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“I was at Colt’s. Then picked up Lennon,” Caleb replies. “You can choose whatever colors you want, Mom.”
Mrs. Winters fixes her gaze on me. I experience the uncomfortable sensation of being closely scrutinized and found lacking. “You’re the Matthews girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Winters, I’m Lennon Matthews,” I reply. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You didn’t mention you were having a visitor tonight, Caleb.”
I mimic Mrs. Winters’s cool indifference. “Caleb and I have a school project to work on.”
Caleb’s mother looks relieved to hear I’m here on a strictly academic basis. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” She sweeps out of the front entryway as dramatically as she appeared.
“I feel surprised,” I tell Caleb.
He grins. “Yeah, my mom is probably not the best example. She tried to acclimate to living here by becoming the snobbiest snob of them all.”
Caleb walks toward the central staircase. I trail behind him, registering the inside of the house for the first time. It’s similar to the minimalist exterior of the house but paired with polar contrasts. The ivory walls meld into ebony floorboards. The floors are dotted with woven rugs, and the white painted plaster is covered with black-and-white framed photographs.
Once we reach the top of the stairs, Caleb turns right, leading me down a long hallway. It has a similar color scheme, interrupted by the occasional flash of color. An oil painting of the Tuscan countryside here, a vase of blue hydrangeas there. Finally, Caleb pushes open a door at the end of the hall.
I let out a low whistle as I walk inside. “Ran out of money to pay the interior decorator?”
His chuckle vibrates in my chest, low and husky. “Decorating my own room was a bribe for moving here.”
After the carefully matched, neutral tones in the rest of the house, Caleb’s room is an assault to the eyes. The walls are painted an outrageous shade of red; one that reminds me of expensive sports cars or outlandish flowers. The bold color is mostly covered by posters depicting various logos, bands, and baseball players. Lots and lots of baseball players.
There’s a massive four-poster bed in the center of the room, pushed up against the wall between two windows that are exposed to the exterior of the house. A desk sits to the right, and a dresser to the left. Just past the dresser, there’s a door that I can see leads to an attached bathroom.
“You did a great job,” I tell Caleb dryly, dropping my heavy backpack down next to his desk.
Caleb disregards the sarcasm in my voice. “Thanks.” He drops down on the bench at the end of the massive bed, so I take a seat at his desk.
It doesn’t take long to run through the questions Simon gave me. Caleb answers them seriously, and in a manner that tells me these are the types of questions one is actually supposed to ask in a sports interview. Suggesting Simon should have been the one writing this article all along. But neither of us bring that up.
I take careful notes recording his answers, knowing I won’t remember the baseball jargon otherwise.
After the interview questions are finished, we switch to English. It’s shockingly easy. Past project partners were always content to let me do the bulk of the assignment, but working with Caleb feels like completing a project with a clone of myself.
I even find myself saying, “Yeah, that’s a great idea.”
Caleb looks at me with shock. “Did you just compliment me?”
I roll my eyes. “I can think you’re smartandan annoying, entitled jock, okay? Plus, you were the one who made certain I knew you’d knocked me out of first in our class.”
He shoots me a triumphant grin that reminds me I hadn’t exactly conceded that fact to him. “You were first?”
“You knew that.”
“You confirmed it.”
“Well, don’t get too comfortable,” I retort. “We still have one semester left, and I fully intend to finish first.”
“Game on, Matthews,” Caleb says with a smirk.
By the time we finish outlining our paper, I know we’re way ahead of everyone else in our class. The paper’s not due for another month, and the accompanying presentation is a few weeks after that.
Caleb realizes the same. “We’re basically done,” he tells me. “We can meet again in a couple of weeks.” I wait for the dread to accompany his words, but it doesn’t appear in the pit of my stomach.
“Okay,” I reply.
