“I mean, yeah, you’re good, too. But I expected it. Jamie’s like… weird. Like when he took your cover-up off? I almost gagged.”
I could remember it perfectly. Jamie’s fingers slipping under the strap, slowly easing it off my shoulder, dark eyes following the movement of his touch. I shivered, too, but for a very different reason. “We underestimated him.”
You don’t want me to be Mr. Darcy, he’d murmured to me.
You can’t be Sydney Carton, either.
No. The resolve had been hard in Jamie’s eyes.I can’t.
“Do you think it’s working?” Nellie asked. “You know, Operation: CDE? Did it seem like it was working on Monday?”
Crush Dalton’s Ego. His face had beenveryred at half of what Jamie told him. “I think so. He seemed super jealous, didn’t you think?”
Nellie slowly sat up straighter, her hair falling over her shoulder. “Jealous,” she echoed, frowning. “Not, like… resigned?”
“Resigned?”
“Thatwas the goal, wasn’t it? To show him that you’vemoved on so that he leaves you alone. Not to make himjealous.” She lowered her chin as she watched me. “Right?”
“It’s—similar.” I stared at my sketchbook pages, wishing I could disappear between them. “I mean, it’s no big deal to make him a little crazy with jealousy, too, right?”
I held my breath, but when Nellie spoke, her voice was soft. Gentle. “He’s no good for you, Daisy.” Nellie stretched her hand across the table and brushed my knuckles. “I never wanted to say anything before—I always supported you no matter what—but I… I never liked him.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “Spell poker face, Nell.”
“P-O-K-E-R F-A-C-E.”
“Yeah, you never had a good one of those.”
Dalton was the popular upperclassman who was too loud in class and too crass to get a reaction. The kind of boy you’d either laugh with or roll your eyes at. Nellie hadn’t liked him because loud-mouth boys were on herimperfectlist. Jamie hadn’t liked him because there was nothingloudabout Jamie.
And I’d liked him initially because… well… he’d been cute.
“I just can’t see what you saw in him,” she mumbled, shaking her head. I sketched more lines in my original character. Kit’s face was nearly complete, with a stoic line to his mouth, his eyes studying some faraway spot I hadn’t drawn yet. “You’ve had a lot of cute boys interested in you before. Shane from PE.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Shane from PE was into any girl who had a bra size bigger than a B.”
“Then there was Marco, on the lacrosse team.”
“Never trust a blond guy.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Beck’s blond.”
“Beck’s adyedblond. Speaking of.” I lifted my gaze to hers once more, but this time, I gave her a longing look. “How was your ride home in the convertible yesterday?”
“Would’ve been romantic if the peanut gallery hadn’t been in the backseat. Lydia refused to let us roll the top down.” Nellie sat back in her chair with a huff. “Really ruined the vibe.”
“Thevibe. You wanted tovibe, huh? Little missgirl in love.”
Nellie’s face flamed a beautiful shade of pink, splotching across her cheeks. “You’re ridiculous. We went through so much to get here, but I’m just… happy.”
“With Beckham Jennings.” I made a kissy face at her.
She kicked me under the table.
Nellie and I didn’t really talk too deeply about our love lives, but while the piano played overhead, she told me in more depth about the last month. Beck had gotten on her buttons every chance he could, but she’d slowly caved.
“The beauty and the bad boy,” I said thoughtfully, nodding. “I dig it.”
