Several heads snap up from their desks and look in our direction. Kennedy’s eyes go huge, she reaches out and slams her hand over my mouth in an attempt to quiet me. Her face and chest are red. She takes a step further into my space frantically shushing me, “Isweartogodiamgoingtokillyou” she mumbles out through clenched teeth.
I grab her wrist and pull her hand down from my face, grinning. Her wrist is small in my hand and her skin is shockingly soft. She looks at me, then flicks her eyes down to where my fingers are still circled around her wrist. I drop her hand and turn myself back toward my screen, my stomach strangely tightening and heart beating hard in my chest. I place my hands on the keyboard and straighten my spine as much as I can. I raise my eyebrows and say in my best butler impression, “If you'll excuse me ma'am, I have work that needs to be done.”
She huffs. “I doubt that. What work are you doing?” She leans forward to look at my screen. Suddenly this isn't fun anymore. I reach out to close my laptop before she can see but it's too late.
“Wait, what is this? Are you applying to physical therapy school? As in after you graduate? When you’re supposed to be playing for the Panthers?”
Fuuuuck.I run my hands up over my eyes and through my hair. “I don’t know yet. Maybe. I’m thinking about it. But I haven't told anyone yet. I’m still figuring it out.”
She nods. Turns to me, tucks her lips in between her teeth and makes a locking motion with her hand. She then throws the key to the lock behind her shoulder and smiles.
“That’s really cool. I feel like you’d be good at that,” she says. “I promise I won’t tell anyone, your secret is safe with me.”
I’m a little lost for words. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t that. “Miranda doesn’t know,” I blurt out, trying to stress the fact that she can’t tell anyone.
A serious look crosses her face and she nods, “I won’t say anything.”
All of a sudden that strange feeling in my stomach tightens more, “Thanks.”
She looks down at me, smiling and cocks her head to one side. “Will,” she says in a whisper, then leans down so her mouth is next to my ear, sending chills down the side of my neck, “I’m for real asking you to stop distracting me. I’m taking my first LSAT next week so I need to study.”
She stands back up, hands crossed over her chest and looking at me. “Okay,I won’t,” I say, still feeling that low place in my belly tightening and swooping. She nods once and starts to turn away to go back to her desk. “Wait,” I say, surprising myself a little. She angles her body in my direction and raises her eyebrows on a silent question. “Come study with me, we can do your weird timer method thing?”
“Fine,” she says, the corner of her lips tugging up, “but I’m serious, if you start distracting me too much, I will leave.”
“I would expect nothing less,” I say back.
She walks back to her study desk and gathers up her things before heading back toward me. I take a slow breath, feeling nervous, something I am not used to feeling around Kennedy at all.
Chapter Five
Kennedy
“Start your stupid timer,” Will says next to me as if we haven’t been doing the timer method our whole lives. My mom swears by it, and therefore Lucy, Will and Miranda’s mom swears by it too. My mom’s favorite saying is that she lives and dies by the timer. And, quite frankly, I agree. The timer is the singular reason I get anything done. I’ve even started using the timer method at my internship and I was recently told I was “a machine” when it came to administrative tasks.
I set the timer on my phone for thirty minutes and get to work on finishing up my macro econ chapter. Will and I work in silence side by side for the duration of the timer and I’m less than two pages away from finishing the chapter when the alarm goes off. If I were by myself I’d keep going, set another thirty minutes and then take a break, but since I’m with Will, I’d rather not. I reset the timer on my phone for ten minutes then lean over into his space trying to read what he has. “Don’t look at my screen,” he whispers, trying to block his screen with his hands.
“Show me how much progress you’ve made,” I whisper back, trying to tug his hands down from the screen.
He elbows me out of his way and closes his laptop, “It's not ready yet,” he whispers way more seriously than I was expecting.
“Hey,” I whisper back, “I was just messing with you. I don’t care how much progress you made.”
He scratches the back of his neck, looking awkward and self conscious. “I know.”
There is a tightness in my chest and I don’t really know what to say. I forget how self conscious Will gets about anything he perceives as a representation of his intelligence. I think it's because Miranda tends to outshine Will academically. It's not like Will isn't smart, he is, it's just that Miranda issmart.She’s the type of person that never needs to study and aces nearly every exam. It would be obnoxious if it wasn’t so impressive.
Unsure how to respond, I say, “Have you finished the astronomy quiz for this week yet?”
He shakes his head no, “Why, you want to take it together?” I agree and pull out my laptop from my bag while he navigates to the quiz on the online portal. My “rest” timer alarm goes off, causing my phone to vibrate on the desk between us. I tap the end button and don’t restart the timer, accepting that I probably won’t get as much studying done today as I had originally planned, and strangely don’t feel too upset about it.
I’m logging into the online portal when Will scoots his chair closer to me. His elbow is bumping up against mine and neither of us moves away. We start on question one together, and of course, the questions are randomized. But we both look through our notes and help the other with each question.
By the sixth question I am extremely aware of Will’s body next to mine. His knee is bumping against my bare thigh and it's making me slightly nervous.
Because I am so aware of all the places Will’s body is touching my own, I am acutely aware of what he’s doing next to me, to an almost painful degree. He keeps reaching down and pressing his knuckles into the side of his knee and up the outside of his thigh. He’s not saying anything about it, but he keeps grimacing every few seconds too.
“Your knee bothering you?”
