Page 14 of You Belong With Me

I almost screamed when I saw the message come in,but I took a deep breath and stuck my phone in my bag. That willpower only lasted so long because then I pressed my face into my hands and did actually scream. Luckily, there was nobody around to see it since the school was basically abandoned at the moment.

I felt like the seconds ticked by as I waited for Sebastian to show up. The problem with him being fifteen minutes away was that it gave me way too much time to question what was happening. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he’d been kidding when he said that he was coming.

By the time that his car pulled up, I was a nervous wreck. I tried to jump off the wall, like I’d done a million times before, but the back of my shirt got caught on some loose nail and I was yanked back just as my feet landed on the ground. My shoulder slammed into the wall and I narrowly avoided smacking my head into it too.

I didn’t see Sebastian get out of the car but the next thing I knew, he was standing in front of me, with a concerned look on his face.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He put one hand gently on my shoulder like he was checking it wasn’t dislocated.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, shrugging his hand off of me. At any other time, I never would have pushed him away, but right now I was too embarrassed to even look him in the eye. Sebastian grabbed my bag off the wall for me, then walked me over to his car with his hand on my back like he’d done in the hallway today. He opened the car door for me to slide in, then put my bag down at my feet before closing the door and coming around to his own side as well. My traitorous brain started to wonder whether this waswhat it would be like to go on a date with Sebastian—to have him pick me up, open my car door, drive us to the movies or a restaurant or wherever it was that he took girls on dates—and made my face heat up even more. By the time he got in the car, I probably looked like a tomato.

“You sure you’re okay?” Sebastian asked as he got back into the driver’s seat. I just nodded, still not daring to look at him. Then I realized that he hadn’t needed to turn down the music for me to be able to hear him, like he usually did. And on the same note, the music he was playing wasn’t his usual genre at all.

“This isn’t your playlist,” I said. It took me a second to identify the music as a Take Five song—one of my favorite boybands, that I happened to know for a fact Sebastian didn’t have on any of his playlists. Did he have somebody else in the car with him before that he’d been listening to music with? My first thought was Tiffany, which made my heart sink. It was ridiculous to be upset at the idea of him being in the car with his girlfriend, but I hated to think about it anyway. I hated to think about them even dating at all. But then I realized the time—assuming Ainsley had dance after swim practice today, he must have had to rush from his soccer practice to drive her to dance and then just got home in time for me to text him. Now, he was going to have to drive all the way home again, to then go pick Ainsley up from her dance class afterward. The poor guy was going in circles.

“I know,” Sebastian said, bringing my attention back to the music. “It’s yours.”

And then he took off before I had the chance to ask any furtherabout that.

“Have you ever considered,” I yelled over the sound of the music and the engine revving, “driving like a normal human being instead of a manic?”

Sebastian looked at me with a glint in his eye. “Don’t say you’re going weak on me now, Nellie.”

Honestly, the fact that he didn’t think I was weak before this was surprising. Everyone else sure did.

“Just trying to get through high school without a concussion—” I screamed as he took a corner so fast that his tires squealed. “And without dying!”

“I promise you will never die in my car.” He dropped one hand from the steering wheel and held out his pinky like he was trying to make me a promise. At any other time, I probably would have revelled in the idea of Sebastian Novak making me a pinky promise, but right then, all I could think about was my life. I slapped his hand back toward the steering wheel.

“Could you focus on driving for just a little bit?Please?”

His only response was to turn the music up to its usual volume, AKA trying to burst my eardrums. I turned it down using the dial. He turned it back up with the button on the steering wheel. I glared at him—knowing anything I said right now would fall on deaf ears, because he either wouldn’t be able to hear me over the music or would pretend he couldn’t hear me to be annoying. He turned it back down for long enough to say, “What? The music helps me focus on driving.” Then turned the dial so fast that the volume made me think I would never hear again. I noticed that he didn’t stop me when I turned it back down a few notches, but knew better than to point it out.

I got thrown to the side as he whipped around a corner, and I glanced over my shoulder at the backseat as I tried to right myself again. I was half-expecting to see Ainsley’s bra in the backseat again, but instead, there was only a girl’s navy school tie. Our school colours were blue and silver, but while the younger grades all had silver ties, seniors were required to wear navy ones. That meant the tie couldn’t have been Ainsley or Imogen’s. It could be Lavender’s, except that Mom said she had her own car now, so I didn’t see why she would leave it here. Which left only one girl.

I quickly turned my face forward, hating that I’d seen it, and tried to tell myself that it didn’t even have to mean anything. It was such a basic piece of clothing. Tiffany might have just taken it off right as soon as they got off school property, not wanting to be in her full uniform. But I had a feeling the reason it was there was a little less innocent than what I was hoping for. And it ate me up inside so much more than I could ever have imagined.

And the feeling only worsened when Sebastian pulled into his driveway and I saw the girl herself sitting on his front step, with her chin propped up in her hands like she’d been waiting forever. Her head popped up as Sebastian got out of the car and she stood carefully, smoothing down her brown hair as she did. She looked like she was planning to run straight into his arms until she noticed me get out of the car too and her smile immediately dimmed.

“Oh. Nellie. You’re here too.”

“That I am,” I said, avoiding her eyes. “Thanks for the ride, Sebastian.”

He just nodded, but he kept his eyes on Tiffanyin front of him, probably trying to assess how upset she was. I was guessingvery.

“I’ll see you later,” I told him. I smiled at Tiffany and said, “It was nice seeing you again.”

I walked away slowly, eyeing them and wondering what they were going to talk about once I was gone. My curiosity got the better of me and when I stepped inside, I didn’t close the front door all the way, so I could continue to watch them. Was it wrong of me to spy? Probably. But in my defence, I was almost positive they were going to talk about me and I had to know what it was about.

Tiffany whirled on him as soon as she thought I was gone. “I thought you were picking up Ainsley, not some random girl.”

“Ainsley’s dance class goes for longer,” Sebastian said. He went to step past her like he wanted to go inside, but she moved to stay in his way. For once, I was actually thankful for her, because if they went inside, I wouldn’t have been able to keep listening.

Tiffany crossed her arms and scowled. “I want to hang out with you, not wait around while you chauffeur yourneighbor.”

“Well, you didn’t tell me you were coming over today.”

She scoffed. “I’m your girlfriend. You should assume that I’m coming over.”

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