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Lila: STOP

Lila: NO

Lila: YOU DID NOT

Lila: WHY WERE YOU LOOKING UNDER MY PILLOW

Theo: You’re deflecting.

Lila: I was tired!!! I meant to put it away!!!

Theo: That’s a lot of exclamation marks.

Lila: I hate you.

Theo: Liar.

I throw my phone back onto the blanket and bury my face in my hands, groaning loud enough to scare the ducks floating about in the pond. Of all the things I’ve done lately—trespassing, theft—this is what finally takes me out.

My phone buzzes again.

Theo: Did you seriously use this right next to me?

Lila: WHAT. NO. I’m not a perv.

I am totally a perv.

Theo: …Bathroom?

Lila: Yes!! Obviously.

Theo: So you left our bed to get yourself off, but didn’t think to ask if I wanted the job?

I choke on my lemonade, my face flaming.

“What?” Evelyn asks.

“Nothing,” I lie, coughing. “Just went down the wrong way.”

Exactly like everything else that’s happened over the last two days, apparently.

22

HUNG JURY

THEO

Theo hadn’t meant to act weird last night. He just didn’t know how to be normal around her sometimes. Every glance felt loaded, every sentence an exercise in restraint.

He’d tried to play it safe—keep things conversational, respect boundaries, not assume that one drunken confession and a hot-as-fuck kiss meant she wanted him the way he wanted her.

He’d woken up ready to move things forward. In hindsight, “ready” might’ve been optimistic.

As the day went on without her around, his bravery thinned—especially when his mind wandered to the thing he’d wanted too many nights in a row, the thought of her tangled up with him in ways he’d never let himself have.

His alcohol-induced honesty didn’t mean the next logical step was fucking, and he’d had to remind himself of that more than once.

He’d needed to pull himself back before he did something reckless, remind himself why they were there in the first place.