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Avery risked a glance over her shoulder and saw him looking down at her, a fairly impressive frown on his face. But Avery hadn’t been elected president of her eighth-grade class because she was easily intimidated, so she just smiled and waved. “I’m Avery,” she said. “Welcome to Itasca.”

“You’re the first person to actually say that,” he observed, and her spine stiffened. “This shithole town really doesn’t like outsiders, do you?”

“I think we just don’t like people who call it a shithole, actually,” she said evenly. He might be cute—messy dark brown hair and everything—but she wasn’t going to let that pass without comment just because she liked his face.

He snorted and, to her surprise, grinned. “That’s fair,” he admitted, and her stomach suddenly flipped over in a way that had nothing to do with her uterus, and anyway she had straight up lied to Mr. A—her period wasn’t coming for another two weeks. “What was your excuse?” he asked, nodding toward the basketball court, where Cameron had just nailed a girl who went to St. Mary’s with him in the face with the dodgeball.

“Period cramps,” she said, and decided this was a test. If, like most of the other boys she knew, Theo reacted with disgust, she would be able to write him off as just another gross dude.

“Real or fake?” he asked, betraying not a single ounce of discomfort.

“Fake. You?”

He winced theatrically and clasped his knee. “Possible torn ACL,” he said. “Happened right on my way here, in fact.”

Avery clicked her tongue in sympathy. “Wow, that’s terrible,” she deadpanned, and he smiled again, once more flipping her stomach topsy-turvy. “Like I said, I’m Avery.”

“Theo,” he said, and she decided at the last minute not to tell him she already knew that. She didn’t want to sound creepy, or like she had a crush on him or something.

As Theo moved down a few rows to sit closer to her—exaggerating his movements, so as to emphasize his supposed injury—her own mental monologue brought her up short. A crush? He wasn’t the sort of guy she was supposed to get a crush on. Already she could tell he wasn’t someone who would join her on the newspaper staff; she hadn’t joined yet, but she was going to, just as soon as sign-ups went up. And he just seemed so much cooler than her. They could be friends maybe, but a crush was fruitless, and Avery didn’t believe in wasting time on hopeless causes.

Just as quickly as it had appeared, she had squashed that tiny little crush into nothingness. Theo asked her a question and she answered easily, content in the knowledge that she had managed to make a new friend and talk herself out of heartbreak, all in just five minutes.

Chapter Forty-Three

Theo

A phone buzzed with a message, dragging him out of the best sleep Theo had had in weeks. Avery was curled up next to him, her breathing slow and even, her hands half curled under her chin in an adorably vulnerable pose. Theo craned his neck, looking for the source of the noise, and saw Avery’s phone go dark before lighting up again. “Aves,” he said, nudging her cheek with his nose. He couldn’t resist brushing a kiss to her forehead as she blinked awake. “Sweetheart, you got a text.”

Avery groaned, burying her face on his shoulder. “What if it’s my parents?”

“Then you’ll know your plan worked,” Theo said gently. “Want me to check?”

“No, I’ll do it,” she said, and leaned over to look at it. “Oh, it’s not them. Tommy, Grace, and Harper are going skiing this morning and wanted to know if I’m coming.” She looked up at him questioningly. “Am I?”

“Depends. How long do I get to keep you in this bed?”

“They’re meeting at noon, and it’s barely nine.”

“Downhill or cross-country?”

“And you call yourself our friend,” Avery chided, slapping his chest lightly. “When would Tommy ever go on a chair lift?”

Theo laughed. “Yeah, tell them you’re coming.”

Avery started typing, and then paused. “Should I tell them you’re coming?”

“That depends too.”

“On?”

“On if you want them to know about us.”

“You think I wouldn’t want them to know?” Avery said, sitting up and clutching the sheets to her chest.

They’ve always been more your friends than mine, he wanted to say, but that wasn’t what she was asking. “I didn’t know if you did, to be honest.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”