The End Is Only the Beginning

22. The Right Direction

"Sure."

               Thinking that Kasim had dropped the subject of Friday night was just me being hopeful.

"So, I didn't realise that you and Aaron were friends," he announced as he ran his fingers over the spines of books. "I mean, I'm sure that's something you would have mention considering what happened between him and Lindy."

"I wouldn't say we're friends... not really," I answered, unsure of whether I was telling the truth or not.

Kasim stopped running his hands over the books, dropping his arm back down to his side as he turned to face me. "So what, you two hooked up on Friday?"

I choked on nothing, "no Kas, what the hell? We didn't hook up."

"How come you left with him then?"

"Is this really any of your business?" I snapped, regretting it as soon as the words flew out of my mouth. Kas stared at me for a few more seconds before looking back to the shelved books; we scanned them together in silence. "I'm sorry, Kas."

His hand stilled on the books before continuing once more. "It's fine," Kas replied, his voice quieter than it had been before. "Look, I don't want to pressure you into telling me anything you don't want to, but I need you to know that I won't judge you if you hooked up with Aaron. Lindy doesn't even have to know. Caleb, I'm your friend and I don't want you to feel like you've got to deal with this alone." As Kasim spoke, his voice was much gentler than I had ever heard it.

"Thank you, Kasim."

He nodded with a small smile. "Anytime."

The two of us fell into a comfortable silence, both of us taking our time to look through the books. I wasn't actually looking for anything in particular, but it felt good to just be here.

"Nothing happened between me and Aaron."

"Ok."

I stopped browsing, and Kasim followed. "I mean it. I met Aaron in Florida and we were friends," or something like that. "The other night something came up, something that he'd mentioned to me in Florida, and I needed to help; I couldn't just leave him."

"But you told Lindy that you didn't know Aaron?"

"We weren't on the greatest of terms by the end of the summer," I admitted; and those terms only worsened when school started back.

Kasim pulled a book off of the shelf. "So you didn't hook up?"

"Kas, there was no sex."

"Good, because you saw how he treated Lindy – I wouldn't want the same thing to happen to you," he spoke, pulling a second book from the shelf to add to the other. "And now that that's out of the way, you can look for some books for Adam if you like – he's doing his essay on fundamentalism."

"Fine." I obediently began looking for books beside Kas when something struck me. I raised an eyebrow at Kasim. "Is anything happening between you and Adam?" I questioned in the same patronising voice that Kasim had used on me. It had a relatively lesser effect when the person on the receiving end just snorted with a grin on his lips.

Kasim shook his head with a snort, "Adam's my best friend."

"That's not answering my question, Kas."

"Fundamentalism, Caleb, find them," Kasim instructed, still shaking his head with a smirk on his lips – what was that supposed to mean?

-

With Noelle, I hadn't been the one avoiding her, she'd been avoiding me.

Since the start of the day I'd only had one real conversation with her, and even that was only about a question during English class. I mean, we'd bumped into one another in the corridor, but she'd instantly turned her head down, acting as though she hadn't seen me.