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“So,” Jesse stated. “Partners.”
Raina suddenly found her desk very interesting. “Sure. Partners.”
Jesse made a noise of frustration. “Look, this isn’t going to work if you won’t even look at me.”
Raina snapped her head up, making the mistake of looking into Jesse’s adorable hazel eyes. The bell ringing barely registered as they glared at each other. “Iwon’t even look at you?Youwon’t look at me!”
“I can look at you just fine.”
“So why don’t you?” Raina clenched her fists in her lap. “You haven’t looked at me once since we got back from Theo’s house.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Jesse snapped, grabbing his bag and storming up to Mrs. Dixon’s desk.
Muttering darkly under her breath, Raina followed.
“What do you mean there’s no switching partners?” Jesse was demanding as she approached.
“Exactly that,” Mrs. Dixon replied. “There will be no switching partners. You will learn to work with your partner, or you will fail the assignment. It’s entirely your choice, Mr. Ashcroft.” She turned to Raina. “Ms. Cohen, I’m going to assume you’re here for the same reason. There will be no switching partners; you two will have to learn to work together.”
“Fine,” Jesse spat, glaring at Raina as he shoved past her and left the room.
Raina smiled apologetically at her teacher. “Thank you, have a nice day.” Then she shouldered her bag and followed Jesse out of the room.
* * *
“She can’t fucking do this,” Jesse ranted, pacing back and forth around his dorm later that evening. “Shecan’t! There has to be some way around this.”
Nicole shrugged from where she was lounging on Jesse’s bed, watching some video. Dean and Theo, on their own beds, ignored the two friends and kept reading their respective books.
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do, Jes. Dixon’s a meddler. She told me I have to tutor Cohen.”
Jesse gaped at his best friend. He wasn’t sure what he should focus on first—the fact Nicole had to tutorRainaor the fact that Raina was doing poorly enough to need a tutor in the first place. “InEnglish?”
“Yeah. I’m not happy about it, but Dixon said if I do it, she won’t tell the administration I haven’t been wearing my tie to class.”
“You have to suck it up and work with Raina,” Theo chimed in, tossing his theater history book aside. “Besides, you two were friends! What happened?”
Jesse shared a dark look with Nicole. His cousins were there when Nicole had blurted out that Raina had a crush on him, but it had only been later that Nicole had told him the true extent of Raina’s feelings. He’d kept it to himself, not wanting to hurt his cousins’ perception of his ex-friend/crush.
“Yeah, well, some people aren’t meant to be friends.”
“Come on,” Dean encouraged, barely lifting his eyes from his book as he spoke. “You’re overreacting. Obviously, I don’t know the whole story, but can’t you put whatever happened with Raina aside long enough to complete this project? Pick an easy topic and you’ll be done in a few days. Then, you can go back to pretending Raina doesn’t exist, and you can keep sending each other sad looks.”
“I don’t send Raina sad looks.”
Dean put his book down this time. “Tomato, tomah-to. Look, I’m going to meet Gracie downstairs, but you’ll be fine. It’s all going to work out, okay?”
Jesse looked away. “Remind me who you got, Nic?” he asked.
“Zinnia Travers. She’s one of my new roommates. She’s nice, and I think we’ll work well together.”
“Lucky you,” Theo complained. “I haveOliver. He’s an asshole and a pain in the butt.”
Nicole made an amused noise. “So you’ll say ‘asshole’ but not ‘pain in the ass’?”
“I’ll say whatever I want,” Theo replied haughtily. He flopped back down on his bed and opened his laptop.
Jesse joined Nicole on the bed, leaning his head on her shoulder. “What should I do?”
