Ch.11 - Between A Wall And A Heart Place
She held the hot container so tightly in her lap that she was likely either burning herself or creating an indented circle on her thighs. The heat on her legs though was nothing in comparison to the fury vibrating through her entire being. She couldn’t wait to vent to Sunny all about it. Maybe she’d take her to the lake and chuck some stones into it; pretend it was Jared’s face.
Melanie could feel Ian’s gaze on the side of her face but she refused to give into the temptation to respond to it. She would probably snap at him and that would not be pretty. Besides, it wasn’t his fault she was so upset. If anything she should be thanking him for being the only one around to tell her the truth, whether it had been intentional or not.
The last two days had been a nightmare. She’d alternated between sulking on the front porch – which never lasted long since good old Aunt Maggie always caught her, sniffling on her bed – which had to be done quietly for the same reason, kicking the trunk of the tree she’d fallen out of, and falling off her bike a grand total of three times, and all before either of her feet had made a full cycle on the pedals.
It was pitiful.
She didn’t know which drove her into a frenzied state more – missing Jared in her daily life or worrying over him being supposedly sick for the last three days straight. She knew now the fact that it was the three days following their almost kiss at the park was no coincidence. He was deliberately avoiding her and playing the sick card to do so. A part of her longed to tattle to her Uncle Jeb about it, but there was a little person in her head rolling their eyes at how childish that would be. Besides, it was better to face your problems head on, right?
Well, she fully planned to.
Ian’s comment to her when she got into Kyle’s truck – which should’ve immediately set her off – told her everything she needed to know.
“Jared will probably be by again today, but I need to get Kyle alone. I hope you don’t mind,” he’d said.
Her mind had blocked out all the words except – Jared – again – today.
“Again?” she’d demanded, completely blindsided.
Ian had frowned, probably confused on two counts – Jared’s work attendance and/or his own insistence on bringing her to town early – but she didn’t help clarify. Luckily he’d figured it out before her patience ran out.
“He didn’t come out yesterday?” he’d asked, still sounding puzzled, but at least he’d narrowed down the cause of her temper. “His truck wasn’t in the parking lot.”
She’d turned her head to stare cruelly out the front windshield.
“No,” she’d said crisply, “he did not.”
The rest of the drive into town remained mostly in silence. Ian didn’t offer anything more and Melanie was so busy figuring out how best to yell at Jared that she didn’t even realize when they pulled into the parking lot in front of Kyle’s apartment building and the engine turned off. They sat quietly for a moment; then Ian turned in his seat, resting his arm on the back of her headrest.
“Do you want me to carry that in for you?” he asked.
She looked at him, then down at the container of hot soap she clutched tightly in her hands and shook her head.
“No. I want to give it to Kyle personally.”
“Kyle? But I thought—”
“I’m giving it to Kyle,” she cut him off. Then she opened the door of the truck and jumped to the concrete, bowl miraculously not spilling because of the plastic lid that was clamped over it. She left her door open, determined and eager to face Jared’s best friend as quickly as possible and unleash some of the anger she was holding as tightly to her as she was the bowl of soup.
Ian didn’t rush after her when she went straight for the building. Instead, he lazily got out of the truck, shut his door, rounded the vehicle, shut her door, made sure all the doors were locked and headed for the building. Unlike Melanie, he wasn’t in a rush to confront his brother.
…………
The door was opened a crack when Jared got to it. He knocked hesitantly but the only sound he got in return was the door squeaking as it moved slightly more inward. Looking both up and down the hall and seeing no one, he pushed the door open all the way to find the apartment completely vacant.
“Kyle?”
He stepped inside and scanned the room, looking for any signs of life and finding none. As he moved further into the room he spotted a large bowl on the coffee table. It was covered with a plastic lid and there was a sheet of paper sitting next to it on the plated glass. Oblivious of the still open door behind him, Jared approached the table, curiously drawn to what was written on the note. Hair stirred on the back of his neck when he finally reached his destination. Even without lifting the lid he knew what it was and what the note likely said, or some variation of it. But before he could reach down low enough to grab the sheet of paper and read what it said, he felt a sudden jolt slap across the back of his head.
