Page 92 of TJ Powar Has Something to Prove

A pause. His voice changes, less conversational, now crisp and controlled. “It makes me sound incompetent.”

Wow, okay. TJ stares at him. “I thought you didn’t care what people think.”

“I care what some people think.”

There’s something weighted to his words that, while TJ doesn’t totally understand, she grasps enough to know intuitively that her next words are very important. “So you have a stutter. So what? It’s got nothing to do with your level of competence. And if anyone thinks differently, screw them. Screwanyonewho tries to tell us we’re less than they are.” She jabs her finger at him fiercely. “No more apologizing for who we are or for things we can’t help. The only thing that matters is whether we can debate—and we aredamngood debaters.”

She falls silent, strangely out of breath, her cheeks hot. Charlie doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Then he meets her eyes.

“I’m going to miss debating with you.”

TJ, caught off guard, drops her hand. She hadn’t expected him to say that, but now he’s left an ache in her chest. She’s going to miss him, too. It’s funny how much her feelings towards him have changed in the course of an hour.

But she has to make sure. “So you really haven’t used your Instagram all this time?” He shakes his head. “Did you seriously never change your account password?”

“Why would I? I thought I dropped my phone in the ocean. I didn’t think it gotstolen.”

“Why would you have dropped it into the ocean?”

“I was... distracted.”

His voice is wry. Oh. Heat blooms on her cheeks as she very vividly revisits the moment she joined Charlie at the railing of the boat, when he’d set down his phone.

When she’d basically ordered him to kiss her. She blushes at the memory, and then she remembers him saying she glows when she blushes, and she blushes harder.Get a grip, TJ. But it’s so difficult when he’s looking at her like that.

Her heart makes a dizzying lurch when his eyes drop to her mouth.

But then he says, “What post were you talking about earlier?”

He may as well have dunked her in ice water. She grabs her notebook. “I don’t know what you mean. Come on, let’s go over our contentions—”

“When Mrs. Grayson was here, you said I liked some Instagram post.”

“We only have a few minutes left, Charlie—”

“What was it? I can tell it’s bothering you.”

TJ grinds her teeth. She’s forgotten how annoying his questioning can be. But it’s too embarrassing to admit now. “It’snotbothering me.”

“Sure,” Charlie replies condescendingly. “But don’t I deserve to know what else Isaac did on my Instagram?”

He’s not going to let this go. She wishes she had her phone to show him. Then she wouldn’t have to say it. “You liked a post. It was a shitty joke about me. No big deal, it won’t hurt your reputation, I’m sure you can unlike it, I bet no one noticed.”

She says it all very fast, as if that will make it less humiliating. A pause. Charlie has gone very still.

“I liked a post?” From his voice she can tell he knows exactly what kind of post. “And you thought it wasme?”

Awkward. Her hesitation is too obvious. His eyes narrow.

“H-h-how could you think”—he takes a breath—“after everything, why would I do that?”

She didn’t think she’d have a response to that, but the words are there, whispered, dripping from the cracks in her heart: “To hurt me.”

Charlie actually flinches. “God, TJ. Why would you think that?”

“Because I hurtyou.” Especially with the spectacle during Spring Break. She put him in an awful position. “I used you.”

He’s quiet for a long moment.