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  “Guess we should start,” I said to her.

  “Guess we should.”

  The rest of the class we spent in terse conversation. I was in charge of pulling quotes from the book we could use in our paper and Stella was busy looking up other sources on one of the classroom tablets.

  For the most part, we could work quietly, but when we did have to exchange a few words, it was short and to the point.

  Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. As if it was planned that way, a shaft of sunlight broke through one of the windows and lit her hair on fire. If I didn’t know better, I would have said she looked like an angel. And then she turned and gave me a look and I edited my assessment. Fallen angel. Fallen angel that was kinda bitter about the whole thing.

  It was just then that I realized I’d been staring. Dammit.

  I shoved my face in my book and tried to get back to work. A moment later I looked up because she’d cleared her throat.

  “What do you think about this?” Her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it and I nearly fell out of my seat when she leaned over with the tablet to show me whatever was on the screen. I looked down at it, but it could have been written in emojis for all I noticed. She was too close. Way too close and I was freaking out about it. My heart was pounding so much that I was sure she could hear it and my hands suddenly went cold and then hot.

  “Well?” she said, her voice totally breathy and low. I turned my head just a fraction and whoa.

  Her eyes were crazy gorgeous up close. They weren’t just blue. They had little flecks of green, right around the center. Like emeralds in a pool of water. She blinked the longest lashes I’d ever seen on a real person and suddenly breathing became a chore.

  A rush of heat started from the top of my head and poured down my body into my toes. I had never felt this way before and it didn’t seem to be going away. Stella stared at me, lips slightly parted and then jerked back, as if I’d punched her.

  “Stop staring at me,” she snapped, putting her icy face back on. I blinked a few times and it was like coming up for air after being underwater. I was gasping and disoriented.

  I coughed once and then sat back. I’d leaned way far over without realizing it. Stella didn’t appear affected at all.

  Except.

  Except for the slightest tremor in her hand as she held the tablet.

  Huh.

  “So I think we should get a head start on everyone else,” she said briskly, just before class ended. We’d made good headway on our project, but I had the feeling Stella wasn’t going to be satisfied unless it was absolutely and totally perfect.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, knowing the answer wasn’t going to be good.

  “I think we should get the paper done by the end of this week so we can perfect the presentation. As much as I hate to say it, I think we should get together outside of class and work.” She made a face like the idea disgusted her, but I wasn’t buying it. I’d seen a few cracks in her shiny surface and I was just waiting to see more. People were right when they said Stella was like ice. An iceberg was a little more accurate. There was something below the surface that no one had seen before. I didn’t know what made me want to figure her out, but I did. I wanted it a lot.

  “Okay,” I said, a little too quickly. I shouldn’t have been so eager.

  “We’ll have to do it later because I have practice. And at one of our houses because the library will be closed.” Great. Just what I needed.

  “Not my house,” I said, my voice too loud. “My parents are insane and will drive both of us crazy.” She gave me a look and then said, “Fine. My house.”

  “I mean, really. They’re like the textbook definition of helicopter parents.” Why was I still rambling? She just sighed and looked toward the door as if she wanted to escape.

  “It’s fine. Seriously. Look, I have to go.” Her eyes snapped back to me and then she lunged out and grabbed my phone from where it rested on the corner of my desk. Before I could protest, she handed it back.

  “There. I’ll text you when practice is over and give you directions. You’d better be there on time and ready to work.” With that, she got to her feet, threw her hair over her shoulder and was out the door.

  Ice storm Stella strikes again.

  I did not spend the rest of the day freaking out about going over to Stella’s.

  Okay, that’s a lie. I did.

  “I bet her house is all white and you can’t sit on the furniture,” Grace said, which was a little funny, considering the house she lived in. But she was trying to be supportive.

  “I have no idea. It’s going to be beyond awkward. My plan is to get in and get out as fast as possible.” With hopefully my dignity and sanity intact. It was definitely going to be harder to stop staring at her and being weird if it was just the two of us. If she suggested we do this in her room, I was going to veto that. I didn’t want to be anywhere in her personal space. For some reason.

  “Well, you can always text me and I’ll come rescue you with some sort of emergency.” Grace was that kind of best friend who would fake a life-threatening emergency to get you out of an awkward situation. She’d done it many times before with great success.

  “Thanks, I might take you up on that,” I said as we headed to our cars.

  I wasn’t nervous. Not at all. I wasn’t fidgeting and re-arranging the shakers on the dining table and then going to the fridge to make sure we had enough soda and then checking the couch to make sure there were no dust bunnies underneath.

  Nope. I wasn’t doing any of those things.

  I’d booked it out of practice so I could get home and get a shower in (and redo my hair) before she came over. I sent the text with shaking fingers. I almost wished that Dad was home to distract me, but he was working late tonight so it was going to be just me and Kyle.

  Bad idea.

  Such a bad idea.

