Learning Curve

Scottie

All thanks to Blake Boden’s second game-winning touchdown of the year, Dickson beat the Duke Blue Devils twenty-one to fourteen. The cheerleader bus is bustling with all the markers of perfect season excitement, Kayla and Emma even doing a rendition of “We Are the Champions” in the seat right behind the driver.

I’m trying really hard not to be a downer, but one more karaoke special from the Excitement Barbies and I’m going to have to put in my AirPods and drown out the happy noise.

My playlist titled “Sad Girl” I made a week ago and started listening to on repeat feels like just the vibe I’m looking for. Adele, Sam Smith, Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Bon Iver, and David Gray, this playlist is a rite of passage for every pathetic girl trying to drown out thoughts of the boy who got away while she cries herself to sleep at night.

It’s cathartic, in a way. Though, Veda, the therapist my dad had Wren and me go to when we were young to talk about our mom’s addiction, might say listening to sad, depressing songs about losing someone you love over and over again could also hinder your ability to get over them.

Maybe that’s the point, I think sardonically.

As much as it would improve my quality of life to do so, I don’t want to get over Finn.

I want to get back under him. Being in his arms was still the most special experience of my life, even if I ruined it all shortly after.

After two full weeks of not seeing him at all, he finally came to Professor Winslow’s class yesterday. He avoided me completely until we split up into our groups to work on our The Winter’s Tale project, and even then, he only said what he had to to keep Nadine off our back. I tried to catch up to him to talk to him after, but he was gone, vapor in the wind, before I crossed the classroom’s threshold.

I don’t think he gave Professor Winslow the journal entry again, and I also don’t think our professor knows that Finn is his brother.

It’s all just assumptions from my end, but Professor Winslow is a guy who actually cares about his students. I’ve witnessed him on multiple occasions ask a student to stay after class because he could see they were having a rough time. He’s known for that.

And I have a hard time believing he would’ve been that oblivious to Finn’s surly mood if he knew they shared the same father.

“Where’s your football?” Kayla’s voice fills my ears, and I look up to find her leaving her seat beside McKenzie to cross the aisle and take the empty seat beside me. “C’mon, Scottie. Where’s the football Hottie McHotson gave you tonight?” She waggles her brows at me, and I roll my eyes.

“It’s packed away in my duffel.”

She doesn’t hesitate to jump up and locate my duffel above my seat, the dumb football clutched in her hands as she plops down into the seat again. She turns it over in her hands, and when her eyes spot the numbers Sharpied on the back of it, she squeals. “Holy shit! He gave you his number!”

“It’s no big deal, Kay.”

“No big deal?” she exclaims. “Duke’s QB is smokin’ hot. I mean, he’s clearly not as good as our QB, but who cares about football skills when you’ve got a face and body like that guy, amirite?” She playfully nudges me with her elbow, and I snort at her antics.

“Down, girl,” I tease. “Your horny is showing.”

Kayla cracks up and shoves the football in my lap. “Call him.”

My head is already shaking my refusal. “No way.”

“What? Why not?” Kayla searches my face like I’ve grown an additional head. “I know you and Finn had a little something-something going on at the Halloween party.” When my head whips toward her, she treads a little more lightly. “I mean, we all saw you dancing and making out, but I’m pretty sure you’re still technically single…” She pauses and reaches out to grab me by the shoulders. “Oh shit! Are you guys, like, a thing now, and you’re keeping it under wraps or something?”

Nausea floods my mouth as sadness the size of a boulder finds a place inside my stomach. I discreetly swallow hard against it. “No,” I say, but my voice sounds half strangled. I clear my throat. “There’s nothing going on between Finn and me.”

“Wait…did something happen?” Kayla’s mouth turns down at the corners, and she swivels in her seat to hold both of my hands. “I mean, I’ve been sensing that something’s been off with you.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “But every time I ask, it feels like you’re brushing me off…”

It’s my turn to frown. I hate that I’ve been making one of my favorite people at Dickson feel like I’m brushing her off. “I’m sorry, Kay. Brushing you off was not my intention. I’m just…dealing with some stuff I’m not ready to talk about yet.”

“Girl, no need to apologize. I get it. Not everything is peachy keen every single day of the week,” she comments. “You know Nathan Hodges?”

My eyebrows draw together. “He’s on the track team, right?”

