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My heart clenches. “My present?” I ask, eyebrows pinching in wonder.
He bounces me up again and I try to ignore the friction that’s happening as the apex of my thighs meet the muscles beneath his jersey. “Yeah, your present. It’s almost Christmas baby,” he says, and then I realise, ofcourseTate makes a big deal about Christmas. My eyes fall to the chain just sticking up around his collar and I think of the pendant that is currently being nestled between his pecs. “You’ll meet me?” he urges, bringing my mind back from the gutter.
I nod adamantly and, with another grin, he clasps the back of my neck so that he can bring my lips back down to his, slipping his tongue inside of my mouth and making a flurry of sparks jolt down my belly. He groans quietly as he slides himself over and around me, drinking me up as his hands start squeezing me gently.
“Coleson! Over here,now!”
I pull back, startled, embarrassed, and a thousand brain cells lighter, and I watch as his coach starts marching our way. Tate fluidly sets me down and he runs the backs of his fingers over my flushed cheek.
I take a step backwards, not wanting to get him in more trouble, but he pulls me into him again so that he can kiss me a couple hundred more times.
I laugh and push at his chest, hastily back-stepping before his coach can give us both a last-day-of-term detention. Tate does the same, that knowing smile playing on his lips as he watches me pull the door open to head back inside.
He watches me through the windows until I turn the corner and disappear from sight completely.
*
After the final bell rings I quickly run-walk to my locker, ready to shrug on my coat, stuff a term’s worth of paperwork into my bag, and then go to meet Tate at the entrance. But as soon as I’vealmost emptied it I see one last thing laying on the metal base, as if it was just slipped in through the crack under the door.
I cock my head at it and slowly slide it to the front, aware that it could be something that fell out of my folders but, for some reason, I don’t feel like it is.
I pick it up and feel a shock run down my spine.
It’s another note.
This time it hasn’t been typed in one of the computer labs – instead it’s handwritten, a font more slanted and elaborately cursive than I was expecting, and it looks as though it was torn from a lined homework book. I immediately glance to the bottom of the page and see the name that I was hoping for. I relax a little and smile as I read the note.
Meet me at the changing rooms after final bell
I’ve got something for you baby ;)
Tate
I blink at the note and read over it a few times, a confusing anxious feeling settling into my gut. I turn the paper over to see if there’s anything written on the other side, and then look back at the words again.
The main thing that makes me pause is the fact that he now wants to meet me at the changing rooms. I mean, for all I know, maybe that’s what he actuallymeant when he said that he wanted us to meet at the entryway – maybe he wanted to meet at the entrance to the locker room. And he did say that he had something for me, and hedoescall me baby sometimes.
But for some reason, it just feels… off.
I fold the note into a few squares and then slowly close my locker, turning the key in a slightly numb haze. Why do I feel a bit uncomfortable? Maybe it’s the winking face. Tate and I have never texted before, so maybe he’s a winking face type of person,but it doesn’t match the picture of him that I’ve been building in my head. It doesn’t seem very… him.
I head down the stairs with the rest of the mass exodus, naturally overanalysing my own paranoia. Honestly, what is my problem? So what if he used a winking face? So what if his handwriting isn’t as… buff as I expected it to be? For a reason unbeknown to me, a chill settles in my gut as I reach the bottom of the science block, and I pause.
If I continue going to the left, I’ll reach the foyer and the main entrance in less than twenty seconds, give or take. If I go up and to the right, I’ll be heading to the Gym and I’ll be able to go to the changing rooms, which seems to be where Tate wants to see me now.
I stand at the wall of the corridor, glancing back and forth between the two directions.
I pull the note back out of my bag and read it one more time.
I’m being stupid. It definitely says the changing rooms, so obviously that’s where I need to be.
I shove the note back into my bag and take the exit to the right, not knowing how wrong I was about to be.
Chapter 21
Present
When Mitch and my mom leave, I don’t know what the protocol is going to be with Tate so I choose to go about my day as usual. It involves preparing food, eating food, and then reading until my next meal. After a while I realise that I’m behaving like a self-imposed inmate so I decide to do something that I haven’t had the confidence to do on my own in a long time. I put my book down, slunk out of my quilt fortress, and I pull open a drawer. Once I have the necessary items, I change out of my in-the-house clothes and slip into the more fitted, purposeful pieces. I go downstairs, drink half a glass of water, and then head outside, locking the door and slipping the key into the pocket on the side of my leggings.
