Call It What You Want(60)
“Why?”
“Because you’re a good girl, Maegan. I know you’ll help her figure out the right thing to do.”
You’re a good girl, Maegan. My mother hasn’t said something like that to me in so long. I didn’t realize how desperate I was to hear those words.
Mom leans back. Her hands are still on my face. “She doesn’t have to handle this by herself, though, okay?”
“Okay.”
Mom kisses me again, then moves away from my bed. She leans down to click my light off. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”
“Thanks, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
She stops by the door, leaning in before she pulls it closed. “Maegan?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to handle it by yourself, either.”
The words fill me with emotion. I want to tell her everything. I have to wrap my arms around my body to keep tears from spilling out of my eyes. It takes me a breath before I can speak normally. “Okay, Mom.”
She hesitates. She’s going to pry, and I’m going to spill everything.
But she doesn’t. She backs out of the room and closes the door.
Leaving me in the darkness.
Samantha doesn’t open her bedroom door until after noon. She does it softly, almost as if she’s sneaking out, and then tiptoes across to the bathroom, where she shuts the door with an equally quiet click. She must be hiding from Mom and Dad.
I’m in my bedroom, working on a paper for American lit, and I wait for her to come back out.
She doesn’t. The shower turns on.
My phone buzzes beside my laptop.
ROB: Hey
Three letters, and my heart explodes with butterflies. I haven’t heard from him since he dropped me off last night, and I’ve been sitting on my hands all morning to keep from writing to him first.
The insecure part of me was worried he wouldn’t text me at all until we saw each other Monday morning—or worse, that he’d wake up and realize he wasn’t interested at all.
But he didn’t. And he didn’t make me wait at all.
I’m so ridiculous. I’m blushing before I start writing back.
MAEGAN: Hey
ROB: How are you?
How am I? Hmm.
Still thinking about his quiet voice as he confided in me.
Still thinking about making out at Connor Tunstall’s house.
Still thinking about the feel of his hands and the warm corded muscles of his arms and the way my fingers stroked up his back.
I’m blushing harder.
MAEGAN: Good. You?
I’m horrible at this. My head is full of PG-13 fantasies, while my phone is full of texts that are no more illicit than what I’d send my father.
ROB: Same. I was just thinking about you.
MAEGAN: Oh yeah? What were you thinking?
ROB: I wanted to make sure everything was OK after last night.
Oh. Well, that’s less exciting than I was hoping.
MAEGAN: All good. Sam got home late.
Oh … Is he checking to make sure everything is okay so he’s not going to get involved in some family drama?
I wish Rachel wasn’t being so distant. Any other boy, and we’d be crouched over my phone together, analyzing every word.
I click over to our last messages, when she was asking me about Rob. I never replied. She never spoke to me on Friday. But I’m not going to apologize about Rob. They were mean. They should be apologizing to him.
My brain refuses to forget that I was sharing in their ire on the day I was assigned to be his partner.
I click back to Rob’s texts. A new message appears.
ROB: Any chance you want to meet up later to work on our project?
I bite my lip and slide my fingers over the face of the phone.
MAEGAN: Just our project?
ROB: Like I said last night, anything you want.
Then he adds the emoji with the sunglasses.
Here I thought I was blushing before. Another message appears.
ROB: That looks worse on a screen than it did in my head. I’m not a creep, I swear.
I burst out laughing.
MAEGAN: A creep would send the eggplant. What time?
ROB: Owen wants to go running this afternoon. After dinner?
MAEGAN: Owen runs?
ROB: That’s what he says.
MAEGAN: 7?
ROB: 7
It takes everything I have to keep from pressing the phone against my chest and spinning in the chair.
Then I hear Sam come out of the bathroom.
“Hey, Sam?” I call. “You want to come in and talk?”
Silence answers me, but she’s in the hallway. I can tell.
“I don’t think anyone remembers,” I say. “What I said.” I pause. “Or they don’t care. Rachel would have heard. She would have called me.”
I hold my breath as I wait for a response.
“I don’t want to talk,” says Sam.
Then her door slides closed, and she turns the lock.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Rob
I didn’t drift off to sleep until six a.m., when my body gave up, I guess. So when Owen called at eight, my nerves were so jangled that I almost threw the phone through the wall.
I almost did it again when he asked if I wanted to go for a run.