Page 47 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

Studying him as we walked, I tried to step a little closer to him when I was certain there was no longer an arousal issue, but he damn near crashed into the lockers to keep the space the same between us. I waited a little bit and then tried to get closer again, but once again, he moved as close to the wall as he could to keep the space between us. There was no one else in the hallway, but we were headed towards the front of the school where the entire student population would be waiting and likely see the only two stragglers left behind and the reason why the drill had lasted so much longer than it was supposed to.

He wasn’t embarrassed about his boner, he was making sure he wasn’t seen with me.

Every part of me wanted to say something. To cuss him out or throw something at him or tell him to fuck all the way off until he couldn’t anymore, but I was fighting just to hold back tears.

We got to the front doors and he pulled back, and I pushed through one, dragging all of the attention to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him slink out of one of the doors and immediately cut to the left and out of sight, managing to avoid most people’s gazes.

The only record faster than how quickly he’d let me down was how quickly I’d let myself down.

How big of an idiot could I be?

18

Tristan

Thank god for fast reflexes, because when I placed my hand inside Aria’s locker in an attempt to stop her from walking away from me, she didn’t hesitate at all to slam the door shut. The metal grazed my fingers as I yanked them back, and the locker slammed with a resounding clang.

“Aria!” I called out as she turned to walk away, but she turned around and threw me a harsh glare that melted me where I stood. I made no attempt to step any closer or follow her as she left.

I’d really screwed things up for good this time.

“Tris.” I looked over my shoulder and saw Ceradi, Josh, and Hannah coming down the hallway towards me. “There you are,” Ceradi said. “Why weren’t you at lunchorat the fire drill?”

“Um, I looked for you guys during the drill, but I couldn’t find you,” I lied, feeling like an actual piece of shit. “And Coach bought lunch for anyone who agreed to stay behind and clean.”

Josh’s jaw dropped. “What? She didn’t say she was going to do that. I would have stuck around and helped.”

“That’s why she didn’t say anything, most likely,” Hannah said. “She didn’t want a bunch of people doing it for the free food, so it was more a happy surprise for the good people who actually chose to do it.”

Ceradi crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at me. “I thought you said you were going to the gym to play games? How did you end up cleaning the classroom?”

“Uhhh.” My gaze shifted towards Hannah and she rolled her eyes immediately, having figured it out, but didn’t say anything. “I saw how few people were staying back and felt bad.”

Ceradi shook her head. “Your chivalry is borderline irritating.”

“Yeah, come on dude. What are you doing cleaning the class? Aren’t there people who work here and get paid to do that?” Josh asked. “You make the school famous from the field, not sweep the floors.”

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. “I guess it was pretty stupid.”

“It wasn’t,” Hannah said. “If you stayed back because you wanted to be helpful, I think that’s a good thing.”

I looked over at her, as did Ceradi and Josh. Ever since the altercation with Aria and Arden, Hannah had been standing up for me more. Fortunately, she hadn’t had to hang her neck out on anything truly insane, but in little moments like that, she defended who I was, which I appreciated.

Even if I was totally lying.

“Well, whatever,” Ceradi said. “Mop floors if you want to, you totally missed my impromptu photoshoot. It’s blowing up on the socials.”

“Oh no,” I said flatly and Hannah quietly laughed, shaking her head.

“Don’t worry. I’ll fill you in at dinner,” she said.

I side-eyed Hannah, exhaustion likely prevalent all over my face. “Dinner?”

Hannah shrugged. “We decided we’re all gonna get dinner together tonight since you guys don’t have football practice.”

I couldn’t think of a single thing I’d rather do less than that, but no one seemed to be picking up on that apart from maybe Hannah, but she wasn’t about to stop it from happening. So instead of taking issue with it and making my day worse than it already was, I just went with the flow. Hannah came with me to collect my things from my locker, but seemed to be able to read my mood and didn’t ask about what was going on.

There was a high-end restaurant a little outside of the city where Ceradi liked to go because everyone fawned over her and it made her feel fancy. It was just Ceradi, Josh, Milton, Capito, Hannah and I, but that was more than enough people to make me wish that I was just at home.

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