This Can't Be Good

Chapter 49

Parker and I never talked about how we were going to address our relationship when we were at school. On Monday morning we acted as if nothing had changed. We all sat together at lunch but Parker and I sat apart. We walked to our classes separately despite going to the same locations most of the time. We even drove separately to school.

By Tuesday Max and Miranda were already annoyed with us. Max was irritated at the fact that Parker and I still weren’t acting like a couple in public despite our desire to want to be a couple in public. Miranda, well she was irritated because she couldn’t talk about us with anyone but Max and Ava who already knew more than her, which just made her more angry. I couldn’t read Jayden’s attitude at all. He was still trying to take in all information. I could tell that he was watching the two of us with hawk eyes though, making me extremely nervous.

On Wednesday Parker had gone over to Max’s house. Max gave Parker a lecture about how he and I should stop hiding from the school now that our families knew. That we only had a limited time to be together and that pretending was a waste of time. For once Parker listened to Max’s words and on Thursday he and I were in my room discussing the worse case scenarios of what would happen when the school found out.

“You have it easy,” I told Parker, “no one is going to give you shit for dating me.”

Parker let out a laugh. “Please, I’m going to have to hear shit from the whole team for the next month. Not to mention your brother isn’t going to be too pleased if we show up at school holding hands.”

“Yeah but at least they’re just teasing you. Charlie and her minions are going to spread such shit rumors about me, which is not going to be fantastic. Plus, that whole football captain bullshit lie is going to come back into play,” I sighed.

The two of us both wanted to be able to walk down the halls of Mass High hand in hand, but at the same time we didn’t want anyone to know. Sure if everyone would know we could actually go out on dates in our own damn town but people were always going to be staring and spreading rumors. I didn’t get why people got so obsessed with other people’s personal lives. It was annoying.

“So what do we do then?”

“I don’t know Parker.”

Parker had been sitting on the opposite side of my room. Sensing the hesitancy in my voice he abandoned the chair and walked over to where I sat on my bed. I was sitting angled toward him originally. When he approached me he wrapped his arms protectively around my shoulders. He held me close for a second before whispering into my ear.

“Who cares what they think, right?”

His sudden proximity to me registered causing my body to shutter under his arms as his words tickled my ear. Closing my eyes I allowed my self to envision what it would be like for Parker and I to be able to hold hands at school. Instantly I felt my mouth form into a stupid grin. It was then I knew that I didn’t care what people were going to say all that mattered was that I had Parker.

“Promise to not let what people say about us bother you?” I asked.

“Mm, I can’t make that promise but I can promise that if any someone says something negative about you I’ll tell them why they’re wrong.”

Just thinking about Parker even having to defend me made me nauseous. I knew Parker wouldn’t do anything drastic but I also knew that he wasn’t going to let Charlie spread vapid rumors about me, again.

“Fine,” I finally said before turning my head to place a kiss on his arm that was still wrapped tentatively around my shoulders.

The moment of truth came on Friday morning. Neither of us had mentioned to anything to anyone because we didn’t feel we need too. We had no intentions of making this a grand spectacle. We weren’t going to walk in the main doors of Mass High holding hands like what would have happened if we were in a Hollywood movie. We just wanted to have the option of talking in between classes and holding hands and all that other high school couple behavior I usually gawked at.