Justin sat in his calculus class, his hand taking notes on auto-pilot while he thought over what had happened the night before. I should stay away from Alex. I should just lock myself in my room tonight. He sighed a little, knowing he wouldn't. I might as well go to her, though. It's Alex. If I don't go, she'll come to me.
And that was the heart of the thing: he wanted to believe that Alex might possibly be in love with him as well, and just not be willing to say it. She'd never been comfortable with real public displays of affection - she seemed to use them more as a way to indicate this guy is mine than for themselves. So if he went to her, he could keep telling himself that if he didn't, she'd come to him.
Because if she wouldn't, if she didn't love him too... Then I'm forcing her to do this. Then I'm hurting her. He closed his eyes for a moment, fingers tightening on his pencil until his knuckles were white. Justin took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, relaxing his hand as he did. I won't hurt her. I won't. We don't go any further than we already have. Not unless she tells me that she loves me like I love her.
He looked up at the board, copied equations down, letting them flow from eyes to hand on their own, his brain barely involved in the process. I can't let myself cross that line. I can't let her cross it - not just because I want her to.
At lunch, he sat with Zeke and the other alien language league members, chatting away. Harper was there as well, since she'd taken up with Zeke, and where Harper ate lunch, Alex did - but the presence of the group made it easier to act like nothing had happened. And, Justin found, he was feeling enough better that he joked and laughed along with the rest of them, as he hadn't in months.
A few times he caught Alex looking at him. One of those times she was smiling, but she wasn't sure if she was smiling at him, or at something Harper was saying. Either way, though, her smile was like a ray of sunlight on a cloudy day, and he caught her eye for a moment, smiled back.
She looked away, but the smile didn't drop. Justin's heart leapt in hope, but his brain came crashing right down on it. She's happy that you don't look like you're thinking about suicide. She doesn't love you like that. And why would she? What do you have to offer her? She doesn't like you. She's said it plenty of times before. She doesn't' want you to kill yourself, sure, but that's just because you're her brother. Family obligation. That's all you are to her - an obligation.
The thought was sickening in the most literal of fashions, and Justin felt as if his lunch was turning to lead in his stomach. "Excuse me," he found himself saying. "I just remembered something I need to look at in the library." Zeke started to get up as well, but Justin held out a hand. "Just stay here, man. I'll see you in Chem anyway."
His friend nodded to that and turned back to Harper. Justin avoided looking at Alex as he got up, took his tray to the trashcan, dumped off the remnants of his meal and pushed the tray into the stack. Part of him desperately wanted to look back, to look at Alex, but he set his shoulders and marched like Orpheus out of the cafeteria.
Alex, being Alex, didn't bother with excuses or explanations. She simply gave Harper an "I'll see you later," and headed after Justin, leaving her tray behind for someone else to worry about cleaning up. Harper gave her a look, but Alex was used to that, and ignored that as she headed out into the hallway and looked to see which way Justin had gone - she definitely wasn't trusting that he was going to the library just because he said he was.
She was relieved to find that he actually was heading in that direction. A tightness in her chest that she hadn't known was there eased, and she slowed a little, watching him as he walked.
He didn't move like himself. Justin didn't walk with his head down, looking at the floor about ten feet in front of him. He didn't slouch like that, or keep his hands in his pockets. He's walking like he's trying out for a role as an emo kid, she thought, the thought both amusing and stinging at the same time. When did he get this bad? And how did it take me so long to notice?
Justin turned at the library doors, pulled the left-hand door open, and went in. A fleeting thought for Justin's privacy passed through Alex's mind, but it didn't stand the ghost of a chance as her curiosity moved in like a commando sneaking up on a half-sleeping sentry. She didn't, however, go in through the main door where Justin had, instead circling to a side hallway and using the door marked STAFF ONLY to slip into the librarian's office, knowing Miss (Or was it Mrs? Alex never could remember) Merritt had still been in the lunchroom when she left.
The librarian's office had a one-way mirror for a window (all the better to spy on the potential book-thieves who called themselves 'students') and Alex moved to it and watched Justin from there.
He'd sat down at one of the several tables, and seemed to be writing something - but he didn't have any books open around him. So he was lying about needing to do research here. I knew it. She frowned, watching him, and wondered, But what's he up to?
Justin stayed there, writing, until the bell rang. He looked startled at that, looked down at what he'd written, frowned, then shook his head. Getting up, he crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it in the trash as he went out. Even as the door was swinging shut, Alex hustled out of the librarian's office, grabbed the paper he'd thrown away (and thank God for neat-freak librarians. If there'd been other papers in the trash, that would've been harder), and took it with her as she started to her own class.
