“Heck, yeah!” He throws me a smile. “Later, Rave.” And he dashes away before I can say anything.
“Does the guy have a death wish?” I grumble.
Beck pats my arm. “It happens to the best of us. Unfortunately, you’ve been Jaspered.”
“Jaspered?”
“It means Jasper likes you,” Kylen tells me. “He only annoys people that he likes.” His eyes widen. “I m-mean, not like you likethat. I only meant he thinks you’re cool.”
My face flushes for some reason. Maybe because Kylen and I are talking about someonelikingme? “Oh, um, that’s good to know,” I mutter.
The sofa grows quiet.
Beck frowns. “Why did things get so weird all of a sudden?”
“I should get going,” I say as I stand. “I still have some homework to do.”
“Lame,” Beck says.
Kylen gives him a look. “Some of us think it’s important to do their homework.” His gaze moves to me. “Beck had a double economics class today and has a quiz tomorrow. Ask him if he’s going to study.”
“Are you going to study?” I ask.
“Absolutely not,” he says. “I plan to have my good bud Ky here give me a crash course first thing in the morning.” He messes up Kylen’s hair. “Darn, man. How do you have such thick hair?”
I get a flashback to when I touched his hair for the first time and marveled at how soft it was.
I quickly shove the memory away.
“I’ll see you guys around,” I tell them. “Good night.”
“‘Night,” Beck wishes.
“Good night, Raven,” Kylen says.
I nod to them before heading to the exit of the room. Just as I pass through the doorway, Kylen calls, “Raven?”
I turn around and find that he’s right behind me.
“Hey,” he says with a nervous smile. “I was hoping we could talk?”
It takes all I have not to flee.No, I don’t want to talk to you, Kylen Barrett. What I really wanted from the moment I saw you walk into the auditorium was to pretend you don’t exist. But you had to ruin everything by saying hi.
“Uh…okay,” I say.
He smiles again, still nervously. “Thanks.” He clears his throat as he averts his gaze to the floor. “What happened at camp…” He slowly raises his eyes to me. “You and I. It was…”
“Silly.” The word bursts out of my mouth before I can stop it.
His brows fly up. “What? I mean, y-yeah, it was silly…”
“We were just stupid kids,” I continue, no idea why these words continue to shoot out of my mouth.
“Yeah, totally,” he says. “Stupid kids. What did we know about…?” He clears his throat. “I’m glad we feel the same way because…well, I was hoping we could be friends.”
I look into those green eyes, eyes that are always so full of life and enthusiasm. Then my eyes lower to his mouth that is always smiling in that crooked or sweet way that causes so manyemotions to pass through my body. He wants to be friends?Friends. Does he really think we can be buddies after everything we’ve been through? Every time he’s near me, I’m brought back to that summer. After trying so hard to get over it and put it behind me andmove onwith my life, he decided to drop in at my school and drag everything back to the surface. If he got over everything so easily and thinks we can actually be friends, it almost makes everything I went through so not worth it.
“I don’t want to be friends,” I say.