“Ow!” He spun around to find the guilty party and rubbed his head as he glared. “Kyle, what the hell?”
Kyle said nothing at first, just reached around him and picked up the note Jared had not gotten to reading.
“Here.” He shoved the note in his face. “Read.”
Still annoyed, Jared lowered his eyes to the hand-written message on the sheet he’d snatched out of Kyle’s hands.
“Out loud,” Kyle demanded when it was clear Jared was only scanning.
Jared sighed loudly.
“Jared,” he began, “I’m so sorry to hear how sick you’ve been. We miss you on the farm. Please hurry back. I’m sending some soup with Melanie. It’s the homemade kind you like. Hope it speeds your recovery along. Maggie.” His reading became slower as he went on. When he reached the end, he swallowed and looked up into Kyle’s glaring eyes and narrowed brows.
“I suppose you want an explanation,” he said.
“That would be nice, yeah,” Kyle spat.
“Look, Kyle, it’s not—”
“No, I changed my mind. You don’t get to speak.” He snatched the note out of Jared’s hand, turned around to slam his front door shut. When he returned he looked even more livid than before.
Jared said nothing, obeying Kyle’s command but that only seemed to infuriate him further.
“You know what I had to deal with this morning? Do you?” Jared remained silent. “It was bad enough having to deal with my brother being back in town pretending to ‘bond’ with me and Summer the past couple days, but today he arrives with Melanie in tow who promptly informs me she knows all about how you’ve been avoiding her and she hopes you get sick so you can drink the soup she had so hoped would make you better.” He smacked the side of his head.
“Hey!” Jared slapped Kyle’s hand away from hitting him again. “Stop-”
“What the hell is the matter with you? I told Ian to go inform your lovely employers that you were sick for the day so you and I could hang out and so I’d have a reason to not be around when he came back. When you actually turned out to be sick – or so I’d thought—”
“Kyle-”
“I actually felt bad. I thought maybe somehow I’d jinxed the universe by using you as a means to avoid my brother. Apparently though I had just given you the brightest idea in the world – use me to avoid the great love of your life, because another something must have happened and you don’t know how to deal with it so you hide away and lie.” He paused to catch his breath. “I bet you weren’t even sick,” he spat.
“I was sick,” he insisted, conveniently – Kyle thought – ignoring all the other accusations.
“Oh yeah? Cough.”
“Well, I’m not sick anymore,” he grumbled.
“Cough,” Kyle demanded.
Jared made a noise that Kyle was pretty sure resembled a dying cat that was being strangled by a mouse.
“That was pathetic.”
“I told you I’m not sick anymore.”
“Don’t lie to me. You can lie to anyone outside this town, to your brother, heck even to Jeb and Maggie and Melanie for awhile. I’d be a little upset if you lied to Sunny, unless it was for her own good. But don’t ever lie to me. I am the only true friend you’ve got here and you’d do well not to forget it.”
On the verge of defending himself once more, Jared’s shoulders slumped and he nodded.
“Okay.”
Kyle sent the note flying and crossed his arms across his chest.
“Why are you avoiding Melanie?”
Jared sighed and went to sit on the couch. He stared at the bowl of soup as if it was the saddest thing in the world.
“I almost kissed her.”
Kyle’s eyes widened. He sank into the chair adjacent to Jared’s couch. They both sat in silence for awhile; Jared not knowing how to continue, Kyle trying to process.
“So why are you avoiding her?” Kyle finally asked.
Jared looked up at him, then looked away, thought maybe he hadn’t heard him correctly.
“I almost kissed Melanie,” he said again. Maybe Kyle hadn’t heard him, he thought.
“You said that already.”
