The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden

class.”
     
    She starts across the street, and I grab her sleeve. “Callie, I owe you an explanation.”
     
    Her muscles stiffen as she glances down at my hand on her arm and then up at me. “No, you don’t.  I promise. I didn’t think we were dating or anything.” She wiggles out of my grasp and hurries across the street.
     
    I start to call out to her that she’s wrong, that I owe her everything, but she starts to run, like she wants nothing more than to get away from me.
     
     
     

Chapter 11
     
     
     
    #3 Do Whatever the Hell You Want for Once Instead of What You Think You Should Do
     
     
     
    Callie
     
    I’m avoiding him. I told myself a thousand times that he didn’t do anything wrong, but I’m “unstable” as Seth so pleasantly told me during History class. He also told me that I cut my ties with Kayden because when he left, he took some of my “trust” with him.
     
    “Why do you keep making air quotes?” I ask, picking up my bag off the floor.
     
    Professor Jennerly glances back at us from the front of the classroom and then continues on with his lecture, pacing in front of the class with his hands behind his back.
     
    Seth leans over the desk and whispers, “Because I’m quoting what it said in my Psych book.”
     
    “Your Psych book talked about my problem?” I put my bag on my desk and unzip it.
     
    “Not specifically, but it was close.” He sticks the end of the pen in his mouth as he returns upright in his chair.
     
    I drop my books into my bag and by the time I’m finished packing, class is being let out. We wait until the room has almost cleared before we head down the stairs.
     
    Professor Jennerly, a tall man with salt and pepper hair and thick-framed glasses, waits for us by the door. “My classroom is not for outside chitchat,” he says. “If you two want to talk, then I suggest you stay out of my class.”
     
    “We’re sorry,” Seth says and then rolls his eyes at me. “It’ll never happen again.”
     
    We walk down the packed hallway. Outside the windows, the metallic football stadium stretches in the distance and the metal gleams in the sunshine.
     
    “Are you thinking about him?” Seth asks.
     
    I tear my gaze away from the window and scoot over for a group of guys taking up half the hall. “Thinking about whom?”
     
    He angles his head to the side with a pucker at his brow. “Callie, you need to just forget about him or talk to him. You can’t keep avoiding him, yet wanting him.”
     
    “I don’t want him,” I lie and when he frowns at me, I sigh. “Alright, fine. Yes, I think about him. A lot. But I’ll get over him. God knows I barely know him.”
     
    “Yet you two have shared a lot,” he says and presses his hand flat on the door to push it open. “You saved him. He was the first guy you ever trusted. He gave you your first real kiss.”
     
    “I trusted you first.” I rummage through my purse for my gum as the breeze whisks through my hair.
     
    “That’s not the same.” He releases the door and it clicks shut. “I’m a friend. Kayden is more to you than that.”
     
    “I don’t know if that’s true.” I take out the gum and wiggle a piece out of the pack. “I don’t know what I feel for him or if it is good or bad. In fact, sometimes I just feel like a scared little girl who doesn’t know what to do with anything.”
     
    He looks at me with pity as we amble underneath a canopy of bare branches with the sunlight shimmering through them. “Well, maybe you should just do whatever the hell you want, instead of what you think you should do.”
     
    I stab a finger at him with accusation in my eyes. “You just quoted that from the list.”
     
    He laughs wickedly, throwing his head back and his blond hair falls out of his eyes. “That’s because it’s the quote of the day. Didn’t you get the memo?”
     
    I shake my head, laughing at him. “Darn it. I forgot to check my messages today. I must have missed it.”
     
    He swings his arm around my shoulder. “The question is: what do you want to do? And I mean really, really want?”
     
    I stop in front of the bench, considering what he asked, and staring out at the large stadium in the distance. “I want to have fun.”
     
     
     
     
     
    Kayden
     
    “I’m not really in the partying mood.” I spray some cologne onto my shirt and click the cap back on. “I’d rather just stay in and catch up on sleep. I feel like shit.”
     
    “That’s because