I contemplate lying to her.
I don’t.
“Yeah, I have.”
She gnaws on her lower lip in contemplation, hands trembling as if she’s a first-time phlebotomist trying to tap a vein that won’t show itself. “So, what do I do? How do I let him know that I’m interested?”
“You flirt with him,” I say matter-of-factly.
“Flirt…with him?”
Jesus. It’s worse than I thought.
“Yeah, you know—compliment him, touch him.”
“I’ve never flirted with anyone before,” she mumbles quietly, shame a thorn in her voice that I wish I could pick out.
I want to tell her that she’s flirted withmebefore, but the fact that she doesn’t remember—or maybe didn’t perceive it that way—informs me she didn’t mean to. Maybe it was all just friendly banter, and I transformed it into something to satisfy my basal wants.
I, for the first time in my life, misread a girl coming onto me. I’m hopeless.
Although itkillsme to imagine Staten all over Leif—mapping his skin in teeth impressions and tongue marks—I shove my frisson of jealousy far into the recesses of my mind, determined to lock it away for the foreseeable future. “It’s all in the eye contact, Ace.”
“I don’t…”
I tip her chin up so our eyes meet, and she freezes under my touch, her pupils dilating in the canary-feathered sunlight of the overripe afternoon.
In my head, I count the spray of freckles on her flawless skin, tabbing that number in my head so I can reconstruct this memory when I’m not with her. She’s so pliant, so trusting.
“You look fucking incredible today, Staten,” I drawl with a rasp that’s been known to melt the legs of even the toughest Knox-proof women, my thumb skirting the length of her jaw.
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t even say anything. She just holds my gaze—a gradual blush creeping into her cheeks—her brain trying to delineate what’s for show and what holds an inkling of truth.
All of it is true.
“Is this a part of the lesson?” she stammers, her full, thick lashes tickling her brow bone.
“Do you want it to be?”
“Fuck, Knox. Don’t say that.”
A high-voltage grin. “I’m just complimenting my fake girlfriend.”
Her chest heaves once, twice, those pupils of hers swallowing the puce rings of her irises. “This doesn’t feel fake.”
“Then I’m doing my job right,” I respond.
Like a bungee cord snapping in midair, the fantasy dematerializes, and I sever eye contact. Not because I want to, but because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to free myself from her stare the longer I let myself sink into my own homespun, habit-forming obsession.
“Just hit him with some prolonged eye contact and he’ll be putty in your hands.”
Staten’s lips open to probably dispute my irrefutable evidence, but no words have the gall to enter the atmosphere. She’s still looking at me like we never agreed on minimizing our voiceless intimacy—like she’s still caught in the riptide of my eyes.
I bend down to retrieve my essay, and the price of a good grade seems worthless compared to the ache that ravages my heart.
18
HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED
