I shook my head. “I can’t believe his mother bought me this.”
Tahira frowned. “Does she even know you broke up?”
“I mean, I assume?”
“This is creepy,” Tahira said. She looked at Rowan. “If you and I break up and your mother buys me formal clothes, I’m getting a restraining order.”
Rowan chuckled. “My mom only wears pantsuits. I doubt she’d buy you a dress for any reason.” He looked at the clothes on my lap and frowned.
Tahira held up the lehenga top. “Do you think this is a peace offering from Devin’s mother because her son is such a douche?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Rowan, you should have told him Samaya was on a date when he was here,” Tahira said. “With, like, I don’t know. A famous hottie physicist or something. Are there hottie physicists?”
I laughed.
“I wonder if he saw the picture you posted on your Insta.” Tahira looked at me, questioning, as I put the clothes back in the bag. “Who was that guy, anyway? He’s really cute.”
“He’s ... just a guy. He volunteers at the shelter.” I looked at Rowan. “I’m volunteering for a weekly bake sale at a family shelter.”
“That picture didn’t look likejust a guy,” Tahira said. “Don’t forget you told Mom your focus would be on school and nothing else for a while.”
“Don’t worry, he and I made an agreement with parameters and everything.”
I gave them a brief version of my plan with Daniel. Without mentioning the catfisher or Earl’s Whispers and their vendetta against me, I explained Daniel had agreed to pretend to be my boyfriend to make Devin jealous and stop the student body from thinking I was distraught over him. Tahira looked skeptical, and I fully expected her to object to the whole plan, but my phone buzzed before she said anything. It was a text from Daniel.
Daniel:You’ll never guess what I saw on the way home...
A few seconds later a picture came through on my phone. It was a magazine ad for lemon liqueur or something. Basically, a picture of some bright yellow lemons against a black background. The text on the ad readLEMON IS THE NEWBLACK.
It made no sense, but it made me snort a laugh. This whole thing with Daniel could all go up in flames, but if nothing else, I kind of liked my new jock friend.
11
Everyone Wants a Piece of Me
Earl’s Whispers, unfortunately, did not take the bait and repost that picture of me and Daniel from my Instagram. Nor did they even mention me, or Devin Kapadia, on their page on Monday. But that didn’t matter at all, because even if the school’s biggest gossip account didn’t seem to care, enough people saw the picture to make posting it worthwhile.
“Did you see the way Jayden was looking at me in physics?” I asked Cass at lunch. We were sitting at a picnic table in the quad. I’d told Cass and Aimee about my arrangement with Daniel over the weekend.
“I did not,” Cass said, barely looking up. Their thumbs were moving fast, texting someone on their phone.
I grinned. “He was giving me total dagger eyes. He probably thinks I’m, like, betraying his buddy or something. There were so many comments on my Insta—even a bunch from people I don’t even know. And three people stopped me in the hall to ask about the guy on the post.”
Cass looked up, eyes narrowed.
“Who are you texting?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s—”
“Is it Aimee? Hey, do you know if she’s moved fromtalkingto, to maybeseeingJayden? Because if so, I’d need to prepare myself. Jayden is totally #TeamDevin.”
Cass put their phone down. “You do realize that your friends are actually independent people and not just members of your team, right?”
I blinked. “I waskidding, Cass.” Was I coming off as self-absorbed? “Of course you guys can do what you want. I guess Aimee will tell us about her and Jayden when she’s ready.” I paused. “And I know she won’t tell Jayden the truth about me and Daniel, right?”
“Of course she won’t.” Cass rolled their eyes. “Relax, Samaya. We’re your friends. We’ll cover for you. Oh, I asked Nabil in computers about the game dev. He’s going to try to make it.”