Jared opened his mouth in shock, closed it, then licked his lips and tried again.
“I thought it would be awkward…seeing her again. I wanted to give myself time to try and figure out how to proceed. I don’t want to hurt her feelings—”
“Too late for that, buddy. I can tell you right now that beneath all the fury she showed up with this morning is a lot of hurt.”
Jared’s throat tightened. “I didn’t want that.”
Kyle sighed again. “You said that.”
Jared shook his head. “I knew she was going to expect me to pick up where we left off at some point, and there’s no way I can do that.”
“Why not?” Kyle asked, exasperated.
Jared blinked. “You’re joking, right?”
Kyle only raised his eyebrows and Jared laughed.
“I can’t ‘pick up’ where we left off, because then I would have to kiss her.”
“I fail to see the problem.”
“The problem is if I kiss her,” he said through grinding teeth, “she’s going to assume it will happen again and that pretty much we’ll be dating.” When Kyle still looked confused, Jared all but leapt on him in his frustration. “She’s seventeen,” he said, standing up suddenly and running a hand through his hair as he started to pace. “I’m twenty-six, and she’s leaving at the end of the summer. We’ve been through this. Melanie and I are not going to be a thing, no matter how much you want us to be.”
“Then why did you almost kiss her? And what stopped you? All these stupid excuses you’ve been giving me? You sound like a broken record, and it’s not having the effect I think you want it to have,” Kyle said, turning his chair with his feet to watch his best friend pace.
“Clearly not,” Jared muttered under his breath. “Look, we didn’t…kiss because when we were out on the dock some kids—”
Kyle’s brows furrowed. “What were you doing out on the dock? Was this after the fireworks?”
“Yes…” Jared said hesitantly.
“At night or…?”
Jared sighed and gave in. “Melanie wanted to stay up to see the sunrise before going—”
“Romantic,” Kyle remarked, his lips twitching at the corner.
“I wasn’t going to let her do it by herself,” he snapped, “and there was no way Sunny would’ve lasted that long.”
Kyle’s brows furrowed. “She wanted to see it with Sunny?”
Jared nodded. “I assumed that was the plan.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
He shrugged. “I told her Sunny probably wouldn’t make it. She didn’t clarify the conclusions I’d come to.”
Kyle was quiet for awhile. “So…some kids started splashing in the water when you were in the process of...”
“Yes.”
“What made you almost…?” He left the sentence hanging. There was no need to finish it.
Jared stopped pacing and swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Kyle stood up and went to stand a short distance behind his best friend.
“You don’t know?”
Jared said nothing.
“I think you do know. I think you know and it scares the hell out of you.”
Jared shook his head and turned around suddenly. He held his tongue and then just let loose.
“I wasn’t thinking, okay? I was just feeling. And she was so…so…”
“Beautiful? Alluring? Magnetic?”
Jared nodded and then sighed. “All of the above.”
Kyle reached out to put his hand on his best friend’s shoulder and then thought better of it.
“Why are you avoiding her?” he asked quietly.
“I told you—”
“The real reason,” he specified.
“Because we’ve gotten close,” he said. “Real close. And in such a short period of time. After almost crossing that line though…from growing friendship to whatever that night could’ve turned into…I’d feel like I couldn’t touch her; that I’d be committing some crime, even if it’s something simple and totally innocent like passing a dish or holding onto the handlebars when she tries to ride her bike.”
Kyle waited.
“But being in such close range and not kissing her would just about drive me crazy.” Jared shook his head. “I’d have to kiss her,” he finally admitted to himself, and to Kyle. “It’s too late for me not to want that.”
“You do know that you don’t just go out to the farm to see Melanie, right? You have a job to do out on Jeb’s farm,” Kyle reminded him, momentarily relenting on his pursuit to get his best friend and the new girl in town together.
Jared nodded. “I know. I wasn’t going to draw it out much longer. It wouldn’t be fair to Jeb.”
Kyle sighed.
