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Okay, not sure what to make of that one-word response.
Me: You sure? You seemed upset when you took off from the house and you were late to school.
Stubborn Girl: Keeping tabs on me, huh?
Me: No, you walked into class late. That’s pretty hard to miss.
I’m such a fucking liar but admitting the truth means giving her the upper hand to… well, whatever this thing is going on between us.
Stubborn Girl: Glad to know I’m hard to miss. Now stop staring at me. The less attention I draw, the better.
I yank my gaze from her, wondering how the hell she knew I was looking at her when she’s staring at her phone.
Me: Hate to break it to you, but you naturally draw attention.
Stubborn Girl: Yeah, because of the flyers you put up all over the school.
Me: Again, hate to break it to you, but if the flyer incident had never happened, you’d still stand out.
Stubborn Girl: I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Blaise Porterson, but I feel like you might be referring to my sanity making me stand out. Or lack thereof anyway.
Me: That may have something to do with it, but it’s not the only reason.
Stubborn Girl: Because I’m so awesome? Yeah, I already knew that.
Me: There’re still more reasons.
Stubborn Girl: Well tell me. Maybe I can avoid these alleged reasons so these damn crazy Honeyton folk will stop gawking at me like I sprouted a unicorn horn out of my ass.
I bite my bottom lip to stop from laughing, my gaze flicking toward her. Her head is lowered as she holds her phone beneath her desk near her lap. Me, I’m bolder, my phone resting on my desk. But us Portersons rarely get in trouble at school because my dad writes the superintendent a big donation check at the start of the school year. He does that with a lot of business and organizations so people will turn their heads the other way when he’s doing something sketchy and illegal, which is all the time.
Me: If they’re staring at your ass, it’s not because you have a unicorn horn sticking out of it. It’s because you have a beautiful ass. And face. And everything else.
I don’t hit send.
I suck at flirting. It’s been the running joke in the Porterson’s house for years now, after I attempted to flirt with a waitress one night while we were out for dinner and ended up telling her she smelled like my favorite soup. In my defense, she did smell like soup, but she didn’t see it as a compliment. Doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I will—or ever have—had time to date or work on my flirting skills. And it should stay that way. I don’t need to flirt with Hadley. And with all the chaos going on in her life, she sure as hell doesn’t need to have to deal with me and my awkward flirting skills.
My finger hovers over the delete button, but Mr. G., the teacher, appears beside my desk and startles me so badly I fumble and end up smacking my palm against the screen. Then drop the phone. It smacks against the floor, face down.
“Blaise, you know the rules. No texting during class.” He bends down to scoop my phone off the floor. “You can have this back when the bell rings.” He walks away and drops my phone into the top drawer of his desk.
Great, he didn’t even give me time to lock it up. Not that I think he’ll scroll through my messages or anything. But I have a lot of personal information on that phone. Information that a lot of people in Honeyton would love to get their gossipy hands on.
Not to mention, with all that fumbling I did before I dropped my phone, who knows what buttons I hit.
Mentally cursing myself, I sink back into the chair and sneak a glance over at Hadley. She’s put her phone away—smart girl—and is looking up at the board as Mr. G. scribbles down the assignment. Once he’s finished, she throws a quick glance over her shoulder at me and gives me a dirty look.
I smile back confusedly and mouth, “What?”
She rolls her eyes. I have no damn clue what’s going on, but I stop caring when I notice a bandage is wrapped around her wrist. That wasn’t there this morning and as far as I know, her father didn’t injure her there.
“What happened?”I mouth, pointing at her wrist.
She hurriedly tugs the sleeve of her jacket down then faces forward again. She remains that way until the bell rings then hightails it out of the classroom, shoving people out of the way.
“Hadley,” I call out, but she bolts out the door.
I want to chase after her, but I need to get my phone.
