“I’m gonna go,” the warlock says. He gathers up his books and notes, slips everything into a bag affixed to his wheelchair, and then backs away from the table. “See you later?”
“Yeah.” Poppy raises a hand to wave. “Bye, Beckett.”
I move out of the way so Beckett can roll by me, and the look he gives me is so sharp that I know Poppy must’ve mentioned something to him.
Fuck.
“It’s okay,” Poppy says quietly once Beckett is out of earshot, but the look on her face tells a different story.
“It’s not okay. I should have—” I run a hand through my loose hair, which I only now realize is hanging wildly around my face. “I’m a terrible boyfriend.”
“You’re not terrible.” She won’t quite meet my eyes. “You’re just stressed. Finals are coming up, and I know you’re worried about passing.”
I pull a chair up to the table where Beckett was and sink into it with a heavy sigh. “That doesn’t make it okayto blow you off.”
“You didn’t blow me off. You fell asleep.” She finally looks at me, and there’s a heaviness to her lavender eyes that isn’t usually there. “I went to your dorm, but no one answered. I figured something had come up, or—”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, feeling like the worst person in the world. I must’ve slept right through it, and who knows where Felex was. He often wanders at night.
I reach for her hand, and she lets me take it, but her fingers are stiff in mine. “I’m so, so sorry. How can I make it up to you? I’ll do anything.”
For the first time this morning, her lips pull into a very subtle smile. “Anything?”
It feels like she’s giving me a tiny window of opportunity, and I’m not going to let it slip by. So I squeeze her fingers gently and nod once. “Anything. Well, anythinglegal. Unless you’re a mastermind and can make sure I don’t get caught. Which... you might actually be.”
Her smile is getting bigger now. This is good.
“Are you free this Sunday?” she asks.
A bolt of dread goes through me. I was planning on spending my entire Sunday with my head crammed into a textbook, only coming up to eat and breathe, but...
Poppy tips her head a bit, a movement that used to send her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose, but with the modifications I made to the nosepiece, they stay perfectly in place, and something about it makes some of the anxiety unwind from my chest.
She’s been spending time tutoring me all semester. I can skip one day of studying for her.
“Yeah,” I say, twining my fingers through hers. “I’m free. What’s the plan?”
Her smile tilts sideways, looking more comfortable with each moment that passes between us. “It’s a secret,” she says.
Now it’s my turn to smile. “A secret? Like”—I glance around covertly—“asexysecret?”
This gets her to laugh, and she covers her mouth with her free hand, stifling the sound. “No. Not that kind of secret.”
I trace a heart onto her palm with my thumb. “All right, not sexy. Can you give me any hints?”
She thinks for a moment, then smiles. Abigsmile.
“It’ll probably be hairy.”
My smile twists in confusion, and Poppy laughs again—loud enough this time that the librarian pokes her head around the corner to shush us, which makes Poppy’s brown cheeks flare bright red.
“Stop making me laugh,” she whispers.
But I never want to stop making her laugh. I want to spend every day making her smile and laugh until tears—happy ones—stream from her eyes.
“Okay,” I say. “A nonsexy hairy surprise. Can’t say I’m too sure what that means, but you’ve piqued my curiosity, Brains.”
“Good,” she says.
