Page 27 of I Would Stay Forever (Parkhurst Prep #2)

seventeen

Honestly, I couldn’t blame Dean for not wanting to study here.

The library wasn’t the happiest place in the school.

It was meant to feel cozy and lived-in, with the high dark shelves, moody lighting instead of fluorescent, with only the skylight on the ceiling to offer actual brightness, but instead, it just made everything to read and the space feel cramped.

Dean kept looking around uncomfortably as we sat at the table in the middle, like he felt like he didn’t belong here.

“Would you quit it?” I hissed at him when he looked around for the fifth time and stared a little too long at the couple in the corner who were making out in the stacks to the left of us.

They were the only other patrons in the library, and I was a little surprised that Mrs. Price, the librarian, hadn’t thrown them out yet.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, turning to face me again. But he cupped one hand over his face like he was trying to hide from anybody who walked by—again, nobody but Mrs. Price, who at best was indifferent to his presence here.

“What is with you? Why are you so worried?”

“I’m not worried,” he scoffed, but he also didn’t lower his hand.

I dropped my pencil and leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms, waiting for him to talk.

We would never get through this whole project with him more worried about hiding his face than understanding medieval weapons.

It took him a minute to get the message and realize he’d only be here longer if he held out on me. “I just… can’t be seen here, okay?”

I raised an eyebrow. “What, are you banned from the library or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, no, really,” I said, crossing one leg over the other. “I bet you’re one of those awful borrowers that spilled chocolate pudding all over one page or dropped the book in a lake.”

“I’ve never ruined a book, thank you very much.”

“Only because you’ve never borrowed one, right?” I asked. He avoided eye contact and I laughed. “Yeah, I can tell.”

“Are you calling me dumb?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Hmmm, let me think about that for a moment,” I said.

I started ticking off on my fingers. “You play a sport that can irreparably ruin your body and brain. You chose my brother of all people as your best friend—which, I love him, but honestly, you can do better. And now, we’ve been here for over twenty minutes and you haven’t written a single note.

” I clicked my tongue. “It’s not looking too good for you, I’ve got to be honest.”

Dean wasn’t dumb; far from it, actually.

When he’d told me in the guidance office what he hoped to do in the future, there hadn’t been a single doubt in my mind that he could achieve it.

But he was just too easy to tease and the more I riled him up about this, the better the chances he would actually do something for the project so he could prove me wrong.

“You make a lot of generalizations about football players, you know that?”

I raised one shoulder. “Not my fault you play an inferior sport.”

“Oh right, because volleyball is so popular.”

“Not all of us decide on our sport based on a high school popularity boost.”

“I never said I chose it based on that!” he exclaimed.

Mrs. Price shot a sharp look in his direction and he slouched back in his seat, waving a hand in apology.

He waited until she turned back to her work before sighing and looking at me again.

“Okay, fine—you’re right. Being on the football team, I have an image to maintain and I’m worried about what people will say if they see me willingly hanging out in the library after school. ”

I was shocked he’d admitted that so easily.

“Maybe,” I said in a dry tone, “they’ll think you have a project that needs to be done.”

He huffed. “Nobody comes here to work.” Then his gaze drifted back over to the couple making out in the stacks.

I’d chosen the library for the very reason that hardly anybody came in here, but it hadn’t occurred to me that anyone would come in here for some privacy. I always thought of under the bleachers or supply closets for that. Who wanted to be supervised by the librarian while they hooked up?

“We should have just worked at home,” Dean said.

“Well I didn’t see you offering up that suggestion.”

He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I shrugged, casually flipping through the pages of my textbook as if I was looking at anything. “Just the fact that you didn’t tell my brother that I was in your class.”

“How do you know that?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“Sebastian told me.” I flipped the page again. “I told him about the class and he was surprised you didn’t mention I was with you in it, but that maybe the class was just so big you didn’t notice me.” I finally lifted my eyes to his again. “Was that why you didn’t mention it?”

