Merit rolls her eyes at my nonexistent table manners. “Sure, it’s not. You always talk about girls. This is the first week in months where you haven’t bragged about some bangin’ sexual escapade. Which, if my hypothesis is correct—and it usually is—means you have your eye on someone who’s more than some meaningless hookup.”
“Maybe I’ve taken a vow of celibacy.”
“You? I’ll believe that when pigs fly.”
Dammit. Why do I have to be cursed with such a high sex drive? Maybe that’s why I’m so off—I’m not getting laid enough. Oh my God. My worst nightmare is slowly becoming my new reality. I’m depriving women of the Eighth Wonder of the World: my penis. That’s a crime against humanity.
“She’s not anything,” I finally argue, doing my best to fend off whatever Jedi mind tricks Merit is using on me. The closershe gets to exhuming the truth, the harder it is to herd my runaway nerves.
“What’s her naaame?” she sing-songs.
“Not important,” I grumble.
“Fine. What class do you two have together?”
“Again, not important.”
With a pout, Merit slouches against her makeshift seat—i.e. Crew’s chest. He gives her a comforting squeeze on the shoulder. “Don’t take it personally, Princess. You know Knox doesn’t play nice.”
I reach for the half-full pitcher and begin to fill up my glass again, though I doubt the piss-flavored liquid will slake my thirst at all. It’s a distraction. A regrettable distraction that I’ll pay for tomorrow morning.
Now, I can’t explain what happens next. Call it my Spidey senses, but I get this inexplicable urge to look behind me, and when I do, Staten Renault is depositing her purse on a table a few feet away from us. A table which happens to be occupied by basketball point guard, Leif Kennedy. What one of the most popular guys is doing with her, I have no idea, but envy hacks me to the very bone, sloughing off flesh and tissue with the precision of a hunting knife.
“Maybe he doesn’t need to provide a name after all,” Harlan chimes in, gesturing to my kill-all death glare pointed directly at Mr. Popular.
Staten is laughing at something he’s saying. I can’t hear them. She looks so…happy, carefree. I didn’t even know she was capable of feeling anything other than herculean rage. Why am I so messed up about this? She clearly wants nothing to do with me, and I have more important things to focus my efforts on.
She’s dressed in a black-and-white checkered sweater vest over a long-sleeved button-up, perpetuating a fantasy that I, in good conscience, can never disclose out loud. A pleated,nightshade-colored skirt adorns her legs—stopping mid-thigh—and her ensemble is paired with matching combat boots and knee-high socks that look a bit too warm for the temperature of the bar.
Nevertheless, my downstairs area is getting a clearlymisguidedidea of how the night is going to end, and no, it doesn’t involve me unraveling the hot-as-hell ribbon in her hair. Her whole appearance is understated, and there’s something refreshing about the way that she strays from the spotlight. Almost as if shewantsto be invisible to the rest of the world.
But I see her—I even see the miniscule constellation of barely there freckles scattered over her face.
Irelyn mirrors my line of vision, sucking her teeth. “Ooh, is this mystery girl Staten Renault?”
Fuck. The sound of her name makes me want to hurl. My three drinks are finally starting to catch up with me, and my stomach curdles from the toxic influx. I don’t know how to play this off. I don’t think I can.
Just be honest with your friends, Knox. Staten and you have class together. That’s all. There’s nothing else going on. Give them enough information so that they’ll stop asking questions.
I wrestle back a sigh. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“And miss an opportunity to watch you squirm? Nah.”
Pish, I’m notsquirming. I’m observing…from afar. With a hint of homicidal tendencies toward my newly proclaimed archnemesis: Golden Boy Leif Kennedy. Dude is annoyingly virtuous. Everyone likes him—students, teachers, middle-aged moms who want to divorce their incompetent husbands but don’t have the guts to. He’s everything I’m not, which makes sense as to why Staten would be hanging around someone like him.
“I have Abnormal Psychology with Staten. She’s really nice,” Foster vouches, his effort to help ironically making things worse as he rubs salt into the hemorrhaging wound.
I get it. I turned the nicest girl on the planet evil.
I continue to stalk Staten’s every movement, indignation snowballing into an impassable roadblock that stunts the rabbiting of my heart. Her glossy lips quirk into a rare smile, and she tucks her bangs shyly behind her ear, hanging on to every—probably idiotic—word that comes out of Leif’s fat mouth.
Now, I may not be book smart, but I’ve stockpiled some street smarts in my twenty-one years of life, and I can disassemble a flirtatious interaction with my fucking eyes closed. Let me break it down in David Attenborough terms.
First: the unsuspecting male. A Neanderthal. Usually oblivious to the advances of the female; will continue to talk despite having nothing interesting to say. Second: the sex-hungry female. A bloodthirsty predator. Uses suggestive body language to lure a mate—pronounced cleavage, bedroom eyes, close proximity. Due to the male’s low IQ, the female’s efforts of courting could be mistaken for friendly conversation. This is exceptionally prominent when said female is in a rut—or, as we humans say, the friend zone. And judging by the closed-off body language of the male, he has yet to understand the gravity of the situation.
For someone who knocked me on my ass earlier, Staten seems to have zero game. Maybe it was easier for her to pretend with me.
Sutton, slowly inching into my periphery, stares at the awkward exchange like he’s watching a nature documentary, the crunch of kettle-baked potato chips assaulting my eardrums. “What the hell is she doing?” he muffles around his food.
