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“You guys head home. I’m going to wait a while, check to see if she goes out again or if she lives here. If this is where she’s staying, we can come back tomorrow to speak to her when there’s more time.”
It sounds like a pretty good plan to me, and the others agree, so we say our goodbyes to Jax and head off back towards campus, Thorn bitching about the walk every step of the way. Eventually Rebel crumbles and gives in to his whining, calling us an Uber to take us to where the car is parked.
On the drive back to the hotel, I can’t help but wonder what tomorrow will have in store. And once again, my stomach is in knots and I’m back to worrying.
Charlotte’s Diary
4 weeks post-blaze
Okay, so I will - begrudgingly - admit, here and only here, that Baxter is not so bad. He’s certainly fine for a good time, though I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him with anything of real importance. But he has been good to me the last couple of weeks.
To begin with he strolled in as cocky and as lecherous as he was before, but that soon changed. Once I’d spurned his advances for the fourth or fifth time - threatening to stab his other hand or something further south this time - he backed off and seemed to understand that he was in the ‘friend zone’. Not that we were friends, or anything. I just needed to make it clear to him that it was never gonna happen. Ever.
He’s been perseverant, for sure though. He quickly changed tack and decided he’d spend his summer trying to annoy me instead of bed me.
Only, he wasn’t that annoying...and he kept suggesting we do things that sounded really cool.
Once I stopped resisting and trying to escape from him, giving in and just going with the flow, I realised that he’s a really good distraction.
Every morning, without fail, he’s arrived at my door with breakfast and a picnic for later. He invited himself in and ate with me on the terrace overlooking the ocean, then dragged me out for the day on various adventures. Yesterday’s snorkelling and hand-feeding sea turtles may have been my favourite yet.
I would never admit it, but I look forward to him showing up each morning. I wonder what he’ll have planned for us next. And although we don’t talk about the deep stuff, there’s the beginning of a tentative bond forming. He’s not a friend...more a potential ally? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I was wrong. About so many things…but most of all, I was wrong about wanting to be left alone.
From the moment Baxter leaves me, until the moment he arrives the next morning, I’m crippled by loneliness, confusion, doubts…the list - like the guilt - is never ending.
