Page 55 of Didn't See That Coming

CHAPTER 14

I don’t know what I was expecting when I picked up the phone, scrolled through our class group chat, and texted Jonas: “WTF?” but his reply was definitely not it.

Jonas:Ah, I was wondering when you’d message :)

Kiki:Srsly Jonas, WTF? A date with me?

Jonas:I’ll explain in person. This isn’t the kind of conversation you have over WhatsApp ;)

Kiki:What???

Jonas:I’ll come over

Kiki:Wait, what??

Jonas:See you in twenty min

Kiki:Wait

Kiki:JONAS

Kiki:FFS

“He’s coming over,” I say, and my voice feels like it’s coming from a very faraway place.

“What? Like, over here? Right now?” Cassie says.

“Sounds like it.”

“Let me see that.” Cassie plucks my phone out of my hand and scrolls through my chat with Jonas. “What the hell? This douche is something else. How does he even know where youlive?”

“I don’t—” I shake my head, feeling dazed. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s on the class register or something?”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“Uh, I don’t— What should I do?”

Cassie gnaws on her bottom lip for a while, then sighs. “Well, you need to talk to him anyway, right? So I guess that’s what you do.”

“But. Here?” The thought of having Jonas in my house, of all places, is horrifying.

For a second, Cassie frowns, but then the frown suddenly melts away and is replaced with a smirk. “You could talk on the front porch? That could be a real power move, not letting him inside your house.”

I nod slowly. “I guess…”

“That sends the right message,” Cassie says. “So you stand right outside your door, at the top of the front steps, hands folded in front of your chest, and go, ‘You can talk from there.’ And you’d be, like, three steps above him, so you’d be looking down at him. Perfect.”

I run through this scenario in my head and find that I don’t hate it. “Okay, I guess that could work….”

“But first, let’s put some makeup on you and turn you into a bad bitch.”

“I’m not putting on makeup for Jonas freaking Arifin.”

“Think of it as war paint. It’s not to impress him, it’s to intimidate the ever-living shit out of him.”

It’s clear that Cassie isn’t going to take no for an answer, so reluctantly, I let her lead me to my vanity and start dabbing BB cream onto my face. As she works on my makeup, she goes through lines like “I’m not really seeing your point, Jonas,” and “I think you’re full of shit, Jonas,” and so on.

Barely ten minutes have passed when all of a sudden, Mami calls up the stairs for me. “Kristabellaaa!”