“You know how I feel about you and Melanie. Regardless of the age difference, I think there’s something between the two of you that you should explore. You’ll regret it if you don’t.” Jared opened his mouth to speak but Kyle held up his hand to silence him. “When she leaves, which she will, if you haven’t at least tried, you’ll regret it.”
Jared studied him for a long time before saying, “You can’t know that. Not for sure.”
“Let’s approach this another way.” Kyle said, as he slid his hands into his pockets. “On a purely platonic level, if Melanie never speaks to you again because you’ve been avoiding her all week, can you forgive yourself for not being man enough to figure out how to deal with your own feelings?”
Jared’s lips parted but before he could get another word out there was a knock at the door. Both he and Kyle turned toward the sound as if it were life-threatening. Neither moved.
“Kyle, open the door,” Sunny whined from the other side. “I forgot my key.”
He hesitated, then went to the door and briefly looked back at Jared, who made no attempt to run. Resigned, he opened it and put on his biggest smile.
“Well, hello—”
Sunny pushed past him.
“What took you so—”
She stopped suddenly, and Melanie, close at her heels, collided into her. She was about to complain when she looked up at when she saw what her new bestie was staring at. Her eyes narrowed.
Jared didn’t so much as move a muscle. Kyle didn’t close the door, in case anyone decided they needed to bolt.
“Are you going to run, Jared?” Melanie finally asked. He still said nothing. She stepped around Sunny, who sunk back towards her brother, and stopped, right in front of her opponent. “If you’re going to run, I would do it now. You’ll have no other time to avoid confrontation, since I fully plan on informing my aunt and uncle how you’ve been lying to them all week.”
Jared’s eyes widened slightly. He wanted to say you wouldn’t, but he knew very well that she would. In the state she was in now, she would as soon as she got home, and she wouldn’t let him be the one who took her.
Unbeknownst to Jared, both Kyle and Sunny had slipped out the door, not closing it so as to avoid interrupting the showdown.
“The door’s still open,” Melanie said. Jared broke his eye contact momentarily to glance over her head and spot the wide open doorway. “So, are you going to stay?” He fixed his eyes back on her. “Or are you going to go?”
Melanie could feel Ian’s gaze on the side of her face but she refused to give into the temptation to respond to it. She would probably snap at him and that would not be pretty. Besides, it wasn’t his fault she was so upset. If anything she should be thanking him for being the only one around to tell her the truth, whether it had been intentional or not.
The last two days had been a nightmare. She’d alternated between sulking on the front porch – which never lasted long since good old Aunt Maggie always caught her, sniffling on her bed – which had to be done quietly for the same reason, kicking the trunk of the tree she’d fallen out of, and falling off her bike a grand total of three times, and all before either of her feet had made a full cycle on the pedals.
It was pitiful.
She didn’t know which drove her into a frenzied state more – missing Jared in her daily life or worrying over him being supposedly sick for the last three days straight. She knew now the fact that it was the three days following their almost kiss at the park was no coincidence. He was deliberately avoiding her and playing the sick card to do so. A part of her longed to tattle to her Uncle Jeb about it, but there was a little person in her head rolling their eyes at how childish that would be. Besides, it was better to face your problems head on, right?
Well, she fully planned to.
Ian’s comment to her when she got into Kyle’s truck – which should’ve immediately set her off – told her everything she needed to know.
“Jared will probably be by again today, but I need to get Kyle alone. I hope you don’t mind,” he’d said.
Her mind had blocked out all the words except – Jared – again – today.
“Again?” she’d demanded, completely blindsided.
Ian had frowned, probably confused on two counts – Jared’s work attendance and/or his own insistence on bringing her to town early – but she didn’t help clarify. Luckily he’d figured it out before her patience ran out.
“He didn’t come out yesterday?” he’d asked, still sounding puzzled, but at least he’d narrowed down the cause of her temper. “His truck wasn’t in the parking lot.”
