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“Sure.”

He laughed. “She is. RJ and I crashed a party at the college dad used to teach at last weekend. A girl there asked me.”

“A college girl?”

“Yeah. I think she’s a junior.”

Seriously? I shook my head. So Liam was going with someone way older than him and RJ was going with a child. This was going to be very weird. But all that mattered was that I was finally going to unmask my kiss thief. The real one this time.

“A college party?” Sophie asked. “Seriously? You two are acting like you have lots of downtime. But you’re supposed to be figuring out when that countdown in Axel’s notebook started. Have you solved it?”

RJ shoved his hands into his pocket as he stared at me. “Does it even matter now? You like the kiss thief, not Axel, right? Or else you’d be going to the dance with Axel.”

I glanced over at Axel again. I knew he didn’t like me back and never would. I’d asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance and he’d turned me down. Jacob and Axel were both meant to be my friends and nothing more. My parents had let me watch too many Disney princess movies growing up, filling my head with fairytales that would never pan out. Axel Stevens wasn’t my Prince Charming. And no one was going to heal this ache in my chest but me.

I cleared my throat and turned back to RJ. “Right. It doesn’t matter.”

RJ stared at me for a moment. “Well good. Because I didn’t figure it out.”

“Axel definitely just wants you to notarize something,” Sophie said.

I laughed and shook my head. Axel probably wasn’t even counting down to my 18th birthday. It was more likely Valentine’s Day for some reason. Maybe he was planning a big romantic gesture for someone else that day. Because if there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that Axel didn’t like me like that.

But my kiss thief liked me. And he was ready to love me out loud. God, maybe I still did believe in fairytales.

Chapter 24 – Loophole

Saturday – One Week Later

I ran my hands down the short skirt of my blue dress with white polka dots. When Mr. Tanner had gotten word that the theme of the Sadie Hawkins dance was the 50s, he got very excited and made a whole line of dresses for Odegaard.

Sophie and him had gotten into a whole thing because he said they were authentic and she said they needed to be shorter. Eventually Mr. Tanner had obliged, but he said the theme of the dance was ruined.

I was happy with the change. And my favorite part was the added tulle beneath the skirt to make it stick out a bunch.

Sophie walked back into my room in a skin-tight black leather onesie with a tight belt around the waist.

“Why did you change?” I asked. She’d been in a dress similar to mine a minute ago. “You gave Mr. Tanner all that grief about the dresses and you’re seriously not even wearing one?”

“Well, Mr. Tanner didn’t make them short enough. So I went full rebel Sandy from Grease.” And she definitely had. She’d even curled her hair in tight ringlets.

“This is already short enough to give my dad a heart attack,” I said.

“You look amazing. But I’m not trying to give your dad a heart attack. I’m trying to get Mr. Halifax to ravage me.” She opened up her little red purse that matched her high heeled shoes. “And I decided to make the drug bust a real thing. So that Mr. Halifax catches me and punishes me.”

I peered into her purse. “What the hell is that?”

“A kilo of cocaine. Well, half of one. The whole thing wouldn’t fit in my purse and this one matched my heels so well.”

“Where the hell did you get half a kilo of cocaine?!”

“My horse bookie knows a guy that knows a guy.”

“Sophie! Isn’t that much cocaine like...a felony? You could go to prison for the rest of your life!”

Sophie laughed. “A risk I’m willing to take if Mr. Halifax finally snaps.” She snapped her purse closed to emphasize her point.

Was she insane? “You told Mr. Halifax there was going to be a big drug deal. What if he already called the police? And there’s drug dogs swarming the dance?!”