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I chew another gummy, eating it in sections like some kind of candy serial killer. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, what if they hooked up in our beds?”
“Pretty sure you’ve hooked up in yours.” The string lights above Callie’s bed cast a warm glow over our cramped space, mixing with the purple LEDs and making the room feel even smaller. “I’ve heard the evidence. Multiple times. These walls are thinner than Nathan’s excuse for facial hair.”
“Oh, yeah.” She giggles into her pillow, then sits up. “Speaking of Nathan…”
“We weren’t.”
“We were thinking about him.”
“No, YOU were thinking about him. I was thinking about whether I could eat enough Swedish Fish to put myself in a sugar coma and skip this date.”
I grab my shower caddy and towel, desperate to escape the conversation. The bathroom is my retreat lately, my break from Callie and her weird theories about dorm bed history. Honestly, considering these mattresses, I don’t want to know.
Hot water drums against my shoulders as I lean my forehead to the cool tile. My phone sits on the shelf outside the curtain, and I swear I can hear it mocking me with its silence. Like a tiny electronic cricket chirping: “Jax-on doesn’t care, Jax-on doesn’t care.”
I pick up my phone with wet hands, water droplets making the screen glitch as I pull up Nathan’s contact.
Sorry, not feeling well tonight
Delete.
Something came up.
Yeah, my common sense.
Delete.
I can’t
Delete.
My thumb hovers over Jaxon’s contact photo. I haven’t changed it—same thirteen-year-old boy, hood up, frowning at me.
“Why are you not texting me?” I whisper-yell at his contact, as if that’ll help. “What, your hands too sore from catching? They work fine when you want to hook up at 2 a.m.”
Three days of nothing. Is he talking to Inez again? The thought makes my stomach churn. Or maybe that’s the four pounds of Swedish Fish.
Back in our room,Callie’s on her bed, laptop balanced on her knees. The glow from the screen makes her squint.
“What are you googling?”
“How to... you know....”
I stare at her, blinking, water still dripping from my hair onto the carpet. “No, I don’t know.” I lean forward, catch a glimpse of her search, and snort. “Callie…”
She sighs and pushes her laptop away. It slides into her mountain of decorative pillows—she decorates like we live in an Anthropologie window. “I’m confused on how to... um, how to do it.”
She’s serious. I shift my weight against the bed, grateful for the distraction from my date-related panic. “Wait, what?”
“Don’t make me say it again. You heard me.”
I try not to laugh. “You’ve never…”
She shakes her head fast. “Nuh uh.”
“Oh.”