Slowly We Trust (Fall and Rise #3)(19)
Author: Chelsea M. Cameron

“How-how are you?” she said, moving her hand to brush her hair over her shoulder, but forgetting it was up.

Sweaty, currently. Probably didn’t smell all that great. And missing her.

“I’m good. How are you?”

We moved out of the line so we could talk and I heard Simon ordering me a sandwich.

“Good . . . good.” She nodded and clasped her arms in front of her.

Shit, this was awkward.

“I thought you wanted me to leave you alone?” I hoped I didn’t sound like an ass**le.

“I know. I do. But we can’t help it if we run into each other from time to time. We can at least be . . . cordial, right? Exchange small talk. Very small talk. Tiny talk. Micro talk.”

“I don’t want to talk about the weather with you, Aud.” That wasn’t necessarily true. I didn’t care what I talked with Audrey about, as long as we were talking.

“I know. I’m sorry. I should have left when I saw you, but . . .”

I took a step closer. “But, what?”

“But . . . nothing. I’m sorry. I need to go.” She turned and rushed away.

“What the hell are you doing?” Simon hissed. “Go after her!”

“Why? She doesn’t want me to.”

Simon shook his head as if I was being extremely stupid.

“She wants you. GO AFTER HER.” He stepped behind me and shoved, so I had no choice but to move forward. I’d seen Audrey disappear down the hall, probably into the locker room. Once I was moving, it was much easier to keep moving in the direction Audrey had gone.

I had one moment of hesitation outside the door to the women’s locker room. It was probably a really bad idea to barge in.

I barged in anyway.

“What the hell?” A woman washing her hands at the sink said. Huh. The women’s room was a lot nicer than the men’s room. What was up with that?

I hurried as fast as I could to look for Audrey without making too many other women upset. I definitely caught a few sans clothes, but I tried to cover my eyes and only stare directly ahead.

I found her leaning against a locker.

“Aud.” Her ponytail whipped as she turned around at the sound of my voice.

“Will! What are you doing in here?”

“I came to find you.” She gaped at me and then grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the door again.

“It’s a good thing I wasn’t just getting into the shower,” she said as soon as we were out in the hallway. “Or maybe you were hoping to catch me?” Her voice became a little flirty, which I wasn’t expecting. But then, this was Audrey. I never knew where her head was.

“If I said no, would you believe me?” I said, smiling a little bit.

“Maybe.”

We breathed in unison for a moment. It was a rush seeing her again; I couldn’t lie about that.

“I’m sorry,” we both said at the same time, which then made us both chuckle.

“We seem to be saying that a lot to each other, don’t we?” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re sorry for, except telling me you loved me right before I said ‘thank you’ and then told you I just wanted to be friends.” Just hearing her talk about it brought it all back.

“Yeah, I kind of try to forget about that. It wasn’t my finest hour.”

She looked down.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. It was pretty romantic, doing it on New Year’s. Any other girl would have been ecstatic.”

“But I didn’t say it to any other girl. I said it to you.” She looked up and for a moment I thought she was going to cry. Instead she bit her lip and looked away from me again.

“Look, I don’t know how to do this, to see you and have everything be okay. Starting over didn’t work and just being friends didn’t work and staying apart didn’t work, at least for me,” she said.

I couldn’t lie, I’d been dying to know how she’d been doing since I’d seen her last.

“It hasn’t been great for me either.”

She took a deep breath.

“I missed you. And being with everyone else.”

“I missed you.” She held my gaze for a few seconds.

“So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, how about we just . . . be us? No definitions. Just doing what we were doing? What do you think?”

I thought it was probably as good an offer as I was going to get. And if it meant I could see her, then I was all for it.

“I’m in.” She finally smiled, and my chest expanded and I felt like something heavy I’d been holding onto for the last week had vanished.

“Great. So, um, I’ll see you for dinner tonight?”

“Yeah, I’m going over to Lottie and Zan’s so she can cut my hair. It’s gotten a little out of hand.” I pushed it out of my eyes.

“Don’t cut it too much. I mean,” she said, blushing a little. “You can cut it if you want. It’s your hair.”

“Are you saying that you like it long? Because I would also tell you that I love your hair long.” I couldn’t believe I’d used the L word, even if it was just about her hair.

“I know,” she said.

Someone cleared their throat behind me and I looked over my shoulder to find Simon holding up two sandwiches and wearing a sheepish look on his face.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said.

“No, it’s okay. Would you like to join us?” I said to Audrey.

“Sure. That would be great.” Simon put both his hands up to stop us from walking toward him.

“Hold up. I need to know what the situation is between you two. Because it changes more than Prince changes what he wants to be called.”

“We’re the people formerly known as Will and Audrey,” I said with a serious face. Audrey nodded.

Simon glared, but turned around and walked toward an empty table in the little café.

“Shall we?” I said gesturing toward the table.

“We shall.”

He looked so good when I saw him. There was something about a guy after he’d done something physical. One of those primal things. Of course, he looked glorious while sweaty whereas I just looked gross.

Oh well. I was just glad to see him.

After we decided that we were going to just be, we all sat down and had lunch. It was hard at first, but once we started catching up on what we had missed in our week of, whatever that was, it was like slipping into our former selves.

Reading between the lines, Will had had just about as terrible week as I had, and I caught him kicking Simon under the table when he tried to elaborate on Will’s mood.