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“Oh, yeah,” she mumbled, placing one of the cans back in the fridge. “I forgot about the rugby thing.”
I bit back a smile. “Yeah, the rugby thing.”
She stared up at me then, looking as unsure as I felt.
“Do you want to come up to my room?”
My brows shot up, matching the sudden spike in my heart rate. “Your room?”
Blushing, she tucked her hair behind her ear and hurried to say, “It’s just that I don’t normally stay down here… I mean I do, but I don’t…because…I…” Her voice trailed off and she sighed heavily. “Never mind, it was a stupid—”
“Okay.”
Her eyes widened. “Okay?”
I nodded. “Lead the way.”
I waited until Shannon had turned around before slapping the heel of my hand against my forehead. I was so fucking stupid. This was worse than coming inside. This was wrong.
I knew it was.
And still, I followed her up a narrow staircase, avoiding rogue Legos and stepping over children’s toys on the ascent.
The bedroom Shannon led me into at the front of the house was a glorified box room. She stepped around me, which wasn’t easy in small quarters, and turned the lock on her door before walking the four steps it took to reach her bed. Meanwhile, I stood like a tool in her tiny bedroom, not knowing what the hell I was supposed to do now.
The single bed pushed against the far side of the room took up the entire width of the wall. There was a bedside locker next to it, a chest of drawers shoved against the opposite wall, and not a lot else.
“It’s a small house for a family of eight,” Shannon acknowledged quietly, noticing my staring. She set her Coke down on her bedside locker and shrugged. “I’m the only girl so I get the box room.”
“It’s a nice room,” I replied as I walked over to her bed and sat down.
I was already in the danger zone. I might as well be comfortable.
“Don’t lie,” she said with a sad smile. “It’s a dump.”
“No,” I corrected. “It’s nice.”
I glanced around her tiny purple-painted bedroom, looking for a television set and came up empty. She didn’t have one. Didn’t have a stereo system, either.
But she had books. A lot of them.
“You weren’t messing when you said you liked to read,” I mused, eyeing several piles of neatly stacked books on her bedroom floor under the windowsill. Turning back to face her, I grinned. “Are you a little swot, Shannon Lynch?”
“Believe me, I wish I could call myself a swot,” she replied with a grimace. “I love to read but I’m not academically smart.”
I frowned at her in disbelief. “Bullshit.”
“No, I’m really not,” she replied, shaking her head. “I have to work so hard to keep up in my classes, and most of those are ordinary-level subjects.”
“What subjects give you the most trouble?” I asked, relaxing into the conversation.
This, I could handle.
Learning more about her fed the beast—and distracted the other beast.
“Business,” Shannon replied, scrunching her nose up at the thought. “And maths—I’m terrible with numbers.”
“Those are my best subjects,” I mused, scratching my jaw. “I’m taking business and accounting for the leaving cert next year.”
