“Laurel—”
“No! I said I don’t love you. I…I hardly even know you, Tamani. A handful of afternoons, a trip to a festival — that doesn’t equal love!” she insisted. She didn’t know what else to do. He was right; leaving him with hope for their future every time she saw him was cruel. Unspeakably cruel. She had to make him believe it wouldn’t happen. It would hurt less in the long run. “I’m going to see David,” she said, hurling the last of her ammunition at him and turning before she could see his reaction. She wasn’t sure she could bear it.
She walked toward the cabin, expecting Tamani to stop at any moment. But at the edge of the forest, he was still right on her tail. “Stop following me,” she hissed.
“I don’t think you’re in any position to order me around,” he said tersely.
They broke from the tree line together, Tamani just behind Laurel’s left shoulder. Laurel’s eyes met David’s instantly…a second before he saw Tamani. His eyes went back to her again, full of hurt and accusation. He scooted off the trunk of her Sentra and started to walk toward his car.
“David!” Laurel called, lifting her foot to run.
Tamani’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. He pulled her around and before she could protest, his lips came down hard against hers, his kiss urgent and demanding and full of a heat that swept Laurel up for two seconds before she pushed him violently away.
She looked toward David, hoping he had missed it.
He was staring right at them.
David’s and Tamani’s eyes met and locked.
Tamani still had a hold of Laurel’s wrist. She yanked it away. “Go away,” she said. “I want you to just go!” Her voice was starting to tremble. “I mean it!” she yelled. “Go!”
His face was tense, his jaw flexed as he stared at her. She could hardly stand to meet his eyes. They were an ocean of betrayal. They probed her, searching for the smallest sign that she didn’t mean it. That spark of hope that never seemed to go out.
She refused to drop her gaze. It was better this way. Someday maybe…she couldn’t even think about it. He had to go. He had to leave. It wasn’t fair to keep going on like this.
Please leave, she thought desperately. Please go before I change my mind. Go.
As if hearing her silent thoughts, Tamani turned without a word and walked silently into the trees, disappearing before her eyes.
Laurel couldn’t look away from the spot where Tamani had been just a second earlier. She knew she needed to. The longer she kept looking the harder things were going to be with David.
She ripped her eyes away. David was already at his car door.
“David!” she called. “David, wait!” He paused but didn’t turn to her. “David, don’t go.”
“Why not?” he asked, his eyes locked on the driver’s seat, refusing to look at her face. “I saw what happened. All that’s left is for me to imagine what I didn’t see.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said, guilt and shame pounding through her.
“Wasn’t it?” He turned now and faced her, his expression flat. If he had looked sad, or even angry, she could have accepted that. But he looked neutral, like he didn’t care at all.
“No,” she said, but her voice was quiet.
“Then what was it like, Laurel? Because I’ll tell you how things look from my point of view. You lied to me to come out and see him, to be with him!”
“I didn’t lie,” Laurel protested weakly.
“You didn’t say the words, but you lied all the same.” He paused, his jaw clenched, his hands tense on the car door. “I trusted you, Laurel. I have always trusted you. And just because you didn’t actually tell me a lie doesn’t mean you didn’t break my trust.” He looked up at her. “I got off work early because I was worried about you. I was afraid for you. And when your mom told me you were at Chelsea’s I called her and she didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. And you know what my next thought was? That you were dead, Laurel! I thought you were dead!”
Laurel remembered having the same thoughts about David on Monday and looked down at her feet, ashamed.
“And then I realized that there was one place — one person,” he said scornfully, “who you would sneak off to go see. And I come out here to make sure you’re safe and I find you kissing him!”
“I wasn’t kissing him!” Laurel yelled. “He was kissing me.”
David was silent, his jaw muscles working furiously. “Maybe this time,” he said, his voice steely. “But I saw the way he kissed you, and I promise you, that wasn’t the first time. Go ahead, deny it. I’m listening.”
She looked at the ground, the car, the trees, anywhere but at those accusing eyes.
“I knew it. I knew it!”
He slipped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, his engine roaring immediately to life. He backed up quickly, just missing Laurel as she stood rooted to the ground, unable to move. He rolled down his window. “I don’t…” He paused, the only sign of weakness he’d shown the entire conversation. “I don’t want to see you for a while. Don’t call. When…if I decide I’m ready, I’ll find you.”
Laurel watched him drive away, finally letting her tears come. For a second she glanced back at the trees, but there was nothing there for her either. She slid into her car and let her forehead fall against the steering wheel, sobbing. How had everything gone so wrong?
Laurel sat on her bed, her guitar on her lap, watching the shadows that danced across her ceiling. She’d been sitting there for two hours as the sun sank and the room darkened, playing random melancholy chords that — no matter how much she tried — were strangely reminiscent of the music she’d heard earlier that day, in Avalon.
This morning her life was good — no, great! Now? She had destroyed everything.
And it was her own fault. She had spent too long straddling the fence. She had let her attraction to Tamani get out of hand. It wasn’t enough to be faithful to David physically, he deserved her emotional fidelity, too.
She thought of the look on Tamani’s face when she told him she didn’t love him; this wasn’t fair to him, either. She had been hurting everyone, and now there were consequences.
The thought of living out the rest of her life — even the rest of the week — without David made everything inside her hurt. She imagined seeing him with another girl. Kissing someone else the way Tamani had kissed her today. She groaned and rolled onto her side, letting her guitar slide onto the bedspread beside her. It would be like the end of the world. She couldn’t let that happen. There had to be a way to make things right.
But two hours of thinking hadn’t given her any ideas. She just had to hope that he would forgive her. Eventually.
She tried to drift off to sleep. Usually it was easy, once the sun went down, but today all she could do was sit and watch the numbers change on her alarm clock as the darkness enveloped her.
8:22
8:23
8:24
Laurel went downstairs. Her parents always did inventory on Saturday nights and wouldn’t be back for another hour at least. She opened the fridge, more out of habit than hunger — no way she could eat at a time like this. She closed the fridge and let herself blame David and Tamani a little. She didn’t want to hurt either of them, she wanted them both to be happy. They were both important in her life. Why did they keep insisting that she choose between them?
A movement in the yard caught her eye, but before she could focus in on it the picture window shattered, sending shards of glass skittering across the floor as Laurel’s scream filled the air and she dropped into a crouch, hands protecting her face. But as soon as she closed her mouth, the room was deathly silent; no shouts, no more rocks, not even footsteps.