  I’d regretted the words almost the instant they were out of my mouth, but there was no way to pull them back so here I was, fiddling with my hair and waiting for her to show up. I drew the line at waiting by the door.

  Finally, what seemed like hours later, a car pulled into the driveway. God help me.

  I was able to pretend that I totally didn’t care that she was here, in my house with me, alone. She’d changed into low-slung grey sweatpants that left just a hint of belly showing under her t-shirt. Just that little whisper of skin was enough to make my mouth go dry and I had to remind myself to look up at her face, but that was somehow worse.

  The lighting in my house must have been designed to make her look as cute as possible or else I was just imagining things. I narrowed my eyes and led her to the dining room table where I had my laptop set up and my book out already, with passages I’d highlighted. I’d needed something to do while I was waiting for her.

  “Do you want anything?” I said, trying to sound bored as I went to the kitchen.

  “Um, Coke? If you have it.” Her eyes kept darting around, as if looking for a neon sign to point her toward the emergency exit. I was feeling a little that way myself.

  I grabbed two cans and two glasses and nearly dropped everything when she got up to help me.

  “I’ve got it,” I snapped and she put her hands up and backed away.

  “Sorry, sorry. Just trying to be nice, no need to bite my head off.” I’d like to bite her, but not in the way she was thinking.

  I could feel my face starting to flush, so I got busy pouring out the sodas and then asking her if she wanted a snack. She declined, but I was still starving from practice, so I grabbed a few bags of chips and some berries from the fridge.

  Kyle gave me a look when I set them down between us.

  “The chips and the berries cancel each other out. It’s basic food science,” I said and I swore she almost smiled. Almost.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not how calories work, Stella.” Wow. I really liked the way my name sounded in her mouth.

  Stop thinking
about her mouth.

  Hard to do when she scooped up a handful of berries and started popping them in said mouth.

  I was going to die. This girl was going to kill me.

  I cleared my throat and put my laptop screen in front of me so it blocked the view.

  “So, I pulled a few passages already, if you want to look at them and then copy them down for the paper. I could also have my dad go over it before we hand it in,” I said. He’d already been doing that for every paper I’d ever written. It was a habit that I didn’t intend on breaking.

  She raised her eyebrows and there was a smudge of berry juice in the corner of her mouth. I stomped on a mental image of leaning forward to lick it off.

  “Yeah? You’re going to give it to your dad and he’s going to rip it apart and then you’re going to have him fix it and hand it in anyway,” she said, crossing her arms.

  “No, he’s going to tell us where it’s weak and where it’s good and make sure that the grammar is correct,” I said, keeping my eyes on my laptop. I was pretending to type, but really, I was just pressing random keys.

  “Or, stay with me here, you’re going to re-write the entire paper, slap our names on it and then hand it in. I get it, you’re a control freak.” My mouth almost dropped open and I risked a look up to stare at her.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I’d been called worse before, but for some reason this really got under my skin.

  “Uh, is this new information? Like, are you really surprised?” Her voice was totally dry and I wished I was less attracted to her because that would make things so much easier.

  “I’m not a control freak, I just like things a certain way.” She let out the cutest little snort-laugh and it did funny things to my stomach. Was there anything she did that didn’t make me want her more?

  “That’s a diplomatic way of putting it, babe,” she said and then we both realized she’d called me “babe.”

  Oh. Hell.

  We just sort of stared at each other and then she cleared her throat and looked down at her book.

  “So we should probably get to work,” she said in a low voice.

  “Yeah.”

  Nearly an hour later, we’d demolished the berries, one bag of chips, three sodas between us and we hadn’t gotten much done. It wasn’t for lack of trying. We just didn’t see eye-to-eye on the paper.

  “This was such a bad idea,” she said as she typed in the Google Doc that I was also working on at the same time. “You just keep deleting everything!”

  I hadn’t been. Just editing here and there. Picking a better word or making a sentence stronger or adding a comma. Nothing major. But she saw it as an assault against her writing skills, which were actually better than I thought they would be.

  Not that I doubted her ability to write, but I just thought that numbers were more her speed, but she had some excellent points and used a lot of words that I didn’t know she knew.

  She was smart. Really smart.

  If only she’d been pretty and dumb, I might have been able to resist her. But the smart/sexy combo? I was a goner.

  “I like to think of it more as polishing what’s already there and making it shine,” I said.

  “You always have the most diplomatic way of putting things. Makes me wonder where all those rumors come from.” She tried to make it a throwaway comment, but it definitely wasn’t.

  “What rumors?” I asked, as if I had no idea. Hell, I started a lot of them myself. Had to keep reminding people not to mess with me.

  “I’m sure you’re familiar with them, Stella.”

  “Why would I be?” I asked, trying to sound oblivious.

  She just rolled her eyes at me. Cute. So cute.

  “You also don’t seem like an idiot, so let’s cut the crap, okay? You know exactly what people say about you. I wouldn’t be shocked if you were the one who encouraged it.”

