Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 71814 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71814 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Zoe looked between us, not answering for a few moments. At first, I thought she would deny my request and leave the room, but she scooted over to one side of the sofa and nodded.
I took a seat next to her as Gabe and I placed the rest of the coffee cups on the coffee table in front of us. My appetite for my drink completely dissolved, my mouth threatening to become dry as I felt her gaze on me.
Gabe grabbed one of the coffee cups and handed it to her with a hopeful smile on his face.
“Peace offering,” he said.
The corner of Zoe’s lips turned up a little as she accepted the coffee. Once Gabe sat down on the other side of me, her face became more serious as she turned to face us better. She was definitely as tense as we were, the air growing heavy between us.
Her silence meant that she was waiting for us to go first. I did my best to piece my thoughts together, but they were a jumble. A mess of guilt and uncertainty. Seeing her now, how beautiful she looked, made my mind malfunction for a second.
“I know we gave you a hard time back in high school. Looking back, we regret everything we did to make you upset,” I told her. “You were just trying to better the school and express your ideas, and we had to be assholes and make everything a competition.”
“Really, we just wanted to talk to you, but you know how teenagers are. We couldn’t pluck up the courage to just sit down and talk to you, so we acted like fools,” Gabe added from beside me. “So, we told people to ignore you to get a reaction out of you.”
Zoe’s face didn’t shift a centimeter as she gazed at us, listening to our apologies in unsettling silence. She was probably deep in thought, but I wished I could tell what she was thinking right now. Could she hear our sympathy, or did she think that we were trying to win her over without care?
“We’re really sorry. If we could go back, we’d change everything that we did,” I said, searching her eyes for even a glimmer of forgiveness, but she was hardened and tough. She wasn’t going to give anything away. At least not yet.
Zoe looked away from us, her mouth slightly turning down in a faint frown.
“I thought you guys did what you did because… you didn’t like me,” Zoe stated, her voice wavering midway through her sentence.
Gabe and I quickly shook our heads, not wanting her to think that in the slightest. We admired her. I still admired her as she sat there firm and steady. She stood by her beliefs, even if she was under pressure from opposing forces. Which happened to be us in high school.
“We liked you a good bit. It was just hard to express that, and I think we let outside influence get to us,” I explained.
“The other popular guys in your group,” Zoe replied, her face still unwavering. “They made up rumors about me. Or was that you guys too?”
Rumors. I remembered hearing a few about Zoe that were whispered up and down the school’s hallways. Like she was actually bald and was wearing a wig. She slept with guys that she actually didn’t. Everything was a stupid lie to demean her and make people not take her seriously. It was disgusting.
“That wasn’t us, but we tried to get them to stop. It was out of line. Everything was,” Gabe said, sounding just as disgusted as I was by that behavior.
At the end of the day, we were the ones who initiated the competition, so I still felt like those rumors were indirectly our fault. We sparked something that didn’t need to be started in the first place, and we couldn’t maintain control. Everything spiraled.
Zoe slowly nodded, but her face still didn’t change. Her lips stayed in a firm line, and her eyes were slightly narrowed. She was still trying to figure out if we were sincere or not.
“I didn’t expect an apology from you two,” she admitted.
Of course, she didn’t. How could she expect an apology by the two unapologetic punks who made her high school experience worse than it should’ve been? Without us getting in the way, she could’ve probably gotten a lot done and implemented some of her ideas.
“We’ve felt guilty for a while,” Gabe told her. “But we thought we wouldn’t ever see you again since you left.”
“But we’re glad you came back so that we could apologize. Hopefully, we can help you with this case too,” I added as I shared a hopeful look with Gabe. I hoped that this was going well, but it was so damn hard to read her.
“What do you guys do?” Zoe asked as she looked between us.