Page 36 of Two Weeks to Fall in Love

Two Weeks to Switch the Headphones

“I think I’m in love.”

Melissa sighed and threw herself on my bed, a faraway smile on her face. Good thing we’d managed to convince her parents to let her sleep over at my place tonight, because she was definitely drunk. But not on alcohol, oh no . As Melissa had put it, she was drunk on love .

I rolled my eyes, pulling out a pair of pj’s and throwing them at her. Melissa caught them like a professional baseball player, then sat back up and looked at me somberly.

“I mean it. It was love at first sight, but then when she bent down and kissed my hand before we left I knew she was the one.” She sighed, staring at the back of her right hand and dreamily falling back on the bed.

“All righty, Juliet, maybe we could slow down with the L word,” I said, chuckling at her.

In a way, I was glad she was finally into someone other than Lily. A part of me had worried it would take college for her to finally let go of the love that wasn’t meant to be. Turns out, all she needed was a college student .

“And get off my bed with those dirty clothes. I gave you pj’s for a reason,” I said, attempting to roll her off the bed as she laughed.

“Sir, yes, sir!” Melissa jumped off the bed and saluted me before she started changing. After she’d finished, she stopped in place, staring into space. Then her eyes filled with tears.

“Whoa, what just happened?” I frowned, trying to figure out where her thoughts could have taken her to result in such a drastic emotional shift.

Melissa sniffed and sat on the edge of the bed, her fingers nervously tugging at a loose thread of my quilt. “I feel guilty. Like I’m cheating on my feelings for Lily. I know it’s irrational but . . .”

She trailed off, her back hunched like she wanted to curl into herself. With her emotions so raw, this conversation was going to be tricky to navigate.

“Why would you feel guilty?” I asked, moving to sit beside her.

Melissa’s eyes flicked toward me before focusing back on her hands. “Because I spent years loving Lily. It was all I knew. And now I’m just what, letting her go? Falling for someone else? Does that mean it wasn’t real?”

I frowned, choosing my words carefully. “Mel, you didn’t stop loving Lily.

Sure, you let go of the romantic part of that love, but you held on to those feelings for so long without her even knowing.

You’ve done nothing wrong, and you deserve to be happy with someone who loves you back the way you want them to. ”

Melissa let out a shaky laugh but the tear falling down her cheek made it obvious there was no humor in it. “She didn’t know because I never told her. I was too scared it would ruin everything. And now I’m scared of what this means, feeling this for someone else. Is it wrong to feel like this?”

I reached over and covered her fidgeting fingers with mine. She looked up at me with glassy eyes, confused, worried, nothing like her usual confident self. Every part of me wished I could just say the right thing and take away her pain. All that time on the debate team had to count for something.

“Mel, it’s never wrong to feel what you feel.

Your emotions are valid. Just remember that moving on isn’t the same as forgetting someone.

You’ll always care about Lily in some way, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be happy with someone else.

You know that’s what Lily would want for you too. ”

Melissa was quiet for a while and then she glanced at me, brows furrowed but a little less darkness clouding her eyes. “You really think so?”

I gave her a soft smile. “I know so. And I mean, if you don’t believe me, just try to imagine how Lily would react if you told her about Tara. She’d probably say something like ‘Finally, someone who can match your energy, better wife her up,’” I said, impersonating Lily’s voice.

Finally, that pulled a small laugh out of her and she shook her head. “That definitely sounds like something she’d say.”

“Yup,” I confirmed, and squeezed her hand.

“These feelings don’t mean you love Lily any less as a very important person in your life.

They just mean you’re moving forward, toward something new.

And personally, I think that’s pretty brave.

” It was the kind of brave I wished was contagious, because I sure as heck could have used some of that myself.

Melissa gave my hand a squeeze back and let out a deep sigh. “Thanks, I think I just needed to hear that. It feels like a roller coaster in my head.”

“Are you sure it’s in your head? Because I feel like I just took a ride on it.”

She playfully punched my arm and rolled her eyes. Then, slowly, a smile came back to her face.

*

“What?” I snapped at Melissa when I saw her staring as we walked to her car the next morning.

“Nothing, I didn’t say anything.” She raised her hands in defense, but a smirk was more than clear on her face.

