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Jacob sighed. “Seriously, who is this guy?” He started typing. “I’m not going to repeat myself, friend.”

“We’re not friends yet. But I bet we will be as soon as I start dating our girl.”

“She’s not our girl. She’s my girl!”

I laughed. “Jacob. That makes it sound like we’re dating.”

“You know what I meant,” Jacob said. “You’re not his.”

My phone buzzed with my mystery man’s response: “Maybe not the protective friend then. Interesting.”

Jacob shook his head and started typing. “If you threaten her, you’ll answer to me.”

“I’ve only threatened her with a good time, as she put it. My girl is kinky as hell.”

I laughed again.

“This shit isn’t funny,” Jacob said.

It was a little funny. I stared at the words “my girl.” I wished Mr. Halifax would say that to me.

“What’s going on?” Axel asked as he walked hand-in-hand with Scarlett toward us. They must have heard Jacob raising his voice.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“It’s not nothing.” Jacob waved my phone in the air. “This creep knows Sophie likes Mr. Halifax. There’s no way he’s not going to blackmail her.”

“How could he possibly know that?” Scarlett asked.

I sighed and filled her in. “And he’s not blackmailing me. Yet.”

“The keyword is yet,” Jacob said. “How do we get rid of this troll?”

“I’d hardly call him a troll,” Scarlett said. And then she immediately shook her head. “I mean...right. Definitely an ugly troll.”

I laughed. She was doing her best to keep her word. But she thought my mystery man was handsome. She’d certainly said it enough times at first. “I really think it’s fine. A stalker would have texted me a million times after I ignored him for days. He didn’t. He’s cool. I think we’re all good here.”

Jacob sighed. “Well, don’t delete the app, just in case he does say something.” He hit a few buttons on my phone. “And I turned on the notifications so you’ll know if you get a message from him...” A notification immediately popped up.

I laughed and read the new message out loud. “This is all going to be funny in a few weeks when we become bros, Jacob. Unless you really are crushing on our girl. Then you probably will hate me. Sorry in advance, man. Because I’ve already won her over.”

As if.

Axel laughed. “Well the guy doesn’t know us as well as he thinks he does. Because Jacob doesn’t have a crush on Soph.”

“He’s an idiot,” Jacob said.

“Well now I’m just offended.” I grabbed my phone back. “And I don’t think threatening my mystery man exactly sets a good precedent. We just need to ignore him. Now where were we? Strippers?”

Scarlett laughed. “We need to study for our calc test.”

“Maybe you do. But I don’t plan on doing very well. I’m trying to get some after school attention, if you know what I mean.” I winked at her.

“You’re going to fail the test? On purpose?”

I shrugged. For some reason this seemed like a better idea than texting Mr. Halifax as myself. I’d always enjoyed face to face conversations more anyway. You couldn’t be handsy via text.

Chapter 11 – She Sounds Hideous