’d blend right into the crowd. She hated being gawked at. So I opened my door to get out without actually moving. Letting go of her hand was much harder than I thought it would have been.

We walked shoulder to shoulder toward her first class. A few times, a couple of guys would almost bump into her, but I shoved them away good-naturedly. I smiled and asked about their committee work, current student government plans, or whatever school related project they were working on. That was what elected me as student body president in the first place. My ability to remember names with faces and details about what was important to them.

And I used it shamelessly to direct them away from Astrid and move them out of her way. She probably didn’t realize what I was doing, but it made me feel good to be able to give her that much.

At the door to her classroom, we stopped a few feet before the threshold.

Sticking my thumbs under the straps of my backpack, I adjusted the weight to ease my back muscles. It was just easier to carry all of my books in my bag, but it strained my back on occasion. And in this case, it gave me something to do with my hands.

“I’ll see you at lunch? We can talk then?”

She smiled and bumped my shoulder with hers. “Of course. Who else would keep me company in the dusty corners of the dreaded library?”

Laughing, I rolled my shoulders, and the tension I’d been carrying lightened a little. “Just me. We all know that’s not Rhys’ scene.”

After saying our goodbyes, I headed to my own first class, simultaneously worried about what was in the letter and excited to share it with Astrid. For the first time in a long time, I had a tiny seed of hope in my chest.

I only had to wait three and a half hours to see if it would blossom into something amazing or die a fiery death. At this point, it could go either way.

Over the course of the next several hours, that letter was doing crazy things to my self-control. Twice, I almost opened it just to stop the suspense. But I forced myself to wait. Astrid was the reason I wrote the essay. She read it and supported me. If anyone deserved to see what was written inside, she did.

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