After last night, I didn’t know how to look at him. Or if he’d even look back.
I decided to focus on something else and started scribbling quickly in my notebook before turning it toward Jennie and Alex.
Free period?
Alex leaned back on the bench, a grin already tugging at his lips. “Sort of. Jennie wanted to skip.”
“I did not!” Jennie gasped, snapping her head toward him. Her pencil froze midair. “It’s not skipping if it’s educational.”
Alex laughed under his breath. “Uh-huh. Sure. You ‘educationally’ ditched because the two art classes got merged, and you hate people.”
Jennie huffed, cheeks pink. “It was packed! You couldn’t even breathe in there; everyone was hovering, bumping into each other. I need space to draw, not elbows in my ribs.”
I bit back a small smile, shaking my head as Jennie shot him a glare that didn’t hold any real heat.
They seem to always be bickering and teasing, yet so effortlessly comfortable around each other.
I wrote down:Still counts as skipping.
Jennie glanced at it, gasped dramatically, and looked at me like I’d just betrayed her.
“Et tu, Aurora?”
Alex was grinning beside her. “She’s right, though.”
Jennie elbowed him lightly, but her laugh broke through, anyway. “Fine, fine. Maybe I didn’t feel like being in class today.”
I smiled at that, quiet and small. It was nice seeing people who could be soft without fearing what it’d cost them.
But from the corner of my eye, I could see movement down on the field. Joshua was turning around.
His gaze flicked over the bleachers, past the players, straight to me. And just like that, the easy warmth in my chest turned to nerves.
Jennie was shading in the outline of the goalpost when she spoke again, casual, like it was nothing.
“Oh, I was supposed to have a signing lesson with Lockhart today,” she muttered, lips pursed as she squinted down at her sketch. “Guess I’ll do it after practice or something.”
My pen stilled mid-sentence.
…Signing lesson?
Jennie didn’t notice the way I froze, or how the pen nearly slipped out of my fingers.
Signing.
As in sign language.
My gaze flicked automatically to the field, to him.
Joshua Lockhart.
Tall, broad-shouldered, impossible to read.
The same Joshua who once made me feel like I didn’t belong in a room, let alone beside him.
Learning to sign.
Why?
