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After cursing under my breath, I closed my eyes and rested my head against the headboard. All I wanted was for someone to fucking love me. Someone. Fucking anyone at this point.
ChapterThirty-Nine
VERA
Maddie looped her arm around mine as we strolled through the mall on Friday night, her vanilla perfume wafting around us. Piper was sick, and Blaise hadn’t showed up to school today, so I hadn’t seen him since he’d brought me home last night.
Thank the Redwood gods that João had been extra nice with the money he gave me for watching his sister because Mateo’s birthday party was on Sunday, and I needed to get that twerp something other than a pack of gum, which had been my present to him last year.
“You think he’d like something from GameStop? Like a T-shirt or something?” I asked, gazing into the small store filled with video games and anime T-shirts.
The games were far too expensive for me right now—unless I could find one for, like, twenty bucks.
“Hmm, maybe.” Maddie tugged me into the shop and smiled at the nerdy guy behind the counter. She marched right up to him without a care in the world and looked over her shoulder at me. “What kind of anime does he watch?”
“Um …” I nervously glanced around. “Something about giants?”
“Attack on Titan?” the employee said, his nametag reading Viraj.
“Maybe?”
He led us to a section of anime T-shirts and pulled out about fifteen shirts, holding them out to me. I grabbed the shirts and shuffled through them, not sure which one he’d like or even wear.
“What do you suggest?” Maddie asked Viraj.
“Personally, my favorite character is …” He took the shirts from me and pulled one out with a male character who had a hard gaze and a pissed off expression on his pointed face. “This one. His name’s Levi. He’s pretty cool, but people also like this guy too.” He pulled out a shirt that readEren.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek and picked this guy’s favorite character shirt because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. If Mateo liked it, he liked it. If he didn’t, then oh well. I’d keep the receipt.
After I checked out, I followed Maddie to the food court. She ordered milkshakes for us.
“So, how are you and Blaise?” Maddie asked as we waited.
Fuck, I had really hoped that she wouldn’t ask. I had made it all day without questions.
“He, um …” I tucked some hair behind my ear. “Uh … he told me that he liked me.”
“WHAT?!” she shouted so half the mall could hear her. “WHAT?! Why didn’t you say that from the beginning? Vera Rodriguez, why the hell did you wait until now?! You should’ve called me the minute it happened! When did he say that?”
“Yesterday.”
“YESTERDAY?!”
“Yeah,” I said, brushing it off like it was nothing. But truthfully, I hadn’t stopped thinking about it at all. It had been on my mind all night, all day, every single freaking moment since the skatepark. “But it was a joke.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. “I know you think that but—”
“He said it.”
“That’s a lie,” Maddie said as an employee placed our milkshakes on the counter. Maddie grabbed two red straws and shoved them into the shakes. “What did he say exactly? Because I know that he likes you. It’s obvious.”
“He was being serious about it being a joke,” I said, not wanting to believe her.
“What’d he say?”
“He asked me if I really thought someone like him would like me,” I whispered, my chest tightening. My throat dried, and I found myself tensing at the memory of last night. “That he was the one blackmailing me so we could have sex.”
Maddie furrowed her brows and drew her cheeks in as she sucked up some milkshake through her straw. “That’s weird. How’d he say that he liked you?”