She’d turned her head to stare cruelly out the front windshield.
“No,” she’d said crisply, “he did not.”
The rest of the drive into town remained mostly in silence. Ian didn’t offer anything more and Melanie was so busy figuring out how best to yell at Jared that she didn’t even realize when they pulled into the parking lot in front of Kyle’s apartment building and the engine turned off. They sat quietly for a moment; then Ian turned in his seat, resting his arm on the back of her headrest.
“Do you want me to carry that in for you?” he asked.
She looked at him, then down at the container of hot soap she clutched tightly in her hands and shook her head.
“No. I want to give it to Kyle personally.”
“Kyle? But I thought—”
“I’m giving it to Kyle,” she cut him off. Then she opened the door of the truck and jumped to the concrete, bowl miraculously not spilling because of the plastic lid that was clamped over it. She left her door open, determined and eager to face Jared’s best friend as quickly as possible and unleash some of the anger she was holding as tightly to her as she was the bowl of soup.
Ian didn’t rush after her when she went straight for the building. Instead, he lazily got out of the truck, shut his door, rounded the vehicle, shut her door, made sure all the doors were locked and headed for the building. Unlike Melanie, he wasn’t in a rush to confront his brother.
…………
The door was opened a crack when Jared got to it. He knocked hesitantly but the only sound he got in return was the door squeaking as it moved slightly more inward. Looking both up and down the hall and seeing no one, he pushed the door open all the way to find the apartment completely vacant.
“Kyle?”
He stepped inside and scanned the room, looking for any signs of life and finding none. As he moved further into the room he spotted a large bowl on the coffee table. It was covered with a plastic lid and there was a sheet of paper sitting next to it on the plated glass. Oblivious of the still open door behind him, Jared approached the table, curiously drawn to what was written on the note. Hair stirred on the back of his neck when he finally reached his destination. Even without lifting the lid he knew what it was and what the note likely said, or some variation of it. But before he could reach down low enough to grab the sheet of paper and read what it said, he felt a sudden jolt slap across the back of his head.
“Ow!” He spun around to find the guilty party and rubbed his head as he glared. “Kyle, what the hell?”
Kyle said nothing at first, just reached around him and picked up the note Jared had not gotten to reading.
“Here.” He shoved the note in his face. “Read.”
Still annoyed, Jared lowered his eyes to the hand-written message on the sheet he’d snatched out of Kyle’s hands.
“Out loud,” Kyle demanded when it was clear Jared was only scanning.
Jared sighed loudly.
“Jared,” he began, “I’m so sorry to hear how sick you’ve been. We miss you on the farm. Please hurry back. I’m sending some soup with Melanie. It’s the homemade kind you like. Hope it speeds your recovery along. Maggie.” His reading became slower as he went on. When he reached the end, he swallowed and looked up into Kyle’s glaring eyes and narrowed brows.
“I suppose you want an explanation,” he said.
“That would be nice, yeah,” Kyle spat.
“Look, Kyle, it’s not—”
“No, I changed my mind. You don’t get to speak.” He snatched the note out of Jared’s hand, turned around to slam his front door shut. When he returned he looked even more livid than before.
Jared said nothing, obeying Kyle’s command but that only seemed to infuriate him further.
“You know what I had to deal with this morning? Do you?” Jared remained silent. “It was bad enough having to deal with my brother being back in town pretending to ‘bond’ with me and Summer the past couple days, but today he arrives with Melanie in tow who promptly informs me she knows all about how you’ve been avoiding her and she hopes you get sick so you can drink the soup she had so hoped would make you better.” He smacked the side of his head.
“Hey!” Jared slapped Kyle’s hand away from hitting him again. “Stop-”
“What the hell is the matter with you? I told Ian to go inform your lovely employers that you were sick for the day so you and I could hang out and so I’d have a reason to not be around when he came back. When you actually turned out to be sick – or so I’d thought—”
“Kyle-”
“I actually felt bad. I thought maybe somehow I’d jinxed the universe by using you as a means to avoid my brother. Apparently though I had just given you the brightest idea in the world – use me to avoid the great love of your life, because another something must have happened and you don’t know how to deal with it so you hide away and lie.” He paused to catch his breath. “I bet you weren’t even sick,” he spat.
