Page 39 of Crazy In Love
I raised a brow, because clearly the question didn’t require a response. So I waited.
“I just spent four hours this evening being insulted by my mother. I don’t need to be insulted by a guy who doesn’t even know a single thing about me. So fuck you and your ride home. I’d rather die of hypothermia while walking out in the cold than get in a car with you,” she shouted as tears began to stream down her face once again.
She’d obviously found my comment about her snitching on me to be offensive.
“What don’t I know about you, Emilia? Are you claiming you weren’t coming out of Principal Bryant’s office that day when they walked me in? Because I saw you there. And you wouldn’t look at me, if memory serves. Not that I even fucking care all these years later. It was just a time that I’d realized you had it out for me. So, of course I assumed you wrote the goddamn column, because I thought maybe you had it out for my entire family. And I have admitted that I was wrong about the column.”
She sniffed a few times, swiping at her face, lip quivering uncontrollably. “I was coming out of his office because Cami Rogers was a bully, and she’d taped a note on my locker for the hundredth time that morning. Someone reported it to Principal Bryant, and he called me in. And I still didn’t tell on her. I said I didn’t know who did it, because I just wanted to be left alone.”
Cami Rogers was my girlfriend back then. She’d ditched school with me the day before. Why would she be bullying Emilia?
“What did the notes say?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
She turned toward the door again, and I moved so fast that she startled when I got in front of her and stood with my back against the door. “What did the notes say?”
She shrugged. “‘Loser. Sad sack. Only lonely.’”
“What? Why would she say that to you?” I asked, because I genuinely didn’t know. Emilia had always been shy, and she kept to herself. But she was very well liked, from what I remembered. I’d assumed she was nosy and a rule follower, so it made sense that she would report me.
Her head fell back on a long sigh, and she threw her hands in the air. “Cami and I were friends before she started dating you. She lived next door to me. We both had a crush on you at the same time our freshman year, and we’d always talk about it. But then Cami made the cheer team junior year, and she grew some big ole boobs and got popular out of nowhere. So when she started dating you, she decided that I was enemy number one.”
What. The. Fuck.
Archer was right about her having a crush on me?
“So why wouldn’t you look at me? You’d always look away, like you wanted nothing to do with me,” I said, rubbing my face.
“Have you never had a crush on anyone, Bridger?” she hissed. “Especially someone who is dating a girl who is making your life a living hell. Not looking at you was my safest option.”
My tongue slipped out and moved along my bottom lip as I processed her words.
I’d been wrong about Emilia Taylor writing “The Taylor Tea,” and then again about snitching on me back in high school.
I’d been a complete asshole to this girl.
For no reason at all.
I really was the world’s biggest dick.
I stepped closer, knowing that even if it made me uncomfortable, I owed it to her.
I placed a hand beneath her chin and tipped her head up. Tears still streamed down her face. Her dark blue eyes were flanked by long black lashes as they finally locked with mine.
“I’m sorry for being an asshole, over and over again. I was wrong.” My chest tightened as the words left my mouth. “I’m sorry, Emilia.”
Apologies had never come easy for me.
But I knew I owed her one.
And there was no gift that would replace these words.
She blinked a few times, and her shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.”
It was all she’d wanted. Because she wasn’t the enemy at all.
twelve
