I smacked Poppy’s arm. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about that?”
She rubbed at her arm even though she probably barely felt the hit through her jean jacket. “Because I didn’t know you! You hadn’t bribed me to be your friend yet when it happened.”
“I did not bribe you to be my friend!”
“No, you just bribed the dorm administration to make her your roommate so she was forced to be your friend,” Saylor said with a grin. “Totally different.”
I pointed an accusing finger in her direction. “You can’t prove I did that.”
Saylor and Poppy both snorted in their clear disbelief, but I didn’t give in. Besides, it wasn’t like I actually bribed anyone. I just put Poppy’s name in my roommate request form and happened to mention that we were connected by Take Five—my brother and her sister’s boyfriend were in the band together—and hoped that it would be enough to convince them to put us together, even if Poppy didn’t request me.
Evidently, it worked.
At first, I felt bad for stealing her from Saylor, her previous roommate, but in the end we all benefitted from it. Saylor’s new roommate ended up not coming to the school after all, so she got a double room to herself, which we all used as our private common room now. It was a win-win.
“Well, hello there, ladies.” I practically jumped out of my skin at Tino’s voice coming from behind me. Which, unfortunately, meant that I jumped back into him and the only thing thatstopped me from falling for the second time that day was Tino wrapping his arms around my waist.
I froze, having an immediate flashback to the moment in the store, when I’d spun around and found Tino practically pressed against me. If anyone else had been paying attention then—and thank goodness they weren’t—it probably would have looked like we were kissing.
Not that I was thinking about kissing Tino.
Nope. Never. Absolutely not.
Except that his arms around my waist now were making tingles go up and down my spine in a way I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with. I practically threw myself in the opposite direction to get away from it and ended up slamming straight into Poppy instead. She screeched as she stumbled backwards into the blackboard listing the menu for tonight—ravioli for dinner and ice cream sundaes for dessert—and went toppling over with it, while arms wrapped around my waist for a second time in as many minutes, pulling me back against a hard chest and stopping me from sprawling onto the floor with my best friend.
The whole cafeteria went deathly silent.
“I feel like it’s important to mention,” Tino said in a strangled voice, “that was not planned either.”
I shoved his hands off me and stepped away, regretting it only slightly as I lost the warmth from his body, and reached a hand out to help Poppy to her feet. One of the cafeteria workers came by to put the sign back up and slowly, the hum of conversation started up again around us, stopping the crawling feeling on my neck that came with being stared at.
As we got back in line, Tino slid against the wall, cutting in front and standing in front of us.
“I’m really sorry about that,” he told Poppy. She just smiled back and said it was fine—Poppy didn’t have an angry or grudge-keeping bone in her body.
“You’re cutting in line,” I told Tino matter-of-factly. Then I shoved him aside to step forward, trying to put any thoughts of tingles or almost-kisses out of my mind.
“You say that like you don’t want me to hang out with you.” Then he pushed his way forward again, coming to a stop in front of me. He smiled like he was waiting for me to shove him aside again, which made me hesitate to do it. I hated for him to think that I was predictable.
He stuck his hands in the front pocket of his Hartwell Academy hoodie, looking entirely like someone who belonged on the front page of the school pamphlet. I wouldn’t be surprised if the school ever chose to use his photo for that, because—as much as I loathed to admit it—Tino was actually pretty handsome. His light brown hair had these curls that looked so soft that I sometimes wished I could run my hands through it. He had eyes that would defy anyone who said brown eyes were boring, and don’t even get me started on the dimple on his cheek when he smiled. Pair all of that with his hockey skills and Tino was almost… dreamy.
Of course, that was information nobody could ever torture out of me, and if anybody asked me if I thought he was cute, I would laugh in their face. I had to keep up appearances.
I blinked, realizing that I’d been staring at him blankly for too long. Had he noticed? He probably had, but I was sure he didn’t know that I was mentally drooling over his good looks. No, he probably thought that I was imagining ten different ways I could kill him and make it look like an accident—which wasn’t all too far off from how I was feeling about him right now. It just so happened that noticing how good he looked sometimes derailed the hatred thoughts.
It was complicated, okay?
“That’s because I don’t want to hang out with you,” I told him. “I know that must be hard for you to understand.”
“It really is. I mean, given that I’m such a delight to be around.”
“You mean aside from when you slam doors into my face or send my friend flying onto the floor?”
“I told you it was an accident!”
“Uh-huh.” I bumped my shoulder against his, pushing him out of the way as we reached the front of the line and held out my tray for food. Tino got temporarily lost in the shuffle as Poppy and Saylor got their food behind me, but as soon as I was moving on to the next station, he was right in front of me again, walking backwards and resting his tray casually on one hand. It was clear that he thought there was no chance in hell he would ever accidentally run into somebody and spill his food everywhere. Little did he know that I was gauging the distance between him and the girl in front of him, wondering if a small bump of my hip would send him into her.
But I’d had enough of people falling over for one day, so I just grabbed a cup and moved toward the soda machines, hoping Tino would turn at the salad bar. He ate cherry tomatoes with every meal—something I couldn’t even begin to understand—but he bypassed them completely as he followed me. I tried to act like I hadn’t noticed because seriously, why was I thinking about his eating habits?
