This Is Falling(89)

Chapter 30





Rowe





The hallway is empty. Most of the rooms are locked up, the students already gone for the holidays. My mom called my advisor and was able to get all of my finals pushed to the last two days in my professors’ offices. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I was pretty prepared before I decided to change my plans mid-Thanksgiving break. For one, all I needed to do was turn in a paper, so I wasn’t too stressed.

Cass is still here. I ended up calling her to let her know I was coming, and she said she had a final at the very last possible time slot, so she would be here too. I was glad—I didn’t want to stay here alone.

Nate’s room looks dark though. I didn’t message him again after the first time. I just didn’t know what to say. The way I left his parents house…I was embarrassed. But I also was still so angry about everything. Whenever I thought about the times he and I were together, all the times he knew, I just got madder.

“Yayyyyyyyyy!” Cass is jumping on her bed when I unlock the door and pull my small bag in with me.

“Uh…yeah. Yay,” I say, tossing my keys on my bed and dropping my bag to the floor.

“I saw you walking up out the window. I knew you were coming. I haven’t really been jumping this whole time. That would be weird,” she says, jumping down to the floor. The room smells like nail polish, and she’s wearing cotton in between her toes.

“Pedicure?” I ask, gesturing to her feet.

“Oh,” she pulls her toes up in a curl away from the floor. “Yeah, I forgot. You like?”

She walks closer to me and wiggles them; I realize she has them painted like snowflakes. It makes me smile.

“Yeah, it’s nice.”

“I can do yours. You want?” She holds up a bottle of dark blue polish, but I just shake my head no, and she places the bottle on top of her dresser. “Hungry? I waited, in case you wanted to eat.”

My stomach grumbles at the mere mention of food, so I shrug and pull my purse from my bag. Cass locks the door behind me, and we walk to the elevator bank, my eyes zeroing in on Nate and Ty’s door the entire time.

“They left. Had to go home yesterday,” she says, brushing her arm into mine. “But he wanted to stay. I…thought you should know that. He wanted to stay.”

All I can do is smile and nod. I don’t want to talk about him. Not with Cass. But I also want to know how he is, what he’s said about me, and what he thinks about everything I said and did. We take the elevator down to the main floor and walk to the cafeteria. The entire school is like a ghost town, and there are maybe four or five other students in here.

“Is everyone gone?” I ask, looking at all of the empty tables and chairs—so different from the last time I ate here.

“Yeah, pretty much. Most people were done two days ago, and they didn’t waste any time. Paige left already. Bitch.”

I laugh when she says that, and she smiles at me as we grab our trays and slide them along the counter. I pick out a sandwich and an apple and then fill a glass with milk. Nothing sounds appetizing, but I know I need to eat. My stomach is empty, and if I want to do remotely well on my exams, I need food.

Cass’s tray is loaded with junk food, and it makes me laugh at the contrast between our two dinners. “Hunkering down for winter?” I ask, raising my eyebrows as we walk to the table in the corner. Cass doesn’t even ask; she knows where I like to sit.

“Hey, I have been good all year. But my language final is stressful. I’m stress eating,” she says, dropping her tray and pushing the straw into her chocolate milk before tearing open the package of small donuts with her teeth.

“You took sign language,” I say, just blinking at her, and she stares back for a few seconds before finally huffing.

“Yeah, and guess what? Turns out, it’s hard. Like really hard. Like my fingers this way means something totally different from my fingers this way,” she says, contorting her hands into signs I don’t know, before pushing an entire mini-donut in her mouth, a few crumbs falling down her chin.

“What does this mean?” I say, holding up my middle finger and doing my best to hold my grin in. It slips out in seconds though.

“Yeah, f*ck you too,” she says, throwing a donut on my plate. I pick it up and eat it; she laughs lightly.

We both finish our dinners quickly, eating silently, and then we make it back up to our room. I take a fast shower and change into my pajamas. I pause when I walk out of the shower room, lingering in the hallway and remembering the first time we met. I feel a small pang that I’m not wearing Nate’s shirt, and not sleeping with him in his room. Cass is already watching MTV when I come back, so I snuggle under my blankets and do my best to get lost in the show we’re watching. Some girl is yelling at a guy about dating someone else for most of the show, and it all seems ridiculous after too long, so I pull out my phone and send my parents a text goodnight. I also sweep down to the list of messages from Nate, and I go through every one of them.

“Have you talked to him yet?” Cass’s voice surprises me, and I flip my phone off quickly and hide it from her view.

“No,” I say, letting my eyes fall to the floor while I lay my head flatly along my hands. “I don’t know what to say. Everything is all…I don’t know…messy?” I look back up and stare at her, and we both just sit in our locked gaze, cheeks against our hands and eyes tired.