“No,” I tell her with a sardonic laugh. “I’m listening, but I’m paying attention to more than just the words you’re saying. And the way it feels every time we’re together, the look in your eyes when you finally let down your walls for me, the way you kissed me last night—it all says the opposite. I think you’re not hearing yourself.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t hang out anymore,” she says, cringing in the dark.
“No,” I repeat. “You promised last night that we’d still be friends.”
“You promised me you’d stop trying to …”
“Trying towhat? Prove that I can handle you? Convince you to let me love you?”
Her head whips around, and I see her eyelashes flutter as she blinks away her shock. It’s not the first time I’ve used that word in the last few days, but you’d swear it’s the first time she’s ever heard it.
“Why do you want this so badly, anyway? All we ever do is argue and bicker,” she replies, sounding breathless.
“We’re not arguing. It’s just that you’re always making me beg, which I already told you I don’t mind. And I honestly thought the bickering was your preferred method of flirting, sinceyou outlawed the mushy crap,” I say, pouting, and I could swear the corners of her mouth turn up.
“Fine. We can be friends, but that’s it. I mean it this time,” she concedes after a while.
“Okay,” I agree, and we each grab a snoring wiener dog from the back seat.
“Are we still the kind of friends who send selfies and kiss from time to time?” I venture once I set Oscar down inside the house.
She snorts. “Only in case of emergency. So any selfies you send must include a ‘guess this rash’ caption or a wiener of the four-legged variety.”
“Can we still bicker?”
“I guess,” she says on an exhale.
“Family road trips?”
“Henceforth banned.”
I grunt. “Sleepovers?”
“The minute I say no, you’ll find yourself in some strange predicament, and I’ll have to eat my words. So I’m putting sleepovers back on the in-case-of-emergency list, with a caveat for slutty PJs.”
“What about slutty glasses?”
She growls. “Good night, Athanasius.”
“Good night, Daphne,” I say, grinning. “See you later this week. I’ll make sure I pack my glasses.”
She rolls her eyes and shoves me out the door, practically slamming it in my face. I turn around and lean against it, sighing to myself when her head thumps against it from the other side.
“I heard that, Claire Bear,” I call out, and she pounds on the door with her fist this time.
thursday
2:31 PM
Rowan
Hey, how’s it going?
Claire
It’s the last stretch between spring break and the end of the school year, so you can just assume the answer is “wild.”
Rowan
