Untimely Love (Book 3)

♤Chapter 26♤

Hanging out with Jess was the same as the old days. Not much had changed between us other than we had more things to tell each other now that we didn't spend every day together. Well, she had more to tell me and I kept asking her questions so it stayed that way.

I didn't have anything fun or interesting to offer. Unless I talked about what I did for community service and we already did that. I even told her I planned on staying at the plant shop until I graduated, maybe after too if it came down to that. I was almost done with my hours and I'd gotten attached to the place—including Reese, his girlfriend who stopped by every now and then, and the owners who I'd met back in October.

Even if I kept volunteering there, I didn't mind—it was something to do and the only thing that kept me out of my head these past months, if even for a short amount of time a week.

A part of me was uncomfortable for a little while once Jess and I moved to the lounge. She'd turned the TV on and we'd started with a movie. As the minutes ticked by to ten then half an hour into an hour, that's when I started to relax. The movie ended and we went to her room where she showed me her new wardrobe and actually forced me to let her paint my toes and fingers.

Normal. The usual. And for a few moments in between I'd forgotten about the hell life had been for me. As the clock kept ticking, I leaned into that normalcy, embraced it just for this evening.

She'd told me about the guy she was seeing, Malik, for a few weeks. She wasn't sure if they'd make it out of the dating stage but she liked him. She majored in some kind of engineering and apparently that was kicking her ass but that was the kind of stress she wanted.

I sat on the edge of her high bed, wiggling my toes even though Jess had threatened me not to smudge them. She'd painted them a dark green, coated with clear polish. I loved it.

When she entered the room again, back from the restroom, she asked, "How's school by the way?" She sauntered over and hopped in the bed, laying upside down and sprawling out on her stomach next to me. Her arms hung over the end of the bed next to my thighs, the side of her face pressed into the sheets.

Torture. Hell. The worst place to be on earth.

"It's school, I guess." I shrugged.

She smiled in a way that told me she knew exactly what I was thinking. It wasn't a secret, even now, how much I despised the place.

Reaching over, she patted my thigh soothingly. "You got one semester left. You know where you wanna go for college?"

I groaned and fell back on the bed. Now my head was in the opposite direction of hers. Talking was easier this way. "I applied," I murmured, "to a bunch of places in New York. Mostly cause I wanna stay with my dad though." I laughed a little.

That was only half of the truth. The other half was that I didn't know if I was going to do college after I graduated. Not immediately anyway. My dad had brought up a gap year and right now, it didn't seem like such a bad idea. But I still applied to a few colleges, most of them in New York because like I said, I wanted to be close to him for a while. After what happened over Thanksgiving and our talk, I realized that talking to him over the phone wasn't ever going to be enough. Whether I decided to go to college or not, I planned on staying with him.

"Do you know what you're gonna study?"

I bit back a smile. "Environmental Science. Or Botony. Depends on where I go really."

"That plant shop really got its hooks in you," Jess said, humor lacing her voice.

I snickered. "Yeah."

A few short weeks ago, I almost had a breakdown in front of Reese, which was embarrassing in itself because he was my supervisor. I tried not to bring all my negative energy in there and kill the plants, but that particular evening I'd let some of it slip.