A smirk that made me almost turn around and go back inside because I knew exactly what she was smirking about. For the first time, I was going to school with my pastel-pink headphones wrapped around my neck. And a part of me was convinced that had been a huge mistake.

On the way to school Melissa monologued about everything that had happened last night and how amazing Tara was, which was fine with me. My mind was too much of a mess to be able to actually participate in a conversation with more than a mm-hm and an a-ha .

Noah Archer kissed me last night. And then I kissed Noah Archer. And then there was kissing that I couldn’t even remember who had initiated until another crashing sound had forced us to go back downstairs.

Needless to say, I was nervous about seeing him today. How did one act after an intense make-out session with the guy you were supposed to have zero feelings for?

“You coming?” Melissa asked, bending down to stare at me through the open door.

Shit . I hadn’t even realized we were here already.

Taking a deep breath, I got out of the car and meandered behind Melissa to the front doors, still zoned out. It was only a matter of time before I saw Noah. We had the next class together.

“You just gonna ignore me like that?”

I jumped at the sound of his voice coming from where I least expected it. Leaning against the wall outside of the school was Noah Archer, casual smirk and raised eyebrow firmly in place.

“Uh, what are you doing here?” I mumbled, absolutely unprepared to see him yet. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to complete my breathing exercises.

Noah pushed off from the wall and walked to tower over me, head tilted. “Waiting for you. Thought that was obvious.”

“Oh,” I said dumbly, staring up at him with wide eyes.

He just laughed, brushed his palm along my cheek, and leaned down to press a kiss on my forehead. My temperature instantly increased.

“Morning, Fox.”

“Morning, Archer,” I countered.

“And good morning, Melissa. Are you two lovebirds done?” Melissa exhaled loudly, holding open the front door and gesturing for us to go inside.

“Yup, sorry.” I hurried through the open door, but before I could escape, Noah took my hand in his.

“By the way, Tara said to tell you hi,” Noah said, grinning at Melissa, whose entire demeanor instantly changed, her cheeks going a deep pink.

“She did?” Melissa stuttered, and I stared at her in shock. This girl had never stuttered before in her life.

“Yup, said she was, in her words, ‘too smitten’ to ask for your number, so she wanted me to give you hers if you wanted hit her up or something.” Noah scrolled through his phone and then handed it to Melissa.

Melissa took the phone and with slightly shaking fingers typed and saved the number. She mumbled a thank-you when she handed him the phone back, and then just floated away from us, staring at her screen in a daze.

“Love the headphones.” Noah spoke up again, and my eyes snapped back from my best friend to my boyfriend . “Glad you finally wore them to school.”

“Oh, yeah, I don’t know why, I just kind of felt like it,” I said, biting down on my lower lip. Was he going to read into this? Because I sure didn’t think this through as much as I should have.

“Wanna switch for the day?”

“Uh, what?” I asked, sure I’d misheard him. There was no way he meant he wanted to wear my pink headphones.

“Come on. Switch with me,” he repeated, taking his blue ones off his neck and shaking them slightly.

Was he serious?

Frowning, I carefully took my headphones from around my neck and extended them, a million questions in my eyes.

Noah grabbed the pastel-pink headphones and threw them around his neck before taking his blue ones and putting them around mine.

“There. They look good on you.” He grinned, clearly proud of his little headphone swap. “Plus, I think I’m really rocking this pink.”

As if to highlight his words, he widened his eyes and did a little spin.

“Eh? Ehm ,” he said and wiggled his eyebrow.

I couldn’t help it. I burst into laughter at his silliness, and in a second he was laughing along with me.

“You do look good in pink,” I said between laughs, because it was true—he did. I’d already realized that when he’d worn that salmon-colored hoodie.

“Thanks. Glad you think so,” he said, leaning in closer and closer and closer . . .

The bell rang and Noah let out a groan. “Want me to walk you to class?”

“No need, it’s like ten feet from my locker,” I said, and gently pushed him in the opposite direction, toward his locker. “Just go, I’ll see you next class.”

*

For the rest of the day, curious glances followed me around school. At first, my paranoid mind thought someone had caught us making out last night and spread the word.

Of course, that wasn’t even remotely the case.

They were staring at me because Noah Archer’s signature blue headphones had found their way around my neck. And I had no doubt everyone had noticed the replacement pink ones that were around his.