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“Different how?”
Connor didn’t reply. Instead, he reached out and drew his finger along the couch cushion just beside mine, coming as close as he could without touching me. Something about it caused my heart to kickstart. If I moved my hand just a fraction of an inch, we’d be touching.
There was a soft knock at the front door, and it startled me away from Connor. As our voices lowered, we’d both ended up tilting across the middle cushion. I pushed to my feet to give myself distance, refusing to look him in the eye, not even thinking about who could’ve been on the other side of the door.
If I’d stopped to think, I would’ve realized how odd it was that someone was knocking at almost ten o’clock at night. If I’d stopped to think, I would’ve told Connor to duck down behind the couch in case it was Madison, having spotted his SUV out front. Because when I opened the door, Connor was in plain view on the couch.
It wasn’t Madison, though.
I found Alex on the threshold, hands in his shorts pockets. “Hey. That car out front. You know, it looks a lot like—” He’d been doing a quick scan of the room behind me, locking onto the figure sitting on the couch. “—Connor’s car.”
You could’ve heard a pin drop, my living room wasthatsilent.
“Connor Bray?” Alex said a bit more firmly, stepping past me and into the house. Neither Connor nor I moved. Not an inch.
He’s not really here, my brain chanted in denial, but I slowly got to my feet.You’re imagining Alex in your living room at ten at night.
Except the rigidness of Connor’s spine told a different story. “H-Hey, man.”
“W-What are you doing here?” I asked. Shock fully consumed Alex’s reaction, but I was certain at any moment a different emotion would take over.
“I wanted to stop by and see if I could borrow a pair of your old glasses for tomorrow,” Alex said slowly, and to his credit, he sounded more confused than angry.Veryconfused, as if he was questioning the reality of this moment. “What…what areyoudoing here, Connor?”
“Maisie’s been tutoring me,” Connor said quickly, and he rose from the couch as he did so, putting distance between him and me. “In Algebra II. I have to retake my exam.”
For how long he’d been pressuring me to keep the secret, the truth of the situation rolled pretty easily off his tongue. The confusion hadn’t left Alex’s eyes, though. “In your pajamas?”
I looked down at my nightgown, then at the blanket I’d dropped on the couch in surprise.Crap. “I was about to go to bed.”
“With him here?”
“No!” I tried to keep my voice level, but it came out sharp. “Of course not.”
Alex crept deeper into the living room, glancing around. “If you’re tutoring,” he said slowly, “where are your books?”
Even though I knew I’d only find empty space, my gaze darted to the coffee table, to the couch cushions. The excuse I’d used with Madison on Monday, gesturing at the Algebra II textbook, wasn’t available in this situation. Connor had only brought the piece of notebook paper, not any of his other things. My math book was all the way upstairs. Yes, Ihad it, but Alex would no doubt ask why I didn’t have it out if we were studying.
But there wasn’t a drop of anger in Alex’s eyes, only bewilderment. He genuinely couldn’t decipher the situation in front of him. For zero reason at all, that caused heat to spike through me, expanding from the center of my chest. “I’ve been tutoring him for two weeks now. You can ask Mrs. Diego.”
“Two weeks?” Alex’s eyes widened. “You’ve been tutoring him for two weeks and you never said anything?”
“I told you.” My voice was wickedly calm for how fast my heart was beating. “It’s confidential.”
“You—you—I would’ve thought that if you were tutoring the most popular guy at Brentwood High that you would’ve told me.”
Something in me snapped. I sidestepped the couch while folding my arms over my chest. “Why? Would you have showed up at our tutoring sessions? Thought that would’ve been your ‘in’ into the popular crowd?”
“What’s wrong with showing up? We could’ve talked, could’ve gotten ice cream—”
“Only because Connor would’ve been there,” I cut him off, the burning in my chest increasing to a sweltering degree. “Because you wouldn’t have done that with just me.”
The severe words had come from a small corner of me that wanted to see a reaction from him, that wanted to knock the bewilderment off his face.
“You’d never come to my tutoring sessions if I was teaching someone else,” I went on, squeezing my fists. "Alex,wedon’t even go out and get ice cream! Sounds like you should be dating him instead of me.”
Alex listened to my words with only a small crease in his forehead, as if at some point I’d switched into speaking a different language and he stopped being able to understand me. Gosh, did he ever? I’d been so desperate for his attention all this time, but he wasn’tseeingit.
It was then that I remembered Connor stood behind us, a silent spectator to an argument that was about him but…not. He was tucked out of my peripheral, so there was no telling what his expression might’ve been like.
