Sneaky

When I woke up Monday morning, I was exhausted. I could barely open my eyes, let alone get out of bed. But, like a trooper, I pulled myself out of bed and got ready for school. I attempted to find all of my books and shoved that into my backpack. Hoping that I didn't leave any assignments in my room, I made my way to school.

After a minute or two of walking, I was getting this weird feeling like I'm being watched. I turned around and didn't see anyone. I tried to shrug it off and kept walking. As I kept walking, I had this undeniable sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach that someone was following me. I turned around again and this time, Taylor was following me in his car.

When he noticed that I had seen him, he pulled over to the side of the road and rolled his window down.

"Hey, I'll give you a ride to school," he told me. "Get in the car."

"No, thank you," I told him. "I'm going to walk."

"Please, just get in the car, Court," he told me.

"No, Taylor!" I almost yelled. "I want to walk!"

He left me alone after that. I continued walking to school with Taylor's car trailing me the entire time. I must admit that it looked really odd. He ended up catching up to me after, what I assume is, parking his car.

"Did you get my messages?" he asked me, softly.

"Yes, all 17 of them," I told him. "This isn't the place or time to talk about this. I have to put things in my locker and I have a test today. I don't want you to stress me out before my test."

That was an outright lie. I didn't have a test today, but I really didn't want to talk to him right now. Not at school, not in front of everyone. I didn't want to burst out in tears and have half the school talking about me.

"Ok, Court," he said, sadly. "I'll talk to you later."

I dumped all of my books into my locker and I went to my 1st period. I sat down at an empty desk and took out my materials. Logan came in and sat down next to me, which I found weird. We hadn't spoken since he informed me that Haylie was pregnant.

"Hey, what's up?" I asked him.

"Nothing much, how about you?" he asked me.

"Am I a horrible person?" I asked him, bluntly. I tried to be as quiet as I could. "Do I have some sort of characteristic where it makes it ok to cheat on me or cheat with me? Why am I surrounded by a bunch of people who cheat?"

Logan looked surprised that I was unloading all of this on him. It took a minute for him to wipe that look off of his face and reply to me.

"You're not a horrible person," he told me, after taking a deep breath. "You're a really beautiful, smart, sweet girl. I'm not sure if you have a characteristic that makes you prone to being cheated on and cheated with because you really don't deserve to be cheated on or be the "other woman". I didn't mean to cheat on you, really. I'm just a coward and I didn't have the courage to break up with you."

I was silent, I wasn't sure what to say to that.

"I'm really sorry that I wasn't upfront with you during our relationship," he said. He sounded really apologetic.

"I appreciate the apology, but it's in the past," I told him. "So, how are things with you and Haylie?"

"Oh, we broke up over the break," he told me. "She lied to me about being pregnant. I think she just wanted me to marry her."

"Why would she want to marry you?" I asked him. I quickly realized how bad that sounded, coming out of my mouth. "I mean, is there something for her to gain?"

"Well, my grandmother passed away," he told me. "She left me some money. I won't have access to it until I'm 18, but it's a large sum of money. Haylie had gone with me when my grandmother's will was read and she told me she was pregnant a couple of days afterwards."

"How did you find out she wasn't pregnant?" I asked him, curiously.

"She refused to see a doctor and I dragged her to one, kicking and screaming," he told me. "He told me that there was no sign of a baby. I didn't remember seeing her exhibit morning sickness once during the whole "pregnancy", which I thought was strange. She wasn't exhibiting any other signs of pregnancy either. I can only assume that she was after my money when I gain access to it when I'm 18. I confronted her and well.. She didn't handle the break up very well."

I didn't know what to say to Logan. All I could think about was how sick and twisted this whole thing was.