  No. This was bad. This was why I didn’t let people get too close. Midori was one of my exceptions. When people got close they could see me clearly and I didn’t like it. If they really saw me, they wouldn’t like me.

  I just narrowed my eyes at her and didn’t answer. Most people looked away from me after a few seconds, but Kyle held my gaze and then one side of her mouth turned up in a smirk. The smirkiest of smirks.

  “You get quiet when you don’t know what to say. Means I’m right.”

  There wasn’t much I could say without digging myself an even bigger hole, so I just turned my attention back to my laptop and thought about highlighting the entire paper and deleting it like a bitch, but then I’d have to spend even more time with her and that wouldn’t be good for anyone.

  “I think that’s enough,” I said after a few minutes of silence. I had to get her out of here. She was all I could see and all I could hear and all I could smell and it was a real problem. I had to get her out of here before I did something stupid.

  She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes before putting them back on. I still had a bunch of other homework to do and I was sore from practice.

  She looked at me and then down at her laptop.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Was she reluctant to leave? After all the stimulating conversation?

  “What, you want to stay and hang out with me?” I injected just the right amount of acid into each word.

  “It’s better than being at home,” she muttered, as if she didn’t want to admit it.

  “Are you parents really that bad?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “Not really. I mean, it’s that they care too much. How can you be pissed that your parents care too much about you and want you to succeed? What kind of asshole am I?” I wasn’t going to answer that right away.

  “I’m sure there are plenty of people who wish they had two parents who aggressively cared about them,” I said. I hadn’t been speaking specifically about me, but I guess I did fit the bill. My mom had cared about me long enough to give birth to my brother and then me, but had decided that being a mom just wasn’t for her. You know, she couldn’t have figured that out until after she’d gotten married and had us.

  “That’s right, make me sound like an ungrateful bitch. Perfect. Way to go, Stella,” she said, grabbing her stuff and heading toward the door. I wanted to go after her and tell her that she was the opposite of a bitch, but then that might have led to all sorts of other things, so I let her go, calling “bye,” after her.

  Seriously. What a fucking bitch. Her personality was just that terrible. I’d been wrong. Maybe the glimpses of nice I’d seen were an act. Who the hell knew?

  I was fuming when I got home and that made my parents go into a panic and have another one of their little “interventions” with me. Any time I showed any sort of excessive negative emotions, they sat me down and had a “chat.”

  I wanted to tell them that I was fine, just annoyed. That I wasn’t secretly depressed, or cutting my wrists, or hiding an eating disorder. In addition to being human helicopters, they were also hyper-hypochondriacs. Everything had the potential to be life-threatening, from a cold to a slammed door. When I was younger I used to wish at every birthday and every Christmas that I would get a sibling that they could focus on. Never happened and I was pretty sure that ship had sailed a long time ago.

  Once I got them off my back and assured them that I was not going to hurt myself or anyone else, I barricaded myself in my room to fume.

  I didn’t know why she drove me so crazy. Just . . . everything she said and did just . . .

  Fuck.

  I could pretend the little fluttery feeling in my chest wasn’t there, but that wouldn’t make it go away. I . . . liked her. Or something.

  I didn’t know why. I didn’t know when it had started, but there it was. I liked her in a way that made me wonder how soft her lips would feel and if her hair was silky to the touch. It made me think of lots of other things too. Things that made me want to get in the shower and spend some time alone.

  Dangerous. Th
ose were very dangerous thoughts that I should not be having, but there really wasn’t any way to stop them. They were happening and I had to just get through it. I was stuck with Stella for the foreseeable future, unless I dropped out of AP English, but that wasn’t an option.

  I’d just have to keep a lid on it. Keep it to myself. It was just a little crush (I hated even calling it that) and I could handle it. I was a nearly grown-ass woman and I could deal with a tiny crush on a terrible girl.

  I could deal.

  It didn’t hurt that she was so cold. If she’d been nice to me, I might have liked her more. Or maybe not. Verbally sparring with her was kind of sexy.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Somehow the two of us got through the week without killing one another and I managed to not do anything that would have let her know how I felt. She pulled back a lot, but wasn’t as critical. She’d press her lips together and I knew she was trying not to say something she wanted to say.

  Friday night was another home game and I was there on the bleachers in the front row with Grace. And there was Stella, her hair up high and a smile on her face. It was a little funny that she was so frigid most of the time, but chose a sport like cheerleading to excel in.

  And holy shit, did she excel. Flips and stunts and all kinds of stuff that made me think about all kinds of things. My face was probably beet red the entire game, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  Fortunately, she seemed oblivious of me. Except for one moment when she was front and center, leading a cheer where the crowd had to respond. Her blue eyes seared into me for one moment and then slid back to scan the rest of the crowd.

  Fuck with a side of fuck.

  Grace didn’t say much during the game, and I realized she was upset about something. Her eyebrows were drawn together in a constant frown and I decided that I had to get my head out of my own ass and be a best friend.