Page 82 of The Love Interest

Balls.

She pushes her jet-black hair behind one ear, continuing to walk alongside me. Leaning in conspiratorially, she asks, “So have you gotten your grades yet?”

“Mm-hmm. You?”

“Did you get your grade for Ford’s class?” I cannot, for the life of me, read her tone or facial expression.

“Yes. Did you?”

“Were you happy with it?” Again, I just can’t read her.

“I mean…considering what I was expecting, yeah.”

“Oh, that’s great. So you got, what? An A?”

It is none of her business what I got, and I’m pretty sure my face and silence is telling her that.

“Because Beowulf and I arenothappy. Nobody that I’ve talked to is happy with the grade he gave them in that class, except for a couple of people. I figured—because of the way he’d always rip into your work—that you probably weren’t either. What a dick.”

I am feeling so protective of Emmett. He’s not a dick. Nobody puts Assface in a corner. Except me. And only when he’s being an assface. “I don’t think he’s a dick. What’d you get?”

“A C. I don’t get Cs.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“Yeah. Did you get a C too?”

“No.”

“A B?”

I don’t answer. I open the door to the building, holding it open for Veronica.

As she passes through, she says, “C plus?”

“No.”

“C minus?”

I jog up the steps ahead of her, but she catches up with me and then steps in front of me, blocking me when we’ve reached the landing.

“Oh my God. He gave you an A, didn’t he?”

I try not to let my face betray me, but part of me wants to rub my A in her snobbyBridgerton-hating face. That part of me wins.

She smacks her thin, glossy lips together. “Wow. Okay. Congratulations. You’re one oftwopeople he gave an A to, then.”

“How do you know? Did you survey the entire class?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” She strolls off to our poetry workshop, suddenly uninterested in walking with me.

I get a chill, and not the good kind.

I pull my phone out because my instinct is to connect with Emmett, but I have no idea what to say to him right now.