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“We’re young,” Axel said to her.

She smiled up at him. “I know. That was a terrible point. Maybe he is engaged.”

“He’s not engaged,” I said with a laugh.

“And I’d hardly call 27 young,” Jacob said. “He’s ten years older than Soph.”

“Age is just a number,” I said. “Most of the 18-year-olds I know act like they’re tweens, so...”

Jacob laughed. “I don’t act like a tween.”

“I didn’t mean you. I just meant in general. I’m only 17 but I act much more like I’m 21 I think.”

“Because of how much you drink?” Axel asked.

“What?” I scoffed. “No. Because I’m mature. Actually I think of myself more as 22. Which means he’s only five years older than me in maturity.”

“I’m not sure that’s how anything works,” Jacob said.

I hit his arm. “Don’t you have a coding project to work on?”

“We do.”

I ignored him. “And it’s not just the lack of pictures that makes me know Mr. Halifax is single. He’s been a chaperone to tons of school dances and he never brings a date. And if he was single, he’d flirt when I text him with my burner phone. He just blocks these hot women flirting with him immediately.”

“They’re you,” Jacob said.

“But he doesn’t know that! If he did, he’d flirt back. The same way he always does in class.”

“He really does seem to,” Scarlett said.

I smiled at her.

“Soph, can we please focus for a minute?” Jacob asked. “We need to submit this by nine.”

“Yeah, sure.” I scooted closer to him on the couch to take a look. We were making a videogame together. And I used the term together very loosely. I usually just told Jacob fun stories the whole time he worked on it.

“Actually,” Scarlett said. “Soph and I could use a bit of a break to study for our calc test tomorrow.”

I laughed.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because I don’t need to study.”

Scarlett frowned. “I thought you said my notes you borrowed were crap?”

“They were crap. But I have something more important we need to do. I need some measurements so we know where to put the DJ for our party.”

“DJ?” Scarlett asked. “I thought we’d agreed to just do a playlist? Quietly.”

That would probably work. Since we were throwing a party on a freaking Tuesday night. No one was going to come to this thing. But I didn’t want to give up that easily. There had to be a way to make this party epic. “It has to be a DJ.” I pulled the tape-measure out of my backpack.

“Soph.” Jacob put his hand on my thigh to stop me from getting up. “Just watch the snippet I pulled before I submit it.”

“Then you’ll help me measure?”

“That sounds very suggestive.”