Page 31 of Mistaken Identity
I apologize when I’m wrong. What I don’t do is apologize when I’m provoked. You lit the match, you deal with the fire.
—Creole’s secret thoughts
CREOLE
Life had returned to normal.
At least, I’d returned to normally scheduled programming.
My life, however, wasn’t normal.
I didn’t know what normal was for me anymore, but it certainly wasn’t what it used to be.
The anger and pain that I’d held onto for so long was just gone.
There no longer.
And all of that had to do with Audric pretty much pointing out my stupidity.
I knew he had a thing for my hair.
He always had.
In the beginning of Laney and my friendship, I’d thought he hated it.
He didn’t.
In fact, I’d realized rather quickly that he was obsessed with it.
Before the night that changed my life forever, he never missed an opportunity to touch it.
Never once had I walked into a room with him and he hadn’t touched it.
When everything bad in my life had started, there were moments in time that I’d walk into the room where he was at, and he’d lift his hand up to touch it like usual.
Yet, at my flinch, he’d stopped doing even that.
So I knew he was obsessed with my hair.
Now, I knew that I held a grudge against a boy who had walked in on something he misunderstood and had left without putting any more thought into it.
He’d been hurting.
Because, since I was finally being honest with myself, we’d both had a thing for each other.
We just hadn’t ever acted on it.
Him because he was young and dumb, likely.
Me, because I knew that Laney had always felt the way I felt, only more vocally.
Once I knew that she liked him, that was it for me.
I’d never go there because of our friendship.
I scrubbed my face with my hands, then immediately cursed myself.
I looked at the dirt on my hands, then at the flowers I’d just potted, and snorted.
