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This tiht, driving in the other direction down this road, toward the beach On three occasions at the beach before, we’d gone all the way Each ti of hoould be better He would suddenly beco lover He would et into a snarky argument afterward about whether I really deserved an A two points higher than his on our last English paper

I wasn’t fantasizing about that now With sudden clarity I saw our half hour together tonight We would fool around I would feel like a failure, not heady with love like girls were supposed to feel after they went so far with their committed boyfriends of three years

A wave of nausea broke overwheel "Damn it, Sawyer," I whispered It was hard to cast Aidan asout the senior class had chosen Sawyer as uy And especially after he’d whispered tohadn’t been sexy, yet he’d set ine what he would talk ot me alone

The car behind me honked

I drove on

As I pulled in to my driveway, I saw Aidan was there ahead ofspace I continued around to the extra pad near the front door, like a guest After I stopped, I checked

Wary, I climbed the steps to the wide front porch and opened the door The scent of fresh-baked peanut butter cookies wafted out--h theroom, into the kitchen

Aidan sat at the kitchen bar with a plate of the cookies and a glass of milk "Hello," he called with no enthusiasm

"Hi there," I said with an equal lack of emotion I rounded the bar to the kitchen side and stopped in front of hi?"

He nodded toward the door to my mother’s office "I’ve asked you a couple of times to check on yourBut you toldhoured I could catch her Soht, you have to do it yourself"

I heard the accusation in his voice He was angry withI didn’t understand what I hadn’t done right, though He was the one who’d gotten parlia

I didn’t pursue it I washere "The deadline for early admission to Columbia is a month and a half away," I pointed out