Chapter 147

Tessa’s POV

My phone rang for the third time, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. I knew it was Ruby again. She had texted me often after school, but I ignored her text messages.

I felt completely sick to my stomach after overhearing Joseph’s conversation with Miss Emily. She asked him out to a café on Friday, and he accepted. He didn’t even stop to think about it; he just accepted.

I guess I don’t really have a right to be upset over this. But I couldn’t help myself. My heart was so broken and all I wanted to do was sit here in my dark living room and cry.

I knew if I didn’t answer Ruby, she would end up coming over and that was something I didn’t want. So, I sighed and reached for my phone on the coffee table in front of me. I frowned at the brightness of my phone, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the lighting, and saw a couple of missed calls from Ruby and a text message from her as well.

“I’m worried about you. Please call me.”

I sighed again and cleared out the notification, but my finger froze when I saw another missed call that wasn’t from Ruby.

My heart squeezed painfully in my chest when I read Joseph’s name.

He called me about 10 minutes ago and I hadn’t noticed.

What would he be calling me for?

I shook my head; no, it didn’t matter. I didn’t want to speak with him right now. I wasn’t ready to speak with him. He ripped my heart out of my chest and stepped all over it. I couldn’t trust him and I certainly didn’t want to hear whatever excuses and lies he had come up with. It wasn’t going to make me feel any better.

But then I started to wonder if maybe he saw me eavesdropping on him and Emily earlier.

It would just open the door for more excuses though and I didn’t want to hear it.

I cleared that notification as well and called Ruby, trying to brush the thought of Joseph’s phone call out of my mind.

“Oh, my god, Tessa. Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you. You looked like a mess when I saw you after school. What happened? Why won’t you talk to me? What’s going on?” Ruby instantly started to ramble when she answered the phone.

I felt a headache throbbing at my temples and I wasn’t in the mood to answer any of her ongoing questions. But I knew if I didn’t say something, she’d end up driving over to my apartment to check on me herself.

I loved her for caring so much about me and wanting to make sure I was okay, but all I really wanted was to be left alone. I wasn’t sure how to tell her that though without hurting her feelings.

“I’m fine; I guess I’m still a little hungover after yesterday,” I told her; it wasn’t a complete lie.

I still felt like crap after drinking so much and the thought of that guy’s hands all over my body as he grinded against me on the dance floor and then when he tried to carry me out of the club was still clouding my mind.

I grimaced at the very memory.

“I saw you running out of the school sobbing,” she said, lowering her voice. “Something happened.”

It wasn’t a question, but an observation.

I sighed; there was no way for me to bounce around this subject.

“I overheard him talking to Miss Emily. She asked him out for Friday and he said yes.”

“Professor Evergreen?”

“Yeah,” I answered, feeling my voice quiver slightly. “He didn’t even hesitate.”

“Are you sure it was a date? Where are they going to go?”

“That new café that opened downtown; the one that doubles as a bookstore,” I answered, not wanting to talk about this any longer.

“Oooh, that place is supposed to be really cool. We should check it out too,” Ruby said, excitement clear in her voice.

I rolled my eyes.

“You’re not helping, Ruby,” I muttered.

“I mean it, Tessa. We could go on Friday and spy on their date. Maybe it’s not a date at all. Did they actually call it a date?”

“Not exactly,” I said, and suddenly that tension I felt in my chest was lifting. Maybe Ruby was right; I could have misheard the situation. I only got a portion of the conversation. Maybe it wasn’t a date at all.

But then what else could it have been? When I opened my mouth to ask that very question, Ruby answered me before I could get a word out.

“It could be a friend thing. They seemed like friends when she first started; they are both huge into literature, so maybe for them, it’s like a trip to the library.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way.

“That could be true,” I admitted but my voice still sounded so defeated.

Maybe because I couldn’t bring myself to actually speak to Joseph. I buried my face in my lap, feeling tears itching at the corner of my eyes, begging to be released. I hated this feeling; the feeling of being helpless and heartbroken.

