Page 9 of You Belong With Me

“What?” I asked.

“You mean pardon,” Mom corrected immediately. Then she forced a smile on her face again. “I said Jennifer called to say that Sebastian can drive you to school this morning, so you have an extra few minutes before you need to leave.”

So, I hadn’t completely misheard her. Either that or I was delusional enough to hear it twice, and at that point, I thought I might as well start to believe it.

“But why?” I slowly sank back down to the chair.

“Apparently, Lavender just got her first car, so she’s driving herself and the twins, leaving extra room in Sebastian’s car. Jennifer thought it only made sense for him to drive you instead of leaving you to take the bus.”

Did Sebastian know that Dean wouldn’t be with me? Dean and I usually took the school bus, only driving on the days Mom didn’t need the car, so he probably thought he was driving us both. But Dean was gone and Sebastian’s sisters were with Lavender, meaning…

It would be just me and him alone in his car for the full drive.

But what if he did know it would just be me? What if he wanted to talk to me alone, where he knew Dean couldn’t overhear? What if he wanted to talk about the kiss?

I felt his hands on me again, his lips on mine, my hands tangled in his hair. The kiss seemed to just replay in my mind without prompting, leaving me near breathless.

“Eleanor!” Mom said, breaking me out of the memory. I blinked and looked at her. “What is with you today? Your head is in the clouds.”

“Oh,” I mumbled. I could feel my face warming up, and I wondered how much she knew was true versus how much she suspected. And then, I reminded myself that she hadn’t said anything about a kiss. She just said my head was up in the clouds. There could be a million reasons for that. And there was no reason for her to even begin tosuspect that it was because Sebastian Novak had kissed me.

“Sorry, I’m just distracted this morning, I guess.”

“I’ll say,” Mom said. She checked her watch. “Why don’t you go over to the Novak’s? It would be impolite to make Sebastian wait for you.”

I didn’t want to point out the fact that she was the one who had just told me to sit down for a few extra minutes because I was ready to get away from this table ASAP. Especially when I heard Dad’s footsteps on the stairs, probably coming downstairs to pick another fight.

It was still early September, so it was that awkward weather where it felt like two different seasons every day. My school blazer was usually warm enough, but I grabbed my coat off the hook as I walked by, awkwardly pulling it on with one arm while holding my backpack in the other. I’d just barely managed to get it over my shoulders as I reached the end of Sebastian’s car.

And it was only then that I realized he was sitting in the car where he could have witnessed the whole embarrassing walk. And to make it even worse, he wasn’t alone—his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Tiffany, was sitting in the front seat, and her lipstick was smeared all over Sebastian’s face and neck.

Sebastian waved at me sheepishly as I walked further up the car, opening the back door instead of the passenger-side door like I’d been getting used to doing lately. Tiffany had her seat as far back as it could go, giving me no leg room at all, so I slid to the middle seat, even though it was the least comfortable place in the car.

“Sorry,” Sebastian said as I pulled on my seatbelt. “I didn’t hear you come out.”

I figured he was apologizing for making out with Tiffany, but I didn’t bother correcting him that I hadn’t seen anything. Even if I had, it wouldn’t be the first time. Sebastian and Tiffany had been getting together and breaking up on a loop for years now, being broken up almost as much as they were together. They fought all the time, to the point that I questioned what they even saw in each other, but when they were dating, they were very into PDA. It wasn’t uncommon to see Tiffany go from screaming at Sebastian to kissing him in zero seconds flat.

“I didn’t realize you two were back together,” I said. I knew they hadn’t been together on Friday—Sebastian’s kiss was enough evidence of that. What had changed between then and now was anybody’s guess, but it was hard not to feel a little bit hurt that it took him only forty-eight hours from our kiss to get back with her. But then, what did I expect? That he was going to kiss me and magically fall in love?

“It just happened last night,” Tiffany said. She grabbed Sebastian’s hand and squeezed. “I guess we’re just celebrating.”

I couldn’t help the grossed out face I made at those words, but I quickly turned my face towards the window so that neither of them would see. I guess that threw out my theory that he might want to be alone with me this morning so we could talk about what the kiss had meant to each of us. If he wanted to talk about it, he would have done it before getting back with his girlfriend, I was sure ofthat. At this point, we were never, ever going to mention it again. I hated the hole that burrowed into my heart.

Nobody said anything as we pulled out of the driveway and started towards school, so I just stared at Tiffany and Sebastian’s interlaced hands and the way he kept running his thumb up and down her skin. Without even meaning to, I imagined myself sitting where she was now, my hand holding his instead of hers. His hands had felt soft on my back on Friday. Did they feel like that now? Would they be as warm as they were that night or were they colder now since we were outside?

I tore my gaze away and forced myself to stare out the window, counting each car that passed by just for the sake of a distraction. It wasn’t enough, though. My thoughts kept returning to Sebastian and the kiss and the girlfriend that wasn’t supposed to be here.

When Sebastian pulled into the parking spot at school, I practically threw myself out of the car. Sebastian didn’t even bat an eye at that, probably used to me feeling sick from his driving and being desperate to get solid ground under me. Tiffany stared at me disdainfully, though, as I reached back in to grab my backpack that I’d left on the floor of the car. But when she raised her eyes and noticed me looking, she smiled brightly and said, “Have a great day, Nellie.”

“It’s Nora,” I said. Then I slammed the car door again and waved goodbye to Sebastian before rushing off. Could I be mad at her that she didn’t know my name? No. She probably only knew anything about me through Sebastian, who always called me Nellie. But she wasn’t allowed tocall me Nellie—I gave Sebastian a pass, but that was it. He was the only exception.

And there was something about Tiffany that just rubbed me the wrong way. I wasn’t sure what it was since she’d never done anything to me, but every time she was around, I just got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Whenever they went through one of their inevitable break-ups, I always secretly hoped that it would be the last time and she would be gone for good. There were a couple of times that it seemed like it was really going to happen, but she came back every time. At some point, I probably should have given up hope that he might forget about her.

“Good morning, Nora!” Clementine said in a sing-song voice. She had this uncanny ability to appear out of nowhere and she did so right as I walked into the front doors of the school, and she threw an arm around my shoulder. Her best friend Reese appeared on her other side and smiled at me shyly. Reese was also on the swim team, but she hardly ever spoke. I assumed she was just really shy, especially since most of the school still viewed her as the new girl even though she’d been here for some time now, but Clementine always joked that Reese just knew her Australian accent would distract everyone during practice. “How are you doing today?”

“Good,” I said, looking at her curiously. Clem was one of those girls that was always happy and said hi to everyone who passed by her, but since she’d immediately started walking alongside me, I had the feeling she had some ulterior motives in talking to me this morning.

“Did I see you getting out of Sebastian Novak’s car this morning?”

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