Free Walking Disaster by Jamie McGuire Page A

a
grand story, the only pauses he took were to take drags of his cigarette.
    When I approached, Finch winked at Abby. I took that as a good sign. “Hey, Travis,” he sang.
    “Finch.” I nodded, quickly turning my attention to Abby. “I’m headed home, Pidge. You need a ride?”
    “I was just going in,” she said, grinning up at me.
    My stomach sank, and I spoke before thinking. “You’re not staying with me tonight?”
    “No, I am. I just had to grab a few things that I forgot.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, my razor for one. What do you care?”
    Damn, I liked her. “It’s about time you shaved your legs. They’ve been tearing the hell outta mine.”
    Finch’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
    Abby frowned. “That’s how rumors get started!” She looked to Finch. “I’m sleeping in his bed
. . . just
sleeping.”
    “Right,” Finch said with a smug smile.
    Before I knew what happened, she was inside, tromping up the stairs to her room. I took two steps at a time to catch up with her.
    “Oh, don’t be mad. I was just kidding.”
    “Everyone already assumes we’re having sex. You’re making it worse.”
    Apparently her having sex with me was a bad thing. If I had questions of whether she was into me like that at all, she’d just given the answer: not just no, but hell no. “Who cares
what they think?”
    “I do, Travis! I do!” She pushed open the door to her dorm room, and then zoomed from one side of the room to the other, opening and shutting drawers, and shoving things into a bag.
I was suddenly drowning in an intense feeling of loss, the kind where you either have to laugh or cry. A chuckle escaped from my throat.
    Abby’s gray eyes darkened and targeted me. “It’s not funny. Do you want the whole school to think I’m one of your sluts?”
    My
sluts? They weren’t mine. Hence them being sluts.
    I took the bag from her hands. This wasn’t going well. To her, being associated with me, not to mention being in a relationship with me, meant sinking her reputation. Why did she still
want to be my friend if that was how she felt?
    “No one thinks that. And if they do, they better hope I don’t hear about it.”
    I held open the door, and she stomped through. Just as I let go and began to follow her, she stopped, forcing me to balance on the tips of my toes to keep from running into her. The door closed
behind me, shoving me forward. “Whoa!” I said, bumping into her.
    She turned. “Oh my God!” At first I thought our collision had hurt her. The shocked look on her face had me worried for a second, but then she continued, “People probably think
we’re together and you’re shamelessly continuing your . . .
lifestyle
. I must look pathetic!” She paused, lost in the horror of her realization, and then shook her head.
“I don’t think I should stay with you anymore. We should just stay away from each other in general for a while.”
    She took her bag from my hands, and I grabbed it back. “No one thinks we’re together, Pidge. You don’t have to quit talking to me to prove a point.” I felt a little
desperate, which was nothing less than unsettling.
    She pulled on her bag. Determined, I yanked it back. After a few tugs, she growled in frustration.
    “Have you ever had a girl—that’s a friend—stay with you? Have you ever given girls rides to and from school? Have you eaten lunch with them every day? No one knows what
to think about us, even when we tell them!”
    I walked to the parking lot with her bag, my mind racing. “I’ll fix this, okay? I don’t want anyone thinking less of you because of me.”
    Abby was always a mystery, but the grieved look in her eyes took me by surprise. It was disturbing to the point where I wanted to make anything that didn’t make her smile go away. She was
fidgeting, and clearly upset. I hated it so much that it made me regret every questionable thing I’d ever done because it was just one more thing that got in the