Better Than Me

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

We probably wouldn't have found her if it weren't for the picture of her that leaked on the internet. Tori, Blake and I called Sophia a ridiculous amount of times and sent her even more text messages, but she didn't answer her phone or answer any of our messages. She didn't even open them. She always had her read receipts on, at least for me so I would be able to see when she was purposefully ignoring me.

I knew I was the last person Sophia probably wanted to talk to, but I just wanted to know that she was okay. She'd run off after realizing other people had overheard our conversation and even Tori didn't know where she was. We expected her to eventually come home. We didn't expect her to crash somewhere for the night.

As it turned out, she'd chosen a nearby park to crash at. Maybe she hadn't exactly chosen it so much as she'd fallen asleep there while hiding from the world. Whatever the case, we knew where to find her thanks to the picture someone had posted of her sleeping on a bench.

"Her phone is just going straight to voicemail now," Tori said from the backseat. "It's probably dead. I just hope she's still at that park."

"The picture was taken during the day, so if she's not she can't have gotten too far," Blake said.

I didn't say anything. I was the one driving so I just kept my eyes on the road, going through everything I wanted to say to Sophia in my head, knowing fully well that when the time came my dumb ass would pansy out and barely manage an apology.

I may or may not have sped a little to get to the park faster – in my defense, I wanted to increase our chances of actually finding her there – and before we knew it, we'd made it.

We walked through the park for a good ten minutes before we found her. She was sitting by herself on a large rock near a small lake. She'd managed to find the most random corner of the park to hide away in.

It was Blake who actually made the discovery, although Tori and I would have followed suit. He just happened to be in front of us. "Guys, I found her," he said.

Sophia didn't turn around or even flinch. She just kept sitting there, staring out into the water like it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen. Anything to avoid me. Because if Blake was there, it was safe to guess I was, too.

"Sophia!" Tori called out. Instead of approaching me, she looked at me to see if I was going to try to talk to her.

Part of me didn't want to. Part of me couldn't even look at her after what had happened yesterday, now that I knew that I'd been the asshole all along, and she'd actually been fairly composed and civil all things considering. But the other part of me was desperate to make amends, to somehow earn her forgiveness. Suddenly, there was nothing I wanted more than to make things right with her.

Finally, I gathered up the courage to approach her. "Sophia," I said.

She didn't say anything. Instead, she messed with a loose string on her shirt, pulling it and pulling it until it snapped right off. I was close enough to see the string fly through the air, to see a few strands of hair that looked almost blond in the sun, to see the goosebumps forming on her arms – whether that was from nerves or the cooling temperature now that the sun was starting to set, I didn't know.

"Sophia, I'm so sorry. I didn't – I didn't mean to hurt you –"

I didn't know how true that last part was. Present me didn't mean to hurt her. But past me was an even bigger dick than present me and didn't give a shit who he hurt if it meant getting laid.

"Stop." She shook her head. "You don't get to say that."

"But I mean it," I said, carefully sitting down next to her on the rock. I half-expected – okay, 75% expected – her to shove me off. But she didn't. She didn't even look at me.