"Claire!" Chris shouted. "Wait for me!"
Why, you don't even like me, she thought angrily to herself, not slowing down her pace.
Chris jogged to catch up to her. "Where the fuck are they?" he demanded.
"Hiding behind those trees like the fucking scared little cunts they are," she muttered.
"What's your problem?" he asked. "Why are you being even more of a bitch than usual?"
"You're an asshole!" she blurted.
"What?" he demanded. "Why am I an asshole?"
"You've just been totally set against being my friend this entire time, and I'm so sick of having to come up with mean things to say to you that I don't mean!"
The look on his face suddenly changed, and she saw what he looked like when he was looking at someone he cared about like Gordie or Cale. "I was never against being your friend, Claire," he said. "You've been pushing me away, and then you were so mean to Cale that one time about her liking Teddy--"
"Yeah, I know I was mean to her, okay?" she shrilled. "And I'm sorry about it now."
"Then why didn't you ever tell her that?" he asked.
"Because I'm not good at apologizing."
Glancing at her and seeing the angry, tearful look on her face and the determined way she fought her way through the knee high grass, Chris suddenly felt so mad at himself. Why had he let himself treat someone the way he'd treated her? He didn't dislike Claire. But he'd fought with her non-stop and he'd never once apologized to her the way he would've said sorry to anyone else he'd fought with. He had always prided himself with how he wasn't like everyone else. He was good at caring about people, yet he'd almost reduced this girl to tears. He knew that she hadn't been very nice either sometimes, but still. Chris had always been a peacemaker.
"Listen, Claire," he said quietly. "I never meant anything that I said to you either."
"Yeah you did," she said. "You don't like me, but I don't care because I know that no one really does."
"That's not true," he told her. "None of what you said is true. I shouldn't have said that I didn't like you because I do. And you do care; otherwise you wouldn't have looked so hurt. And that crap about no one liking you is bullshit."
"If you say so," she murmured.
"I really have been an asshole," he said. "I'm not like this usually. But I guess I'm scared, you know, and I've got stuff on my mind, and you were just acting like you were looking for a fight, so I took my anger out on you."
She peered up at him. "Chris Chambers, scared? Wow. What about?"
Chris shrugged. "That Cale will never give a shit about me ever. And about going home."
"Firstly, Cale does give a shit," she said. "When she was scared, she didn't look for Teddy; she wanted you. So what if she doesn't like you back in the way you like her? You're safe to her and you give her reassurance. You're her friend. And secondly, I know about what you go home to, Chris. I know that that's why you just kept on driving. I think it's really fucked up that a dad can hurt his son like yours does, but you can't run away. You're a strong guy, everyone knows that you are, even people who act like you're less than them. You never came across to me as the kind who runs away, you seem more like the kind who just, um…survives."
Chris stared at her. "Why did you just say that?" he asked slowly.
She felt herself going red. "It needed to be said, I guess," she said, trying to sound like she said stuff like that all the time and like she didn't think he was something out of the ordinary. "I mean, it's about time someone told you what you are."
"I know what I am," he said firmly.
"You're running away from yourself. If you knew who you were, you wouldn't run away."
"Well," he said, laughing. "I certainly take back everything impolite I said to you earlier."
"Likewise." They were approaching the truck. "Look, it's Cale! I can see the back of her head."
"Oh boy," Chris laughed.
"Go get em, Tiger."
