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“She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
Dean snorted. “That’s bullshit. Anyone with eyes can see that you two have this unresolved tension that’s only been growing for weeks. Scratch that, anyone withoneeye. Ever since you came back from your little overnight trip, the tension’s switched, but it’s still there. It’sveryobvious.”
“Feelings are harder than math,” Jesse said to his plate.
“Everything is harder than math,” Dean agreed. “But sometimes we have to do hard things in life. Like math homework.”
Jesse’s shoulders drooped. He snuck a glance at Raina, but she hadn’t turned around or glanced at their table once in the half hour he’d been sitting there. Which he knew, because he kept turning to glance at her.
“I tried to talk to her. I wanted to tell her everything, but she wouldn’t let me.”
“You need her side of what happened,” Dean said wisely. “I don’t know what went on between you two, because you haven’t talked about it, and I haven’t pushed. So maybe that’s on me for not asking sooner. But as a general rule, there are always two sides to every story.”
Jesse stared at his pasta, forcing himself to eat another bite. “Remember when you and Gracie were flirting-fighting-pranking each other?”
“How could anyone forget?” Theo snickered.
“Raina was trying to get close to me to hurt you,” Jesse said abruptly, cutting off Theo's laughter. “Gracie apparently had this elaborate plan to get back at Dean, and one of those things was for Raina to pretend to like me. Nicole found out about it and told me.”
Theo froze. “Um, what?”
“That doesn’t sound like Gracie or Raina,” Dean said. “I know the girls cooked up some sort of plan, but Gracie would never ask Raina to do that.”
Jesse shrugged. “I nearly didn’t believe it myself. But why would Nicole lie about it? She knew how I felt about Raina.”
His two cousins shared a glance, an entire conversation happening in the silence. Dean broke first, shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket and turning to Jesse.
“Have you considered that might be the reason why?”
“Nicole doesn’t like me that way,” Jesse said, purposefully ignoring the question.
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Frustrated, Dean yanked a hand from his hoodie pocket and raked it through his curls. “Look—”
Jesse jumped up, waving a hand to cut his cousin off. “Are you saying Nicole’s making it up? Because that’s not like her. Why would she want to hurt me?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Gracie and Raina looking up at his outburst. Gracie patted her friend on the shoulder and stood frowning in their direction; Jesse took that as his cue to gather his things and leave.
Before he hurried out of the dining hall, however, he tossed one last look at his cousins.
“Nicole’s my best friend. She’d never do anything to hurt me, and she knows how upset I’ve been by this. So who are you going to believe—the girl we’ve known for a few months, or the girl who’s practically part of the family?”
Despite his and Raina’s connection, Jesse couldn’t overlook how she’d hurt him. And every time he talked about it with someone, the wounds opened once again. He was tired, so tired of being forced to relive the emotional pain.
All Jesse wanted was to lie in bed and watch bad movies, but he barely got an hour into the first one before he had to get up. The last thing he wanted to do was spend time with Raina, but with a little over a week to go until the bake sale, they’d agreed to meet and hammer out all the logistics.
“Hi, Jesse,” Raina said, smiling at him as she joined him in the common room and pulled out her laptop. Her face glowed as she sat down on one of the couches, looking relaxed and happy. She’d seemed a little wound-up the past week, so he was glad Shabbat had refreshed her. “Ready to get to work?”
“Not really,” Jesse admitted. “But we should probably get this done.”
He powered up his laptop, opening to the shared doc of all the bake sale plans. Gracie had uploaded a simple flier she’d made, and Raina had created a list of the ingredients they needed. While Raina talked through the grocery and set-up plans, Jesse stared at the computer screen, nodding and mhm-ing at random places. If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t know what to do. How was he supposed to act around Raina now, especially since they’d been hanging out more? It was almost back to normal, back to the way it used to be. But how could he just move past what she’d done? The questions tumbled around in his head, but even after all his constant debating, he still didn’t have a single answer.
“Jesse?” Raina asked at some point, causing him to jerk his head up.
He grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m a little distracted today.”
Raina chuckled, closing her laptop. “I see that. Do you want to come back to this another day? There’s not much left to do, this was just a check-in to see if we were missing anything. I can finalize the rest by myself if that works better for you.”
“I want to help,” Jesse said, not even realizing how true the words were until they left his mouth. He wanted to help Raina save the hotel, but he also wanted to help Raina. He didn’t know if he could express that clearly though, so he changed the subject to something he knew he could easily talk about. “Do you know how Trinity was founded?”
