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CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX

Knowing my mom was coming to visit in less than two weeks made it feel like time was standing still. Each day moved by at a painfully slow pace, and not even throwing myself into my schoolwork helped. The only upside was that Noah kept his distance from me. It was so much easier to feel like I was making progress moving on from him when we didn’t fight and when we didn’t share heated moments.

Anna and Cress took this as a sign that they should make more heavy hints about Wes and I getting together.

“You guys even look perfect together,” Cress said as we walked back to Esher Hall after PE on Wednesday. Wes and I had been partners for squash, which must have triggered this latest attempt by the girls to convince me to date him.

“Yeah, like two golden deities walking amongst us,” Anna added.

“I don’t know where you come up with this stuff, Anna, but we’re just friends.”

“Friends with sexual tension,” Anna said. “I bet if we locked you in a room together you wouldn’t be saying the same thing. You guys definitely wouldn’t be able to resist one another.”

I laughed uncomfortably. “Why are we getting locked in a room together?”

“Uh...there’s a pandemic, and you both get exposed to the virus and are thrown into quarantine?” she suggested.

“Pretty sure that’s not going to happen.” I laughed. “Besides, we spend plenty of time alone together and we manage to resist each other.” Most of the time, at least. I was choosing to ignore that time on the sidewalk in New York and that time in Wes’s room.

“Aha!” Cress shouted, her voice filled with victory. “So, you admit it. You do have to try and resist him.”

I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Sure, you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.” I let out a sigh. “But if anything changes, you guys will be the first to know.”

“We better be,” Anna grumbled.

Thankfully, the girls let it drop over lunch. It would have been super awkward otherwise since both Wes and Sawyer sat with us. It didn’t stop them from shooting me knowing looks whenever Wes glanced my way. And it really didn’t help that he did it frequently, often smiling so sweetly it practically made Anna and Cress explode silently in their seats.

I had economics with Wes after lunch, so we left the room together. We were literally just walking to class together, yet Anna wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at me as we left.

I scoffed as I turned away from her.

“What?” Wes asked.

“You really don’t want to know,” I said.

“Try me.”

“It’s embarrassing and stupid.”

“Well, now I really want to know.” He grinned.

I shook my head, wishing I hadn’t said anything at all.

“Come on, I won’t make fun of you, I promise,” he said.

“Ugh, fine.”

His smile only grew. “So...”

“Anna and Cress have been not so subtly hinting that you and I should be more than friends.”

“Really?” He didn’t sound all that surprised, which made me feel like they’d probably been giving him the same crap they’d been giving me.

“Yeah. Anna thinks there’s so much tension between us that if we were ever locked in a room alone together we wouldn’t be able to resist each other.”