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Reed wasn’t even bothering to fight his amusement. “Well, I’m off to homeroom,” he said, edging away from us. With Alex now perfectly distracted, there was no one to catch Reed tip his head quickly to the side, eyes holding mine all the while. “Have a good day, Rachel and Rachel’s friends.”
Awesome. Demoted to Rachel’s friends. Reed walked away, but before he turned the corner, he caught my gaze one last time, doing that head-jerking thing that made his intentions clear. I swallowed hard.
“I’ll—I’ll meet you in homeroom,” I told Maisie, squeezing her arm before taking a step. “And I’ll see you at lunch, Rach.”
“Don’t be late!” Maisie called after me, and I threw her a thumbs-up.
Yesterday, when I’d been racing down the hall, there’d been not a soul in sight. However, today, with five minutes still until the bell, everyone was taking advantage of the opportunity to get more gossip in. As soon as I turned the corner Reed had disappeared down, all hope of finding the boy was lost in the sea of students. Especially with my height deficit, standing on my tiptoes didn’t even help.
There was no way I was going to find him—and talk to him—before the bell.
No sooner than I’d had the thought did a hand wrap around my upper arm and tug me to the side, fishing me from the flow of traffic and pulling me into an empty classroom. It was Mrs. Oakley’s classroom, the senior US History teacher, and since she had first period as her free period, she didn’t come in until the second class of the day.
With the lights out and my steps off-balance, it was impossible to orient myself.
At least, until Reed pressed me against the wall beside the door, easing it shut behind us. I swatted his hand off my arm, giving him as strict of a glare that I could muster. “Jeez, are we in a spy movie or something?”
Reed’s easygoing expression was a bit different than it’d been a second ago; less guarded, more intense. He’d put on a bit too much of his cologne this morning, the green apple and jasmine scent making my head swim. With him so close in the darkness, this felt like an echo of last night. Enough for a stab of déjà vu. “We should talk about last night.”
“Now?” I demanded, glancing around the room. The desks looked ghostly. “Class is literally about to start, and if I’m late again, I’m getting detention.”
“Fine, I’ll make it quick, then.” Reed folded his arms across his chest in a macho-man look, but it struck me distinctly as the way a brother might look at his sister when she annoyed him too much. “Don’t get any wrong ideas about last night. The kiss didn’t mean anything to me.”
The subject shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Reed spent the last ten years barely acknowledging I existed. The way he spoke now was no different from how he’d been speaking to me my whole life. Except despite how blunt his words were, I struggled to comprehend their meaning. “I—you—excuse me?”
“Just because we got carried away doesn’t mean it meant anything. It was a good kiss.” He tilted his head to the side. “You know, honestly, for it being your first, I expected it to be worse.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but stopped at the last second, gaping like an idiot.
“It was a good kiss,” he repeated, “but it didn’t mean anything to me. I want to be sure we’re on the same page. Let’s forget about what happened, okay?”
Oh?I wanted to say, to channel even just an ounce of confidence that he practically oozed.You kissed me like that and you didn’t feel anything at all?
Because even though I wasn’t sure whatI felt, I knew it’d been something.
The way he spoke sounded like he was talking about something else. The dinner he had last night, a piece of candy he’d never had before, or a new soda he’d sampled.It was okay, but I wouldn’t try it again.
“You pulled me aside just to make sure I hadn’t gottenbutterflies?” I demanded, crossing my arms across my chest and mimicking his stupid stance. “Your ego’s bigger than I thought. Not everyone wants to date you, Reed. In case you forgot, we already agreed that it was a one-off thing. It didn’t mean anything to me either.”
The words didn’t sound like a lie, but they tasted like one. Admitting anything different to Reed, though? Now? It was the equivalent of standing in front of a crowd in my underwear. I’d scrub the kiss from my brain, scrub the feel of Reed’s hands along my body along with it, and start fresh.
It seemed possible enough…right?
“Glad we got it cleared up,” Reed said, and his expressionlookedglad. It almost stung how relieved he sounded. He took a step back from me, and then, without warning, he smacked his palm against my arm. “Like I said, Paparazzi, you did good.”
And then he left. He sauntered out of the classroom like he was giving me a sports pep talk instead of telling me that despite how heated the proposed timid kiss got last night, he wasn’t attracted to me in the least. I stood there exactly as he’d left me, jaw dropped, eyes wide, asking myselfdid that just happen?
The tardy bell rang out like the slamming of a court gavel, sealing my fate.Yes, yes it did.
* * *
My blue-light blocking glasses gave the webpage in front of me the faintest tinge of yellow, but a smidge of a headache was inching its way through after hour three of staring at my computer screen. After school, I sent in the baby announcement webpage for client review—which got a 5-star approval and a $10 tip—and began working on a site mockup. I offered the mockups on my website so clients could see what my range of abilities were, and partly because I was addicted to the site building process.
This one was a bit of a bigger build, with a five-page design and custom HTML. I created the mockup with the idea of it being a culinary blog. Using mocha brown, olive green, and bright orange color scheme, I established the contact page with clean and professional fonts, the 301 redirects, and created a faux blog post with a recipe I’d gotten from one of Dad’s cookbooks he’d left behind.
Probably more in-depth than it needed to be, honestly, but once I got started, it was hard to stop.
It was also the sort of mind-numbing work that I could do without my thoughts straying in a million other directions, which was fitting for the current state of my life.
