Page 48 of The Music of Us
Exclusive! Reality Star Livie Morris Speaks Up About Her Breakup with the Bad Boy: “Jake walked out when I needed him most!”
My lips twisted down.
Jake was my best friend. Livie inspired “Lovely, Aren’t Ya.” He abandoned us both.
I never imagined the old Jake turning into this. Why were the two versions of him so different?
“Hey.”
Jake’s voice came out of nowhere.
Startled, my pulse leapt into my throat like I was going upa roller coaster and about to be spun upside down in a loop. I swiped the tab away and turned my phone off.
Then flipped it over against the leg of my embroidered jeans for good measure.
I looked up at Jake. “Hey.”
He stared back at me. “Hey.”
“You said that already.”
“Yeah.”
A long, drawn-out beat passed. I waited for him to speak, but instead he stayed silent.
I thought about pulling my phone back out to searchHow to reboot stalled conversation.
I took another look at the boy in front of me.Fast.
Did Jake not know what to say? He was the one who sought me out; surely he wanted something.
It felt like when Rumple or one of the other café cats would come sit in front of me and juststare, while I tried to decipher what they were trying to tell me.
Turns out, humans did the silent staring thing too. And it felt even more awkward.
I cocked my head to the side, the summer scarf I’d tied my hair back with this morning brushing across my shoulders. “Did you want something?”
“I— No,” Jake said, shaking his head. His brows furrowed for just a minute, like he was trying to figure out how to phrase something correctly, then just gave up and blurted out, “Your mom was bragging about your scholarship. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I tensed. Mom stopped by for five minutes today before she went to PT. She must’ve said something to Jake then.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said tersely.
He gave me an unimpressed look. “Come on. You know it is.”
“It’s not.”
I pushed off the floor and started walking out of the cat room and toward the faulty register.
“Seriously?” Jake questioned, hot on my heels. Why was he following me? “I mean, the scholarship was why you were always studying so hard, right? So you could afford to go to college? Your plan was to get a bachelor’s in biology, since that was a lot of veterinarians’ preferred study, then go to vet school. You researched all about how to do it. Even back in middle school—”
“Stop.” The reminder of just how much I’d pushed myself made something clench inside my chest. I didn’t want to think about it. “It’s not that great.”
“You’re way too smart to be this stupid.”
“Just leave it,” I snapped, whirling around. “I’m not even going anymore!”
Jake stopped dead in his tracks. “You’re not?”
