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“If she brings it up,” he begrudgingly conceded. “But only if she brings it up. I’m not digging, Gibs.”
“You’re the best.”
Johnny shook his head in dismay. “So, this is the teenage bullshit I chose to partake in instead of the pros.”
“I know.” Grinning, I clapped his shoulder. “Good decision or what, huh?”
“Or what,” Johnny muttered under his breath.
_______________
“Can I ask you a question?”
“No, Gibs, Shannon didn’t tell me anything about their bleeding date,” Johnny snapped in an exasperated tone from his perch at his desk, where we had been since school ended two hours ago. Instead of doing something fun to kick off our midterm break, Brains had decided we needed to get all of our homework out of the way. “Nothing’s changed since the last time you asked,” he added, glancing at the screen of his phone. “Ten minutes ago.”
“Not that,” I replied, trying and failing to make sense of his notes from accounting class. Giving up, I closed the book and sprawled out on his bed instead. “I was going to ask you how it felt.”
“How did what feel, Gibs?”
“When you kissed Shannon for the first time.”
“It was a disaster,” he muttered, scribbling furiously into a copybook. “I couldn’t have handled it worse.”
“What about the first time you were with her?” I questioned. “How did it feel?”
“If this is another one of your weird conversations, then strike it out, Gibs, because Shan’s name isn’t up for discussion. And especially not that kind of discussion.”
“Ah, calm down, will you?” I grumbled, pulling myself up on my elbows. “I’m not asking you to give me intimate details about her—”
“Gibs!”
“All I’m asking is if it felt different with Shannon than say Bella, or any of the rest of them,” I huffed, flopping back down. “You know, because of the feelings.”
“The feelings?”
“Yeah, Johnny, the feelings.”
“Hold up.” His head snapped up and set down his pen. “Are you fucking Claire…”
“No,” I snapped, not liking him saying her name and sex in the same sentence. Jesus, karma was a bitch. “And don’t say the words ‘Claire’ and ‘fucking’ in the same sentence.”
Johnny grinned. “Oh dear.”
“What?”
“It’s worse than I thought.” There was a knowing glint to his eyes when he rolled his chair toward the bed and folded his arms across his chest. “Alright, Gibs. Ask your questions, lad.”
“When you and Shannon were together,” I repeated, rubbing the back of my head. “Was it different?”
Johnny nodded. “It couldn’t have been any more different.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, lad, really,” he replied. “Feelings change everything.”
“Meaning?”
“Feelings make you a whole lot less concerned with how you feel in the moment than how she is feeling.”
