Magnetic

Chapter Twenty-Four

I got to my locker and Brady was already standing there, per usual. He greeted me with a smile and kissed my cheek. "How's your day been?"

"Alright," I replied, twisting the dial on my locker and standing back as it popped open to reveal my textbooks, each so thick that I almost didn't have enough room in my locker to fit everything. "Yours?"

He crossed his arms and leaned against the locker beside mine, his blonde hair falling over his eyebrows. "Fine, I guess. Like, AP Statistics is killing my GPA, but that's because my teacher hates me."

"Why?" My psychology text book flopped out of my locker, landing on the floor with a bang. Brady reached down the grab it, his blonde hair falling in front of his eyes.

"My teacher's daughter had a huge crush on me at the beginning of the school year." He handed the book back to me and I stuffed it into my L.L. Bean backpack. "She asked me out, I turned her down nicely, and voila. My teacher has hated me ever since."

"That's not your fault, though."

Brady shrugged. He was one who hated confrontation, and when there was confrontation, he always thought he was the one responsible for it all. It was important to remind him that it wasn't always his fault, because sometimes, he'd forget. "It's whatever. I mean, I hate that I've got a C in stats and it's bringing down my 4.0, but it doesn't seem like there's anything I can do."

I slammed my locker shut, slid my backpack on, and took Brady's hand. We walked down the hallway, through the school, to get to his car. Like usual, I got a few jealous glares from a wide array of girls that I didn't recognize. After all, to them, it seemed like I had attained the unattainable.

"Gage and Paisley want to check out this new teen-club-turned-lounge place later tonight in Monraville," he told me as we climbed into his truck, which, to my surprise, he had still kept clean. "They invited us. I'm probably going, not like I have anything else to do."

I pushed my backpack over the headrest. It slumped down onto the floor behind my seat. "Sounds fun," I said. I didn't really have anything else to do. My dad probably wouldn't be home until past midnight, since it was Friday, and so I'd be up all night, by myself. Almost anything sounded better than that.

"Alright. Well, I think they want to be there around seven, so I could probably pick everyone up at about-"

My ringing cell phone interrupted. He glanced down at it and then back up at me, as if he was waiting for me to silence it.

"Let me check it real quick." I picked it up and at the sight of the name, immediately pressed answer. "Oh my gosh."

"Nicki." It was Tucker. He must've been out of his coma, and, fortunately, still alive. "I know that you know. Justine told me she told you."

It was almost a week since Justine had called me about Tucker's car accident, and I still wanted to kill him for drinking. And I wanted to stomp on his grave for driving after he'd been drinking. My mother was killed because someone had made that decision.

But even though I was extremely pissed off, I felt a wave of relief wash over me at the sound of his voice. "I hate you so much, Tucker."

Brady's head jerked over to me at the sound of Tucker's name. Of course, he still loathed him. I hadn't told Brady about the accident, especially because I knew he would've made a crack about how he deserved it or something. That would've been one of the last things I wanted to hear.

"I expected that much. To be honest, I was pretty surprised when I woke up and didn't have thousands of threatening voicemails from you."

"Talking to you wasn't something I wanted to do. I was furious, Tucker."