“You stopped texting me.”
“Yeah, because you never texted me back.”
I push my hair out of my face. “I was grounded and I needed to think.”
“You had to know you’d get suspended for hitting Jaden.”
“I didn’t really think about it at the time. And Principal Carr suspended me for the skirt, too.”
“For real?”
“Yep.”
“Asshole. Though you did look . . .” She trails off, biting her lower lip.
“I did look what?”
A smile ghosts over her mouth. “Sexy as hell. But you look sexy as hell in anything.”
My stomach handsprings down to my feet.
“Sorry,” she says, lacing her hands together. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You’re not allowed to think I’m pretty?”
She frowns. “No. I just . . . I don’t know.”
“Oh, right. Tess.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Who the hell is she, anyway?”
Charlie sighs, dragging both hands through her hair. It sticks up everywhere, dark mountains and valleys, and it’s so adorable it makes my teeth ache.
“I met her at that pizza night I went to a few weeks ago for my dad’s school. Her mom’s a math teacher there.”
“Cute. Are you together?”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“You know what. Talk to me like you’re interested when you’re actually pissed.”
“I’m not pissed—?I just want to know who she is.”
Charlie fiddles with the peeling plastic rim of the table and shakes her head. Only when her eyes are off me do I register the throbbing in my fingers from balling them into tight fists, trying to hold all these different threads of my life together. But they’re all coming unraveled.
“You wanted this,” she whispers. “And you have Alex.”
“I don’t have him. We’re just friends.”
“You something him.”
Hurt blankets her words, but I don’t know what to say. When I broke up with Charlie, it seemed smart and safe, for both of us. I didn’t think I could ever be a good girlfriend to Charlie. So I did want this. But I didn’t want this. I brush my hand over her back, feeling her breaths push against my fingertips.
Romance and friendship blur with Charlie and me. Always have. It’s hard to tell the difference. It’s hard to tell which is more important. It’s even harder to tell if one actually has to be more important than the other with us. But Charlie and me, we’ll always be more than something.