“I was sick,” he insisted, conveniently – Kyle thought – ignoring all the other accusations.
“Oh yeah? Cough.”
“Well, I’m not sick anymore,” he grumbled.
“Cough,” Kyle demanded.
Jared made a noise that Kyle was pretty sure resembled a dying cat that was being strangled by a mouse.
“That was pathetic.”
“I told you I’m not sick anymore.”
“Don’t lie to me. You can lie to anyone outside this town, to your brother, heck even to Jeb and Maggie and Melanie for awhile. I’d be a little upset if you lied to Sunny, unless it was for her own good. But don’t ever lie to me. I am the only true friend you’ve got here and you’d do well not to forget it.”
On the verge of defending himself once more, Jared’s shoulders slumped and he nodded.
“Okay.”
Kyle sent the note flying and crossed his arms across his chest.
“Why are you avoiding Melanie?”
Jared sighed and went to sit on the couch. He stared at the bowl of soup as if it was the saddest thing in the world.
“I almost kissed her.”
Kyle’s eyes widened. He sank into the chair adjacent to Jared’s couch. They both sat in silence for awhile; Jared not knowing how to continue, Kyle trying to process.
“So why are you avoiding her?” Kyle finally asked.
Jared looked up at him, then looked away, thought maybe he hadn’t heard him correctly.
“I almost kissed Melanie,” he said again. Maybe Kyle hadn’t heard him, he thought.
“You said that already.”
Jared opened his mouth in shock, closed it, then licked his lips and tried again.
“I thought it would be awkward…seeing her again. I wanted to give myself time to try and figure out how to proceed. I don’t want to hurt her feelings—”
“Too late for that, buddy. I can tell you right now that beneath all the fury she showed up with this morning is a lot of hurt.”
Jared’s throat tightened. “I didn’t want that.”
Kyle sighed again. “You said that.”
Jared shook his head. “I knew she was going to expect me to pick up where we left off at some point, and there’s no way I can do that.”
“Why not?” Kyle asked, exasperated.
Jared blinked. “You’re joking, right?”
Kyle only raised his eyebrows and Jared laughed.
“I can’t ‘pick up’ where we left off, because then I would have to kiss her.”
“I fail to see the problem.”
“The problem is if I kiss her,” he said through grinding teeth, “she’s going to assume it will happen again and that pretty much we’ll be dating.” When Kyle still looked confused, Jared all but leapt on him in his frustration. “She’s seventeen,” he said, standing up suddenly and running a hand through his hair as he started to pace. “I’m twenty-six, and she’s leaving at the end of the summer. We’ve been through this. Melanie and I are not going to be a thing, no matter how much you want us to be.”
“Then why did you almost kiss her? And what stopped you? All these stupid excuses you’ve been giving me? You sound like a broken record, and it’s not having the effect I think you want it to have,” Kyle said, turning his chair with his feet to watch his best friend pace.
“Clearly not,” Jared muttered under his breath. “Look, we didn’t…kiss because when we were out on the dock some kids—”
Kyle’s brows furrowed. “What were you doing out on the dock? Was this after the fireworks?”
“Yes…” Jared said hesitantly.
“At night or…?”
Jared sighed and gave in. “Melanie wanted to stay up to see the sunrise before going—”
“Romantic,” Kyle remarked, his lips twitching at the corner.
“I wasn’t going to let her do it by herself,” he snapped, “and there was no way Sunny would’ve lasted that long.”
Kyle’s brows furrowed. “She wanted to see it with Sunny?”
Jared nodded. “I assumed that was the plan.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
He shrugged. “I told her Sunny probably wouldn’t make it. She didn’t clarify the conclusions I’d come to.”
