At the same time Raelynn left me alone, my phone buzzed.
Jamie
Did you get lost on the way to the kitchen?
be nice, or i’ll make you come out and get your own soda
Jamie
Oh, my sweetest companion, come hither with all due haste, but do not insist that I myself brave the simple-minded fray.
…
and you call ME weird???
Jamie
Indeed
I sent an emoji with its tongue sticking out.
“Hey, Daisy!” a girl from school, Isabelle, greeted me when I walked into the kitchen. She leaned against the kitchen counter with Collin from fourth period at her side, his hand on her hip. “Where’s your other half?”
Panic blew through me before I realized she didn’t mean Dalton. Of course she didn’t mean Dalton. “Nellie? She’s running late.” Almost the entire side of Lydia’s kitchen counter was filled with 2-liter sodas, and I picked up one, grabbed a cup—then two—and began pouring. “She had something to do before. But she’ll be here soon.”
Something to do,like finish bleaching her boyfriend’s head of hair. A part of me wanted to text and check in, but the other part of me wasn’t sure she hadn’t fried his hair off, and maybe it was best to not interrupt.
“Not Eleanor.” Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Jamie.”
I snorted as I poured pop into the second cup. “Jamie’s my other half?”
“C’mon,” Collin said. “When are you going to drop the act? Everyone knows you’re together.”
I blinked, and then blinked again. “How does everyone know something that’s not true?”
“You hang out all the time.”
“Because we’refriends.” I finished pouring into the cups and capped the two-liter. “I hang out with Nellie all the time, too, but that doesn’t mean I’m harboring secret feelings for her.”
“Guys and girls can’t be friends,” Isabelle declared. “Not without someone crushing on the other.” She and Collin shared a smirk.
“You’ve got a skewed worldview,” I told the weirdos at the kitchen counter, picking up both of my cups. “But I’ll tell the twins about your theory. I’m sure they’ll get a good laugh out of it.”
And with that, I walked out of the kitchen. I had to bob and weave around bodies as I made my way to the staircase on the far side of the house, leaving the pulsing beat of the music on the first floor while I climbed to the second.
Everyone knows you’re together. Ew. Well—I mean, notew,because Jamie wasn’t gross, but… still. I’d never imagined Jamie romantically. Ever. I’d been crushing on Dalton since middle school, and we’d started going out the summer before sophomore year. There was no time to daydream about Jamie, who’d moved to town at the start of freshman year.
And I mean, sure, Jamie and I were close, but he acted with me the exact same way he acted with Nellie, just with fewer twin telepathic conversations. Why were people just assuming we were together?
Misogyny, I decided.
I got to the first door on the landing and, with the toe of my shoe, I lightly kicked the door three times, paused, then twice more. I’d been careful not to spill the cups, but the one in my left hand was dangerously close, so I sipped the edge of it. The Spritezingedon my tongue.
A second later, Jamie unlocked and opened the guest bedroom door. His light blue hoodie was loose on his frame, with the hood drawn up over his head, and his eyes were narrowed behind his glasses. “You got the secret knock wrong,” he said, immediately accusatory. “It’s two knocks first, a pause, and then three knocks.”
“We made it up on the drive over; give me a break.” I brushed past him and into the small room. There was a queen-sized bed near the window with a desk on the opposite wall, but otherwise it was pretty empty. The stereo downstairs was loud as it reverberated through the house. “I’m surprised it’s quiet enough for you to read.”
“I’m used to zoning everything out.” Jamie took the cup of soda from my left hand, leaving me with one on the right. His gaze roamed me. “No snacks?”
