POPULAR: An Emma Teen Fan Fiction (Sunrise High #3)

POPULAR: chapter twenty-two (Step Into Tomorrow)

Chapter Twenty-two

Step Into Tomorrow    

    I wound up hovering near the returns shoot all by myself.

    It was quiet inside, of course. I was reminded me of that ancient scene in Doctor Zhivago when Lara and Yuri meet again in the library after being apart for so long. It’s such a great classic, romantic movie. But where was my yummy Yuri in real life ?

    I’d left Ethan standing in the street. How could I have come to the local library expecting to find him?

    I didn’t. I’d come here to hide.

    What had come over me? Running away from true love maybe?

    Here I was, in Sunrise library, acting like a total nerd, acting like… Rafe Martin.

    And there he was, sitting in the corner. When he looked up and saw me I noticed even Rafe Martin looked down again quickly. He pretended he didn’t know me.  

     I was shunned in my own neighborhood. I stood by the wall, seriously, and for the first time since I was six, I walked into the stacks and cried.

    “Honey?” I stopped sniffing, wiped my eyes and turned around. He put his hand on my shoulder.

    It was Rafe, through all my unintended meanness, the object of my derision had reached out to me.   

     “What’s up?”

     “I was just…” I picked up a copy of How to Forge the Right Teen Path and Follow Your Teenage Bliss.

    “Looking for this?” He asked.

     “Kind of...”

    I wiped my eyes again. I didn’t think I’d been noticeably shedding tears until Rafe handed me a tissue.

    “I told Hilary the ‘misunderstanding’ about the dance, well, it was all my fault…” I sniffed.

    “Oh, it’s okay. I just texted her. We’re going to the movies on the weekend. She explained everything – how she was sorry and how she’d regretted not hanging out with me earlier… She said she thought she’d liked someone else but that was just for a moment.”

    “So she…” I realized Hilary had changed her mind, ignored my advice and made the first move. Maybe she’d just pretended to want Ethan to annoy me. Actually, it was the second move because Rafe had approached her in the first instance, but whatever. It served me right.

    “That’s great,” I said. “That’s so great that you guys are getting together… maybe.”

    Rafe smiled.

    “Honestly, I used to intensely dislike you Honey Woodhouse. But, if it hadn’t been for you, I don’t think Hilary and I would have overcome our obstacles in the first place. I wanted to take her to the dance but I never thought about her beyond the point of that. You made me think long and hard about why I was disappointed that she rejected me. I even went away for the weekend to forget her. I liked her heaps more than I even realized. Don’t blame yourself, Honey. You may be out of fashion now, but tomorrow it will all be different, you’ll see.”

    Who’d have thought Rafe would have turned into the emotive voice of sunshine? Nothing was as I expected. Still, it was nice of him to try.

    “I gotta go,” I said. Everyone else’s teen worlds were coming together just as mine was falling apart; but I could never begrudge Rafe and Hilary their happiness.