Never Sweeter(21)

It made her think insane things, like he doesn’t even look that way at women he dates.

Before she shook it off. They were just having fun, that was all. He spun her back into his arms, but spinning into his arms didn’t mean anything. They were dancing; you were supposed to do that when you were dancing. And you were supposed to hold someone the way he was currently holding her, so tight to his body she could feel every curve and groove. She could feel each breath he took, as short and harsh seeming as her own. But most of all, she could see how little blue there was left in his eyes.

They were almost all pupil, as black as five past midnight.

And she knew this because she was staring up at him just as hard as he was staring down at her. She couldn’t seem to look away, as though he had somehow hypnotized her with dancing or smiling or whatever else it was that he had done here. Something, she thought. Something that made her skin feel seared and her head spin. She had to stop it before it got any worse.

Though she felt foolish after she had.

She practically ripped herself away from him, fumbling over words like Lydia is probably wondering where I got to. They sounded silly coming out, like he had done something seriously untoward. Put a hand up your skirt, her mind supplied, but that only deepened her blush. He hadn’t done anything of the sort, and to even think he might was beyond absurd. Not only was he not that sort of guy, she had all the sexual allure of a diseased snail to him.

And that would never change.

She was safe, completely safe.

Yet still, she ran.





Chapter 9


She kept her head down when he approached their table in the library. It seemed best tothat way, he couldn’t easily ask her why she had run off like that. He would have to wait until she was completely calm and ready. She might even get a chance to breathe and come up with something casual in the meantime. Something like I just remembered I left my curling iron on. It was even possible that he would buy it, considering how he took his seat. He just did it silently, effortlessly, as though none of this was a big deal.

Girls panicked and fled from him all the time.

It was fine, it was fine.

And then came the note.

Did I do something wrong the other night?

She tried to ignore it, she really did. But there was just something so vulnerable about his writinghe’d pressed own way too hard, and crossed out three lines before hitting on the right one. Plus he had underlined wrong, as though aware of how bad he could be.

She just couldn’t avoid him, or answer him meanly.

No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I really needed to go, she wrote on the back of the paper he had passed her. Followed by a hastily scribbled answer, on his side.

It was more the speed you went at that concerned me.

I didn’t go that fast. I just sort of jogged a little.

You hate jogging. It makes your boobs punch you.

How do you know that?

I overheard you tell Becky Rivero.

So you were just always listening in high school.

You make it sound like I bugged your bedroom.

Did you?

Yeah. Also there was that one time I climbed in the window when you were sleeping and watched you creepily from a corner. Don’t worry though, I’m the hero of this story so it was totally romantic.

She paused there, eyes running over those words again and again. Every bit of sense in her head saying he was fooling around. Then every other bit of sense telling her to panic now.

We should probably get back to work.

Scared you with that romantic thing huh?

I wouldn’t say scared exactly.

Good, because I didn’t mean it like that.

Of course you didn’t mean it like that.

It was just a joke, you know, because of Twilight.

He had drawn little cartoon vampires around the word, but she didn’t feel comforted. She felt unsettled, somehow, as though someone had exchanged her clothes for ones two sizes too small.

I know. Obviously I know that. You spent four years telling me how hideous and unappealing I am to all mankind. I’m not likely to think you suddenly want to date me.

Right. Exactly. It would be pretty weird.

Extremely weird. And ridiculous.

Oh totally ridiculous.

Preposterous, even, she wrote sloppily in the margins of his sidebecause that was what they’d started to do now. Somewhere in the middle they’d descended into rushed scribbles all around the edges of each other’s words, diagonal and upside down and scrawled in circles.

But that only made his pause more obvious.

His pen hovered, then touched the paper, then went back to hovering. He wrote a word and crossed it out, like he had at the startonly worse than that. Now he seemed pained by it, as though the words were sticking to the insides of his fingers. They wouldn’t flow down the pen, to the point where he just had to talk.