It's Not You It's Me Read Online Free

catch up in time to hold my exhibition. Not that I even wanted to any more. Because I’d been slowly realising that there was something wrong with it all. Something not quite right.
    I couldn’t relate to what I was doing, where I was going with my sculpture—couldn’t get involved. Up atthe apartment I’d hear Jas working away, completely absorbed in his songwriting, frustrating me with every note he played on the piano. I would have given anything, anything to be able to block out the world around me like Jas and my mother seemed to be able to do for hours at a time.
    Things had only got worse on the uni front as well. I’d received a conceded pass on my assignment, and was now trying to convince myself that the saying ‘third time lucky’ might just be true, because it certainly didn’t seem as if I was going to pass on this, my second, attempt. It was the worst of times. And then, as if all of the above wasn’t enough to be getting on with, I worked something out.
    I’d been sitting there in the boat shed, doing little or nothing as per usual—unless you could call kicking around the bits of scrap metal on the floor doing something—when it came to me. I could hear Jas playing and singing. A new piece I hadn’t heard before, or couldn’t remember. It was perfect, whatever it was, and I knew he must have written it himself. It suited his voice, which I noticed instantly, because a lot of things other people wrote didn’t. He had a strange voice, low and raspy. Very distinctive.
    Halfway through his song I became startled and coughed. I’d forgotten something. To breathe, in fact. And I needed to desperately. I felt something strange and brought one hand up to my chest. My heart was going thumpa-thumpa-thump. That’s when it came to me.
    I was completely, desperately, totally, devotedly, idiotically in love with Jasper Ash.
    I was in love with Jas.
    Why I hadn’t realised it before was beyond me. It was so obvious.
    The feelings I’d found so hard to control when he’d hadgirl after girl over for the night. The waking up early every weekend morning. The sitting and listening when I should have been working. The…oh, everything.
    It was cringeworthy.
    So that’s what I did. I sat for a bit longer. But this time, instead of staring at the walls, staring at the floor, staring at the ceiling, I cringed. Long and hard. And when I was done I wondered just what I was going to do about this. This…love thing. The L thing. It didn’t take me long to realise there wasn’t much I could do.
    It was pointless.
    In two weeks’ time, Jas and I would be packing our belongings into boxes. In three weeks’ time we’d be moving out. Jas to Sydney and me to my mother’s place in Byron Bay. And there wasn’t any way I could change that. Not my plans anyway, because my mother needed me. She was sick. And I was going to go and look after her.
    There wasn’t any way Jas could change his plans to move to Sydney either, because he’d made this great contact. Some guy in the music industry who might be able to get him started in the business. So that was that. To say anything now would be pointless.
    Futile.
    Basically, an all-round waste of time.

Chapter Three
    S o, I shut up about it. I hid my feelings.
    Oh, probably not very well. I have to say that much. I was probably as transparent as the thinnest of thin rice paper. I probably mooned around the apartment like a lovesick cow. But Jas didn’t seem to notice, or if he did he didn’t say anything, and things continued as usual.
    Until our third last day together.
    We’d been fairly busy up until then. Of course everyone in the building had to leave, so we’d spent the last few weeks running around and helping out with the odd spot of packing. Wrapping up endless china cups and knickknacks for the arthritic Miss Tenningtons—why old ladies always seem to own about a hundred china cups and saucers in rose patterns that never match is beyond me—and waving