“I know people here,” she adds, staring at Aspen’s little group of girls across the cafeteria, which is all women right now.
I take another sip. “Uh-huh. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with your new friend.”
“What?” Her eyes widen. “I wasn’t even looking at them.”
I narrow my eyes. “Sure, you weren’t.”
“There’s nothing happening. What do you even see?”
“Everything.” I wriggle my brows.
She chucks a grape at my face. “I’m trying to make friends after switching colleges. Is that so wrong?”
“Nothing wrong if you ask me,” I muse, smiling like an idiot.
“Grow up. It’s not like you’re so innocent either. You’ve been gawking at Sunny for months on end now. When are you going to make a move?”
“How do you know I haven’t already?”
Her jaw drops. “Oh my God, Orion. You did not.”
“I have a death wish. I thought you already knew about that.”
She leans forward with both hands on the table. “Did you ask her out?”
“Oh, it’s gone way beyond that already.”
She giggles all giddy and stuff. “I can’t believe it. Orion Navarro and Sunny Reed are dating?”
I smash my fingers onto her lips. “Don’t. Don’t say it out loud. Besides, we’re not official.”
“Or she’ll kill you?” she whispers.
“If only,” I lament, taking another sip.
“You are weird. You know that, right?”
“Wanting to die by the hands of a goddess is not weird. It’s devotion. Commitment. My life, my fortitude, my being, belongs to her entirely.”
She snorts. “All right, all right, I get it. You’re nearly drooling over your wine.”
I snatch one of her crackers and stuff it into my mouth. “I just don’t want to disappoint my only muse.”
I pull my notebook from my pocket as well as my pen and write down more words.
“Lemme read those.” Cecelia steals the paper right from underneath my nose, and I wince.
“Hey!”
She reads through them at a crazy speed. “Wow. Obsessive, but wow. These are good.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah,” she says. “But you need to start writing about something other than death.”
“Impossible.” My curly blond hair slowly forms a curtain around my face as I lower it to the table so I don’t have to look at her. “I yearn to be relinquished from the bond that ties me to this earth.”
“Melodramatics will not land you the girl, Orion.”