She nods. “We were dating a little bit in October, but then he met some biology major with big boobs.”

I wince, realizing only now that I’m not the only one with stuff going on. “I’m sorry.”

I wish I could tell her the truth. I wish I could just word-vomit my tragic situation all over her lap. But I can’t. It feels wrong to tell anyone. So I give her what I can.

“I was definitely hoping something would happen between Finn and me, but…” I pause and shrug. “You kind of need both people to want that for it to work.”

“Damn, I’m sorry,” she says and squeezes my hands. “You should have told me that was going on, Scottie. I would’ve been there for you.”

“I know. You’re right. Next time, you’ll be the first person I call,” I tell her, making a promise that I don’t feel like I can actually keep.

“Well, if my opinion means anything,” Kayla comments with a nod toward the football that’s still in my lap. “Then I think you should call that man.”

“You realize he goes to school seven hours from me, right?”

She waves her hand in the air. “I’m not saying date the guy. Just, like, have a little fun with him. Even if it’s just some flirty texts back and forth.”

I wish I could agree with her, but I miss Finn too much to talk to another guy. Which is probably insanely pathetic, I know, given how badly he wants me to leave him alone.

“Just consider it.” Kayla takes the football from my hands and stands up to put it back in my duffel. “Good grief, Scottie,” she groans when a pair of my gym shoes falls out of my bag, and she has to pull my bag down and set it in the aisle to get the football and shoes shoved back in it again. “What in the hell do you have in this thing?”

“Books,” I admit. I’ve been sucked into reading Cassie Kelly’s whole damn collection.

My phone vibrates in my pocket as Kayla shoves my bag even harder with a laugh, and I pull it out to check it.

As soon as I do, I wish I wouldn’t have.

Karma called, bitch. And she’s coming for your ass.

“Who is texting you?” Kayla asks as she plops back down in the seat, my duffel bag safely secured in the overhead bin above our heads.

“Just my dad,” I lie and shove my phone back into my pocket.

Truthfully, I haven’t really talked to my sister or my dad for any meaningful amount of time since before Halloween. And it’s not for their lack of trying. They’ve texted and called, but I’ve only been able to offer them brief, two-minute phone calls or short and sweet texts back.

Getting out of bed every day and trying to focus on class and cheerleading is about all I can give right now, I’m so swollen with heartbreak.

“Oh my God!” Kayla bursts into laughter and startles the hell out of me. I glance over to find her looking at something on her phone. “You have to see what Julia just texted me.”

She turns the screen of her phone toward me, and I scan through their messages.

Julia: Girl, it’s a damn shame you and Scottie are in Durham because some wild shit has gone down here. (By the way, I saw you both on TV! You girls looked GORG.)

Kayla: TELL ME EVERYTHING.

Julia: Ace’s dad just pulled the prank of a lifetime at my parents’ surprise birthday party for me. He legit paid to close off city streets, bought a film crew, and even had police officers there to keep everything secure. Ace had no idea what was happening.

Kayla: What the hell was the prank???

Julia: Ace’s dad and my dad pretended to be all panicked that his younger brother Gunnar got arrested and told Ace and Finn to get in the car to go bail him out. And that ended in a pretend police chase scene through the closed-off streets of the city. ACE WAS FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. Seriously, just watch this.

Kayla clicks on the video Julia just sent over, and in an instant, I’m face-to-face with Finn’s gorgeous face. He’s sitting in the back of some kind of sports car with Ace, and in the front sits Ace’s dad Thatch and an incredibly handsome guy I’m assuming is Julia’s dad.

Ace looks petrified as his dad drives like a bat out of hell through city streets with no one on the road or sidewalk.

By the time police sirens sound from behind them, Ace is losing his fucking mind on the video while Finn tries to pin him down.

Kayla laughs her ass off at the clusterfuck.

Under normal circumstances, I’d probably find this hilarious too, but there’s just something about seeing Finn’s face this up close and personal that makes my chest become so tight I feel like someone has sucked all of the oxygen off the bus.

When Kayla can’t stop laughing, other girls on the bus start to get interested, and she busies her attention with showing them the footage.

I’m thankful, to be honest, because every time she glanced in my direction and I forced an amused smile to my lips, I felt like my face was going to shatter into a million pieces.

Finn Hayes may be done with me, but I can’t escape him.