Affective Needs by Rebecca Taylor

Author:Rebecca Taylor [Taylor, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ophelia House
Published: 2016-07-10T22:00:00+00:00

The day after my confession to him, Porter didn’t show up at school. My plan had been, against Eli’s better judgment, to pretend like Porter hadn’t advised me to stay away. I wasn’t exactly sure how that was going to work out; it wasn’t much of a plan, and it had taken me all morning to talk myself into the courage I needed to simply walk up to Porter and start a conversation—but I didn’t get the chance anyway.

I brooded, all through calculus, English Lit, and lunch, imagining Porter milling around the public library and then standing outside his sister’s school waiting to pick her up. I thought about leaving myself, going to the library and sitting down next to him, but I had a test in English Lit I couldn’t miss. Also, it was one thing to approach Porter at school, but maybe it would be kind of weird to hunt him down outside.

Eli’s accusation that I was turning into a crazy stalker chick didn’t exactly fall on deaf ears. I didn’t feel confident enough in my assessment of Porter’s feelings to know for sure that I was right.

What if he really did want me to stay away from him? Getting the brush-off at school was nowhere near as bad as tracking someone down in their private world and them feeling like maybe they needed to get a restraining order.

“What is wrong with you today?” Eli asked me at lunch.

“What? Nothing’s wrong.”

He nodded. “Sure, okay. Porter’s not at school again today.”

My brow wrinkled in irritation. “What? I don’t care about that!”

Eli rolled his eyes. “You’re obsessing,” he said, and took a bite of the horsemeat-looking burger that was the best-case scenario on the school lunch menu today.

“I am not,” I hissed, but we both knew he was right.

That night I sat at my desk, forcing myself to focus on my senior honors thesis, and not focus on wondering if Porter Creed might or might not be at school the next day. I would get halfway through a particularly dry paragraph only to find that my brain had slipped into imagining Porter’s many possible reactions to what I had planned as a conversation starter.

“Uggghhhh!” I slammed my laptop shut and went downstairs to make fun of the Wheel of Fortune contestants waiting to be mocked on our DVR.

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