Steering the Stars by Autumn Doughton, Erica Cope Read Free Book Online Page B

propped her foot on one of the benches and started to tie her shoes. “And what’s his story?”
           I’d been trying not to think about Owen because whenever I did, the muscles in my chest pulled tight, stretching until I could feel a kind of pressure in my lungs. It wasn’t necessarily that I got sad or depressed when I thought about him. It was just that everything felt screwy and I couldn’t deal with it.
           It had been a week since I’d been in London and in all that time he hadn’t emailed me or called me back. The way we left things had been so raw. So unfinished.
           I understood his position. He’d put everything on the line and I’d frozen up. He was hurt. He was upset. He needed a break from me. From us . That all made sense and maybe deep down, a small part of me was relieved. Maybe I was secretly glad that he was the one to say it, not me.
           But I didn’t really know where that left us.
          Were we or weren’t we a couple?
           Every morning I checked my Facebook account to see if he’d changed our relationship status, but it was the same. There in the sidebar of my profile, it still stated in a relationship with Owen Kilgore . Did that mean anything or was it like makeup? Only there to mask the blemishes.
           “Let me guess—he’s fit and a wanker?”
           I realized that I’d been staring off into space for way too long. “No! He’s not. Well, I mean, he is fit or hot or whatever you call it. In his own way,” I said, pulling my fingers through my hair and releasing a shallow breath. “His name is Owen and we were friends when we were younger and then we became more than friends.”
           Tillie’s soft brown eyes closed with appreciation. “That sounds romantic. I’m over the moon for childhood love stories.”
           “I guess so,” I said carefully. “We were best friends first… me, him, and Caroline—I think I told you about her earlier.”
           “The redhead?”
           I smiled despite myself. “Yeah. So, anyway, we were all inseparable and we even called ourselves The Three Musketeers, but a few summers ago things changed. Owen and I started dating.”
           “A few years is a long time. He doesn’t miss you?”
           I swallowed uneasily. A few years is a long time. That was the echo of what he’d told me the day I’d left. If you can’t say it now, you’ll never be able to.
           “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I guess he misses me, but he knows how much I want to be a writer and how important this program is to me.”
           “But?”
           I paused, hunting for the right words. “The truth is that Owen doesn’t really like change. He’s more into predictability and comfort.”
           She dropped her foot to the ground and gathered her hair in a tight ponytail. “That’s rubbish. Change is good for you.”
           “That’s what they say, isn’t it?” I asked, rolling the waistband of my skirt over so it would stay in place. Then I turned to face my reflection in a foggy mirror.
           Oh. My. God.
           For real, the squash uniform was worse than my school uniform.
           I looked up and down. Then back up. “I am a stranger in a strange land.”
           “ What was that?”
           “ Oh, nothing,” I said, bending over to fold my school clothes and arrange them on the bench next to my bag. “I was just thinking that in this uniform, I look a lot like an ice cream cone.”
           She laughed and shook her head. “You’re hilarious. I’m glad that you’re here.”
           I smiled and put on my best southern drawl. “Oh, ain’t no thang.”
           My first instincts this morning had been right; Tillie Hoover was turning out to be my best chance at having a real friend at Warriner. She seemed genuinely thrilled to have me