This was a feeling I had with Brian for a long time during our relationship and when we broke up, I felt strangely lighter. Yeah, I was brokenhearted when I saw Brian kissing his best friend, but once we broke up, I realized it was a weight I needed to release.

I never once regretted the decision.

The thought of Brian reading my blog, admittedly made me want to laugh. Not enough to actually do it, but enough to think about it.

I shook my head at that thought too and focused on my conversation with Ruby.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to crash his date,” I told her, laying my head on the pillow on the couch.

“I didn’t say crash the date; I said we should spy on them. There’s a difference,” she replied.

I rolled my eyes, glad that she couldn’t see my face.

“I know you’re rolling your eyes,” she said quickly, making me lift my head off the couch.

Was she spying on me?

“How did you know that?” I asked, furrowing my brows together.

My curtains were closed tightly; there was no way she could see inside of them.

I could hear her chuckling on the phone.

“Because I know you well,” she said simply. “But I’m being serious.”

“That sounds like a bad idea,” I told her. “I’d rather just forget about this whole thing and get some sleep.”

She was quiet for a moment, and I knew she was frowning.

“You didn’t turn in your assignment with everybody else yesterday,” she said softly. “That was unlike you, and you worked really hard on it. Are you going to turn it in tomorrow?”

I glanced at the coffee table and saw my paper sitting on top of it. I stared at it with a deepened frown, that heaviness returning to my chest. She was right; I did work very hard on it. I pulled several all-nighters to make it perfect because I wanted Joseph to love it.

It was all about a human girl who fell in love with a vampire. Obviously, it was about Joseph and me. But nobody else had to know that and only Joseph would be reading it anyway. I wanted him to like it; I wrote it for not only his class but for him.

But since the breakup, turning it in didn’t feel right to me anymore. I couldn’t handle watching his face as he read it. I couldn’t even fathom the thought of him reading something like this now. So, I didn’t bring it with me to school. I didn’t turn in my assignment and now my grade was going to falter because of that.

“Maybe,” was all I said in return.

After a small back and forth, I finally convinced her to let me off the phone. All I really wanted at that moment was just to sleep.

….

The next day.

I got through my first set of classes. I was feeling a little more human today after I slept the entire night last night. I fell asleep around 7 pm and I woke up at 8 am this morning. I was almost late for my first class, which started at 8:30 am. But thankfully, I live very close to the school.

Once I threw on some clothes and put my hair up in a messy bun, I was able to run to the school and make it in time for my first class.

I was late though, so I didn’t get to see Ruby at our lockers.

It was probably for the best. If she were to see my face, the dark circles that lived under my eyes, and my skin that had grown pale, she would be even more worried about me, and I didn’t need that right now.

Instead, I threw her a text, once I got to my first class, telling her that I was here and not to worry.

As much as I tried, I couldn’t seem to get Joseph out of my mind. My conversation with Ruby last night had shed a little bit of light on the situation. I very well could have misheard that entire situation.

It could just be a friend outing and not at all a date. Maybe I overreacted.

The only way I was going to know for sure was if I asked him myself. I was dreading having any kind of interaction with him. I managed to avoid him, even in his own classroom, for days. But I wasn’t going to be able to keep avoiding him.

If I wanted to get past this, if I wanted to actually pass his class, I needed to learn to talk to him.

I waited until I had a free period, just before our lunch hour. I had about 20 minutes before lunch and then afterward I had a study hour. But now was the perfect time to speak with him.

I swallowed the lump that sat in my throat as I climbed the long stairs to the faculty offices. He usually holds office hours around now, so I knew he’d be there. I just hoped that he’d be alone.

I paused when I saw Emily’s office door opening. I quickly hid in the corner of the stairwell before she could see me.

I heard Emily’s voice right away, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

I peered around the cornea and saw that she was speaking with Joseph.

Their bodies were very close to each other. His back was facing me, but I saw Emily’s bright face and her pink cheeks as she smiled up at him.

He was saying something to her that I couldn’t hear, but it made her chuckle like a schoolgirl. That knot formed in my stomach again and tightened, making me feel sick.

Then she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled herself close to him, and intimately hugged him.