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I sit up straight. “You’ve stopped pedaling.”

“Why? You want to separate from me so soon?”

“To remind you, I was perfectly fine on my own thirty minutes ago.”

“Careful, Lopez.” He begins pedaling again. “You’ll hurt my feelings.”

I roll my eyes. “Somehow I know you’ll recover easily.”

“Wow, you know me so well,” he says, “and yet I feel like I don’t know enough about you.”

Enough, like he wants to know more. I ignore how that makes me feel and fix a frown on my face instead. “I go to school, I study; I go home, I study. Occasionally I like to eat a bunch of spicy food and cry watching K-dramas with Lexie and my dad. If you know that, you know everything about me. I’m boring.”

Theo just laughs. “I can’t tell if you’re intentionally selling yourself short or if you just don’t want me to know too much about you.”

“That’s up to your imagination.”

“See,” he says, still chuckling, “before, I didn’t know you were funny. But you are. And maybe the things you do can be boring, but you’re not.”

“Please.” I shift in the hard, cold, and a little wet seat. “You make it sound like you know me at all. I’m sure you never thought about me until you needed help on your case.”

He pierces me in place with his gaze, and I feel some nerves creep under my skin—nerves of confusion, nerves from his close proximity. His voice is soft. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?” I ask, just as quietly. For some reason, the moment feels like it’s turned reverent. He searches my face quietly, and for a moment, all I hear is the lapping of the water and our breathing.

He finally breaks eye contact, and when he looks at me again, it’s like whatever moment we were having is over. His usual smirk is back on his face, and he leans in closer. “I have thought of you. Before the case, I mean,” he says, deftly avoiding my question. “Of course I knew you were smart. How could I not? You’re always at the top of a grading dock and raising your hand in class. But I know a lot more about you than you think.”

I open my mouth, then close it. Suddenly, it’s way too hot. Especially with his jacket around me.

“You don’t believe me?” he says, then speaks before I can stop him. “Well, you’re obviously very pretty. But I’m sure you know that; you’ve seen your reflection. But there was one day I saw you huddled over your notebook. You were frustrated with a problem, sure, but more so that your hair kept covering your face. So you pulled it into a bun, and I remember looking back and seeing the beauty marks on the side of your face.”

I feel the tips of my ears get hot. “Theo—”

“But that’s on the surface.” He looks out into the water. “I know you’re a bit of a softy. That when our classmate, Emily, sprained her wrist during softball, you typed notes for the classes she missed—even though you prefer to handwrite them—so she could use the read-aloud feature. That when Mr. Winter’s dog passed away last year, you brought him dessert for a week straight. And, of course, you did the whole setup for your dad because you were worried about him.”

“What is this?” I say like I’m accusing him of something. “Why are you saying all this?”

He keeps going, ignoring me. “You’re dedicated, which is why I think you’ll develop neck problems in about five years since you’re always hunched over studying, but it also shows that you’re a bit, hmm, obsessive seems a little too harsh. Maybe excessive.”

My entire face burns. “Those mean the same thing.”

He snaps his fingers. “A bit of a know-it-all. Let’s add that too.”

“I’m going to tip us over,” I warn through gritted teeth.

“Easy to anger,” he says, “or maybe dramatic?”

“Oh my God, enough!”

“The point I’m trying to make here is I look at you more than you know.” He faces me. “And you would see that if you looked at me, too.”

At that, my stomach fills with such rampant fluttering I’m scared one of my organs is actually malfunctioning. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to think.

I just don’t get why he’d be watching me the way he has outside of needing me. His case is recent. Emily, who I occasionally trade notes with, broke her hand a year ago.

Why would he remember that? Or my beauty marks? Or anything about me?

“If you’ve been watching me all this time,” I blurt, the words coming out of my mouth before I can stop them. There’s so many whys flickering around in my head, one was bound to force its way out. “Why haven’t you spoken to me before? Why now?”