“But you remembered mine.”
That throws him. Just for a second.
His grip tightens on his coffee, his mouth pressing into a flat line. Like he didn’t mean to give himself away.
My pulse trips.
“So,” I say, fiddling with my tea bag, trying to fill the sudden charged silence, “about Friday night?—”
“Nothing happened Friday.”
I blink. Okay, wow. Straight to the shutdown.
“I mean, not what happened, because obviously we’re not talking about that part.” My face heats up. “The hallway part. Or any parts involving…”
His mouth twitches.
I absolutely do not think about his mouth.
“…anything involving your lips on mine,” I finish weakly, clearing my throat. “What I meant was the sprinkler incident. Which was totally Ethan’s fault, by the way. And now we’re stuck doing sixty hours of community service because we’re covering for him, which is actually kind of nice of us, if you think about it, but also kind of unfair because we were trying to get Alex’s poster and?—”
“Tara.”
His voice cuts through my spiraling ramble like a scalpel.
I snap my mouth shut.
He leans back in his chair, watching me. Unreadable.
“Breathe.”
I take a sip of tea instead. A long one.
It doesn’t help.
It doesn’t help that he’s looking at me with those dark eyes that I now have seen up close. Very up close. Like, pressed-against-geology-display-cases-while-discussing-rock-formations close. That I know exactly what he sounds like when he loses control.
Not that I’ve been replaying it or anything.
Much.
“Right. Breathing. Good idea,” I mumble.
He exhales, shaking his head slightly. “This court-mandated friendship is already going great.”
I brighten. “That’s what I was saying! We should probably talk about it.” I clear my throat.
“The situation,” he deadpans.
“Yes! The situation where Ethan channeled his inner pyromaniac and somehow we’re the ones suffering.”
Alfie says nothing.
Because he knows exactly which part of this situation I’m actually talking about.
I shift, lowering my voice. “And the security camera footage conveniently only caught us...”
I hesitate.
