“I know. I’m working on it,” he said, walking to the door. “I’ll let you get dressed.”
When he reached for the knob, he paused, rubbing his arm. As soon as his fingers touched the tender splatter of purple pooling under his skin, he pulled up his elbow and noticed the bruise. He stared at it for a moment, and then turned to me.
“I fell on the stairs last night. And you helped me to bed….” he said, sifting through the blurry images in his mind.
My heart was pounding, and I swallowed hard as I watched realization strike. His eyes narrowed. “We,” he began, taking a step toward me, looking at the closet, and then to the bed.
“No we didn’t. Nothing happened,” I said, shaking my head.
He cringed, the memory obviously replaying in his mind. “You fog up Parker’s windows, I pull you out of the car, and then I try to…,” he said, shaking his head. He turned for the door and grabbed the knob, his knuckles white. “You’re turning me into a fucking psycho, Pigeon,” he growled over his shoulder. “I don’t think straight when I’m around you.”
“So it’s my fault?”
He turned. His eyes fell from my face to my robe, to my legs, and then my feet, returning to my eyes. “I don’t know. My memory is a little hazy…but I don’t recall you saying no.”
I took a step forward, ready to argue that irrelevant little fact, but I couldn’t. He was right. “What do you want me to say, Travis?”
He looked at the bracelet, and then back at me with accusing eyes. “You were hoping I wouldn’t remember?”
“No! I was pissed that you forgot!”
His brown eyes bored into mine. “Why?”
“Because if I would have…if we would have…and you didn’t…I don’t know why! I just was!”
He stormed across the room, stopping inches from me. His hands touched each side of my face, his breathing quick as he scanned my face. “What are we doin’, Pidge?”
My eyes began at his belt, and then rose over the muscles and tattoos of his stomach and chest, finally settling on the warm brown of his irises. “You tell me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
nineteen
“Abby?” Shepley said, knocking on the door. “Mare was going to run some errands, she wanted me to let you know in case you needed to go.”
Travis hadn’t taken his eyes from mine. “Pidge?”
“Yeah,” I called to Shepley. “I have some stuff I need to take care of.”
“All right, she’s ready to go when you are,” Shepley said, his footsteps disappearing down the hall.
“Pidge?”
I pulled a few things from the closet and slid past him. “Can we talk about this later? I have a lot to do today.”
“Sure,” he said with a contrived smile.
It was a relief when I reached the bathroom, hurriedly closing the door behind me. I had two weeks left in the apartment, and there was no way to put off the conversation for that long. The logical part of my brain insisted that Parker was my type: attractive, smart and interested in me. Why I bothered with Travis was something I would never understand.
Whatever the reason, it was making us both insane. I had been divided into two separate people; the docile, polite person I was with Parker, and the angry, confused, frustrated person I turned into around Travis. The entire school had witnessed Travis going from unpredictable before, to damn near volatile.
I dressed quickly, leaving Travis and Shepley to go downtown with America. She giggled about her morning sexcapade with Shepley, and I listened with dutiful nods in all the right places. It was hard to focus on the topic at hand with the diamonds of my bracelet creating tiny dots of light on the ceiling of the car, reminding me of the choice I was suddenly faced with. Travis wanted an answer, and I didn’t have one.
“Okay, Abby. What’s going on? You’ve been quiet.”
“This thing with Travis…it’s just a mess.”
“Why?” she said, her sunglasses pushing up when she wrinkled her nose.
“He asked me what we were doing.”