I was making it seem like this was a bigger deal to me than it actually was. I didn’t really care that he didn’t tell Sebastian, beyond simple curiosity. It seemed like a relevant thing to mention, that he was sitting next to his best friend’s sister in the class.

“I didn’t lie to him,” Dean said quickly. Given that I hadn’t said anything about lying, I had a feeling he’d been thinking about this as well. “I just thought it was easier if I didn’t tell him.”

“Did you now?” I asked rhetorically, flipping another page in my book. “Fascinating.”

He narrowed his eyes. “It’s not like you told him either.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because if you had, he would have asked me about it the same way you are now.”

I laughed. “Was that your plan? You wanted to force me to tell him?”

“You didn’t have to do anything. It just didn’t come up when I was talking to him.”

I found that hard to believe, especially since we had this project together, but I just shrugged and continued flipping my pages. We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, deciding on the things we needed to look at and were going to discuss them in a couple of minutes.

Finally, he slammed his book back down on the table, leaned in, and said, “Look, I didn’t tell him because you know how he gets when you hang out with his friends.”

I put my own book down more gently than he did, noting that Ms. Price had only glared at him and not at me, then leaned forward to stare him in the eyes. “It’s a group project, Dean. Not a date.”

“I know it’s not a...” He stopped himself and looked around again quickly before dropping his voice to a whisper. “I know it’s not a date, but you know that he would make that assumption if he saw us.”

“Yes, I do know that,” I said, “which is why I suggested we work in the library instead of on the bleachers where he was bound to see us.”

Dean stared at me for a long moment, then leaned back. “Huh.”

“Huh, indeed.” I grabbed my bag and pulled out the black shirt that I’d shoved in there along with my books. I passed it across the table. “Speaking of sneaking around, here.”

Dean frowned as he took the shirt until he unfurled it and saw what it was. “You could have kept it.”

“Why would I want to keep your shirt?”

He shrugged, and instead of the frown that had been gracing his face the whole time we’d been sitting here, his usual smirk came back. “You know, in case you wanted a memento of me.”

“Oh yeah, just what I needed,” I said flatly. “A memento of the time my brother’s best friend gave me a shirt at a party because I spilled fruit punch all over my shirt.”

He shrugged. “You never know what girls are into.”

I ignored this. “By the way, because you lent it to me, my mother now thinks we’re having sex.”

Dean choked on air. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t worry, I set her straight,” I said, flipping my pen through my fingers.

Dean, still coughing, opened his water bottle and started chugging.

I waited until he added a mouthful before I added, “I reassured her that we haven’t gotten to that point yet, and that we’ve only made it to second base. ”

He spat his water all over. I laughed, even as Ms. Price turned to glare at us. When he finally got his breathing under control again, he said, “You didn’t actually tell her that, did you?”

I threw my eraser at him. “No, you idiot. I told her that you very kindly lent me your shirt because I spilled a drink on mine, and after that point, she didn’t even consider the fact that you might have done it in a romantic way. Rest assured, nobody in my family thinks we’d make a good couple.”

An expression crossed his face, but it was gone before I could recognize it. “Right. Well, I guess that’s good.”

“You guess?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, I know.”

I watched as he moved the shirt off to the side so he could pull his textbook toward him. That look was back on his face, one I still couldn’t make sense of, and although his eyes were trained on the book in front of him, it didn’t seem like he was actually reading.

“Thanks again,” I said, wondering if he was upset about me giving back the shirt for some reason. “For lending me the shirt. You were a total lifesaver.”

“Well, I couldn’t let you go walking around in a bra, now could I?” he asked. His mouth curled up. “It’s much more appropriate to go around in your pajamas.”

“One time! It was one time!”

“Ah yes, of course, I just happened to run into you the one time it happened,” he said. “There’s absolutely no chance that you, in fact, do that every day and I just caught you the one time.”

I guess he wasn’t technically wrong that it had happened more than once. Although they’d been getting less frequent as the weeks went by, there had been multiple times I’d gone sprinting from my house in only my pajamas. I just hadn’t had an audience for the other times.