I got out of the car and then poked my head through the open window.
“Wait,” I ordered.
“What the fuck is it now?” I heard him whine.
“I told you, wait here.”
I ran inside to get his uniform.
When I came back outside, I found him leaning on the car.
“Well?” he prodded as he saw me stand still in front of the door.
I walked down the steps, came closer, my eyes sliding down his sculpted abs, which were wrapped in the blood-stained T-shirt.
“Are you bleeding?” I pointed at his chest.
“You only treated my face. Remember?” Then he looked at me. His dark eyes swallowed me up in an instant. Something grabbed my stomach. It was a feeling of unexpected lightness.No, June. All that secondhand smoke was getting to my head.
James threw the vape pen away and licked his split lip.
“So? I don’t have all night, White,” he said impatiently.
“Shh!Be quiet.”
I glanced upstairs, where my mom would immediately appear once she heard loud voices.
“Here.”
I handed him his uniform, and he raised his eyebrows.
“And my sweatshirt?”
“Um, I still have to wash it.”
“It looks better on you,” he muttered under his breath so quietly that I thought I didn’t hear him right. Where’d the repulsion he felt around me go?
“What?”
“I said no problem.” He shut the conversation down with a husky, mellow, hoarse tone.
Was that how he talked to everyone else? No, he definitely wasn’t being polite. My brain must’ve been clouded right then. I turned away from him without saying goodbye.
“White?” Oh no.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t mention it, eh.”
I looked at the ground, suppressing a smile, then leaned on the doorjamb.
“Go home. You need sleep, James.”
>> <<
I spent the next day studying. I missed two calls from William that afternoon and pretended not to see them. I didn’t want any distractions. I’d call him back when I finished the pages I planned on. Around six, I bolted into the kitchen like a ferocious beast in search of food.
I couldn’t handle another ten minutes of chemistry without getting some sugar in me.
