“Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose, but I didn’t miss the smile she tried to hide. “What about you, then, huh? You and Jamie? I’ll get everyone to call you two beauty and the bookworm.”
A new voice said, “Ooh, it’s got a good ring to it.”
Both Nellie and I turned to find Beck walking into the game room, carrying two iced coffees. His black shirt hugged his frame, but his jeans were so loose that, without the studded belt he wore, they looked like they’d fall off him. The picture of nonchalance.
“How’d you find us tucked away in here?” I asked him, eyeing the items in his hands. “Or, maybe a better question is, how did you know our coffee order?”
“I figured out how to tap into that Boyfriend Telepathy,” he returned casually, one corner of his lips tugging up.
“I may or may not have texted him,” Nellie said sheepishly.
Beck passed one of the iced drinks to her before offering the other to me, giving it a shake so the ice tornadoed inside. “And I, with no life, had nothing better to do than to drive to an Expresso’s and get two iced shaken brown sugar espressos for my girlfriend and her cool BFF.”
“I appreciate your lack of life,” I said as I took the drink, taking a sip from the straw. It was perfect. “So we’re in the clingy stage of the new relationship?”
Nellie tried objecting, but Beck curved his hand around her shoulder. “I know. She’s obsessed with me. It’s kind of cute.”
Nellie smacked him in the stomach, to which Beck just laughed.
He drew a chair out from beside Nellie and sank down into it, his eyes catching on my sketchbook. “Wowza, Daisy. That’s really good.”
His tone was mild, but his eyes were closely scanningthe page. It was my realism style, and I nearly flipped the sketchbook lid shut, but forced myself still. I hadn’t drawn any death and gore yet, just Kit behind the beginnings of a steering wheel. “Thanks.”
“How long have you been drawing?”
“For fun? My whole life. Seriously? A few years.”
He whistled a little under his breath. “Your portfolio must be insane.”
If it were insane, NYU wouldn’t have put me on their waitlist. The thought sucked any wind out of my sails.
“You’re doing that in case anyone else sees?” Beck asked.
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Nellie told me about the—” He glanced over his shoulder, as if someone might’ve spawned there, and then lowered his voice. “—fake dating pact. And don’t worry,” he added, miming zipping his lips shut. “I’m a vault.”
I wasn’t worried about that. Even though I didn’t know Beck that well, I could tell that he would rather die than spread gossip. “I still don’t know what you mean, though,” I told him, tapping my pencil against my sketchbook. “Am Idrawingin case anyone sees?”
“Drawing Jamie.”
His words were like a rubber band snap against my skin. “I’m not drawing Jamie.” The sting still smarted, and now I yanked my sketchbook away from him, scanning the page as if something had popped up in the point-five seconds I’d looked away. No. Still Kit. “This isn’t Jamie. You think this looks like Jamie?”
Nellie leaned forward to look closer at the sketch page,and for a moment, I found myself holding my breath. “It’s one of her original characters,” she explained to Beck, not at all seeming bothered. “She doesn’t draw people she knows.”
Right—refused to, actually. Drawing people I knew in my realism style was an impossible feat because I could never quite capture their essence. With original characters, I could make up whatever essence I wanted and could easily manipulate it on the page.
That was how Iknewthis wasn’t Jamie. Kit’s hair was longer, normally brushing the tops of his shoulders, and straighter than Jamie’s. Kit’s face shape was more angular, with a pointed nose and thick eyebrows. Kit didn’t wear glasses. Definitely not Jamie.
“Must’ve just been the angle I looked at it from.” Beck shrugged. “When does his book club thing end, anyway?”
Nellie glanced at the clock. “Maybe, like, ten minutes? Sometimes they run over the top of the hour.”
“The idea ofJamietalking with those ladies does not compute in my brain,” Beck muttered, folding his arms across his chest and tipping his head back. “Especially talking enough that they’d go over time.”
“Get Jamie talking about books and he won’t be able to stop,” I told him, peeling my gaze off my sketchbook. “Nell, hey, if you and Beck want to head out, you can. There’s… there’s something I want to talk to Jamie about, anyway.”
Nellie frowned. “Like what?”