Kyle was quiet for awhile. “So…some kids started splashing in the water when you were in the process of...”
“Yes.”
“What made you almost…?” He left the sentence hanging. There was no need to finish it.
Jared stopped pacing and swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Kyle stood up and went to stand a short distance behind his best friend.
“You don’t know?”
Jared said nothing.
“I think you do know. I think you know and it scares the hell out of you.”
Jared shook his head and turned around suddenly. He held his tongue and then just let loose.
“I wasn’t thinking, okay? I was just feeling. And she was so…so…”
“Beautiful? Alluring? Magnetic?”
Jared nodded and then sighed. “All of the above.”
Kyle reached out to put his hand on his best friend’s shoulder and then thought better of it.
“Why are you avoiding her?” he asked quietly.
“I told you—”
“The real reason,” he specified.
“Because we’ve gotten close,” he said. “Real close. And in such a short period of time. After almost crossing that line though…from growing friendship to whatever that night could’ve turned into…I’d feel like I couldn’t touch her; that I’d be committing some crime, even if it’s something simple and totally innocent like passing a dish or holding onto the handlebars when she tries to ride her bike.”
Kyle waited.
“But being in such close range and not kissing her would just about drive me crazy.” Jared shook his head. “I’d have to kiss her,” he finally admitted to himself, and to Kyle. “It’s too late for me not to want that.”
“You do know that you don’t just go out to the farm to see Melanie, right? You have a job to do out on Jeb’s farm,” Kyle reminded him, momentarily relenting on his pursuit to get his best friend and the new girl in town together.
Jared nodded. “I know. I wasn’t going to draw it out much longer. It wouldn’t be fair to Jeb.”
Kyle sighed.
“You know how I feel about you and Melanie. Regardless of the age difference, I think there’s something between the two of you that you should explore. You’ll regret it if you don’t.” Jared opened his mouth to speak but Kyle held up his hand to silence him. “When she leaves, which she will, if you haven’t at least tried, you’ll regret it.”
Jared studied him for a long time before saying, “You can’t know that. Not for sure.”
“Let’s approach this another way.” Kyle said, as he slid his hands into his pockets. “On a purely platonic level, if Melanie never speaks to you again because you’ve been avoiding her all week, can you forgive yourself for not being man enough to figure out how to deal with your own feelings?”
Jared’s lips parted but before he could get another word out there was a knock at the door. Both he and Kyle turned toward the sound as if it were life-threatening. Neither moved.
“Kyle, open the door,” Sunny whined from the other side. “I forgot my key.”
He hesitated, then went to the door and briefly looked back at Jared, who made no attempt to run. Resigned, he opened it and put on his biggest smile.
“Well, hello—”
Sunny pushed past him.
“What took you so—”
She stopped suddenly, and Melanie, close at her heels, collided into her. She was about to complain when she looked up at when she saw what her new bestie was staring at. Her eyes narrowed.
Jared didn’t so much as move a muscle. Kyle didn’t close the door, in case anyone decided they needed to bolt.
“Are you going to run, Jared?” Melanie finally asked. He still said nothing. She stepped around Sunny, who sunk back towards her brother, and stopped, right in front of her opponent. “If you’re going to run, I would do it now. You’ll have no other time to avoid confrontation, since I fully plan on informing my aunt and uncle how you’ve been lying to them all week.”
Jared’s eyes widened slightly. He wanted to say you wouldn’t, but he knew very well that she would. In the state she was in now, she would as soon as she got home, and she wouldn’t let him be the one who took her.
Unbeknownst to Jared, both Kyle and Sunny had slipped out the door, not closing it so as to avoid interrupting the showdown.
“The door’s still open,” Melanie said. Jared broke his eye contact momentarily to glance over her head and spot the wide open doorway. “So, are you going to stay?” He fixed his eyes back on her. “Or are you going to go?”
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