Page 11

And then I was blushing.Great. Awesome. You don’tdoblushing, Jess. Try to remember that!I mashed my lips together, twisting around in search for Sara. She was sitting on the bleachers, already scrolling through her camera roll.

I turned back towards Greyson, held my camera up. “Just taking pictures,” I answered.Good one, Captain Dumbass.

He laughed. “I can see that. But what for?”

“Photography project.”

“Ah, that’s right.” He nodded. “Get any good ones?”

“Yep.” I smiled; we both smiled, skirting the obvious. The fact that he’d just caught me taking at least a dozen pictures of him. I guess he wasn’t going to call me on it, and I think I fell for him a little harder then.

“Well, I have to head into locker now,” he said, gripping the back of his neck in one hand and his helmet in the other. “See ya around, Jess.”

“See ya, Grey.” My eyes didn’t leave him as he walked away. Not until his tall, lean, muscled form disappeared around the corner of the locker building.

I sighed.

Sara bumped into the back of me, snickering. “Could you be any more obvious?”

“Shut up.”

“Well! What did he say?”

“Nothing really.” I shrugged.

“Oh, come on! I saw the way you two were looking at each other. If he said something juicy, you better spill.”

“Something juicy?” I laughed. “I wish.” Only in my dreams. Only when the thoughts that had been running through my mind just before falling asleep bled into my unconsciousness.Only then did Greyson say things like “I want you,”and“I’m yours,”and“I’m going to kiss you now.”“He was just asking what we were doing taking pictures out here, and…that’s pretty much the gist of it,” I finished.

“Lame.” She scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“Totally lame.”

And it hit me then, with the subtlety of a freaking freight train, that something had been noticeably different between Greyson and I just before, when we’d been talking. Something was off, skewed. Unlike our usual interactions.

The way he hadn’t touched me, not once. The way his smiles had been genuine, but hesitant, if not a little distant. The way he hadn’t flirted at all, aside from that single knowing smirk he’d thrown my way. And the way he’d just casually said,“See ya around, Jess,”like he could wait a day, a week, a month before seeing me again. Like it didn’t matter to him at all when that would ever actually happen.

Was I being dramatic? Probably. But the absence of all these things made me feel inexplicably hollow inside. Because I realized then, that those silent words that had filled the space between Greyson and I the night of the party…he’d obviously meant them.

Eleven Before

AND THAT’S HOWthe next few weeks went.

Me: desperately flirting.

Him: brushing it off like it was nothing.

And maybe that’s because I totally sucked at flirting. At best, he probably had no clue I was attempting to at all. At worst…he probably thought I’d been incubated all sixteen years of my life and had only just discovered what the outside world was like:Ooh. Boy. Me like.

Whatever the case, he was too good at appearing oblivious. Or actuallybeingoblivious. But I refused to believe that was the truth.

We’d worked on our poetry assignment over those few weeks, too. Last we left off, we were trying to figure out how to combine our interpretations of it into one cohesive presentation, because our takes on it were night and day. Mine was one of loss and turmoil; his was one of devotion and remembrance. It made sense, though. That he’d be able to find the positive in it. He was light—a happy, glass half-full kind of person. And I was…well, I was me.

I spent a lot more time with Greyson than I’d expected to, though, outside of our assignment. In first period, at lunch, in the hallways between classes, at Jaymes’ parties. We always seemed to find each other on that same slope of grass, talking under those stars for what felt like forever. I wasn’t just infatuated with him anymore—no, I actuallylikedhim. Like, as a human. His personality, his likes and dislikes, his positivity, his humor. I really,reallyliked him.

But again…he seemed oblivious. Everything between us was completely platonic. Utterly and tragically and disgustingly platonic.

Ugh.