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“We could be really good together,” Cameron said quietly. “Couldn’t we?”
“I—we—” Avery stammered uncharacteristically. She felt herself swaying closer, drawn inexorably toward him. She was dancing on a precipice, but at the last second she managed to snatch herself back from certain doom. I can’t trust him I can’t trust him I can’t trust him, her brain chanted, louder and louder. She reminded herself not just of the way he’d dumped her that September but of what happened just before homecoming, and all the other times Cameron had jerked her around. “I have to go.”
And Avery turned and fled.
Chapter Six
Theo
Theo leaned back against the wall and did his best to hide his grimace as he drank the crappy beer Matt had bought for them. He wasn’t exactly a beer connoisseur, but he knew good from bad, and this was definitely bad, and his stomach felt uneasy. When Avery was proposing her idea, it had seemed just plausible enough that it would fix their problems, but so far all it had done was create a major one for him. Izzy had been coldly accepting when he talked to her, but there was a knowing look in her eye that he didn’t like. He knew she could be a little sensitive about his friendship with Avery, but he hadn’t expected her to feel like he’d been biding his time with her until Avery was single. It probably didn’t help that she had walked in just as their entire graduating class and about half the surrounding classes had been celebrating the fact that they were “dating.”
Avery materialized out of nowhere, jerking him out of his brooding. She looked frantic, her cheeks and the tip of her nose telling him she’d just been outside. “Did Izzy leave?”
“I think she went down to the basement with some of her friends. What’s wrong?”
“I almost did something very stupid.” She glanced over her shoulder and he followed her gaze, swallowing back the curse he wanted to growl when he saw who exactly her something stupid was.
“Seriously?” he asked, genuinely annoyed. The one sore spot in his friendship with Avery was her absolutely garbage taste in men, starting with Cameron Fucking Finstad. He didn’t know what she saw in that empty paper bag of a guy.
“We do not have time for that now,” she hissed. “You have to do—something.”
“What do you expect me to do? Does he know?”
“No, he doesn’t, because like I said, I almost did something very stupid.”
“That’s not fair, Cameron was salutatorian,” Theo said cooly.
“God, I hate you,” Avery muttered. “I just—he needs to know, and now, so that he backs off.”
Theo rolled his eyes and caught Cameron glowering at him across the room. Cameron hated Theo almost as much as Theo hated Cameron, and suddenly he forgot all about Izzy and figuring out a way to get out of his fake dating arrangement with Avery.
He straightened and looked back down at his best friend. “Fine. But don’t punch me, okay?” he said, dropping his half-empty cup into the potted plant next to him. Two weeks from now it would probably die, but hopefully Grace’s parents wouldn’t know it was his fault. Theo wasn’t intimidated by many people, but Mr. Park’s disapproving glare was terrifying.
“Punch you? Why would I punch you?”
“Because I’m going to kiss you,” he said matter-of-factly, taking her face in his hands. “If you don’t want me to, step back.”
She didn’t. So he kissed her. Fuck, he kissed her. His best friend. Avery. Theo kissed her, and then something terrible happened.
She kissed him back. Her nose was cold from being outside, but her mouth was hot, and when she wound her arms around his neck Theo felt a spark kindle in his chest. His thumb brushed across her cheek and her lips, and for a heart-stopping second the world beyond them ceased to exist. Her lips parted, and she welcomed his tongue into her mouth with a sound that might have been a sigh.
Dimly, he heard people around them wolf-whistling and cheering, and God, people in Itasca really needed to look into hobbies. Theo slipped his hand from her cheek to the back of her head, tucking it into her blond, shoulder-length bob, and she opened her mouth to brush her tongue alongside his.
All at once, Theo remembered where they were (in public) and who he was kissing (his best friend slash fake girlfriend) and why (to get her ex-boyfriend to leave her alone, or maybe just make him jealous), and he let go.
Avery stared back at him, her face still flushed. She looked as shellshocked as he felt, but she recovered first. “Upstairs,” she said, low enough that only he could hear her. “Now.”
Chapter Seven
Theo
Thirteen Months Ago
Avery made another angry noise, somewhere between a scoff and a snarl, and Theo looked up from his homework. He was working on precalculus while she muddled through her own homework. Theo hated math and refused to take anything with “advanced” or “AP” in the name for that subject, which left him on the regular track while Avery was in AP Calc, on account of taking every advanced class Itasca had to offer. “What now?”
She threw her phone onto his bed with another one of those noises. “Cam is just—ugh.”
“That he is,” Theo said.
