Chapter 36
June
“Don’t you think it’s time, June?”
I slammed the locker door, feigning a calm that I didn’t feel.
“To?”
I wasn’t great at masking my emotions no matter what they were.
“Break the silence,” said William, leaning his arm over the locker and blocking me. I ducked under him.
“I would’ve called you again last night, but my mom had this dinner.”
“What dinner?” he asked, watching me dog-ear the science book. Didn’t James tell him?
There were two options: lie or tell the truth.
“I was at James’s house.”
He knit his blond brows. “Uh, what?”
“I didn’t know it was his house when I went there. Our parents are organizing an exhibition, but what do I know,” I grumbled, irritated.
“James told me you went to his house the other night.”
“Yeah, because you disappeared,” I clarified, confronting him with my gaze.
“I didn’t forget about you. I asked him to stay with you.” I heard heavy steps coming closer, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar silhouette approach us. James passed by us, chewing gum without acknowledging us. He’d actually bothered to put on his uniform this morning.
The jacket was tight on his shoulders while his untied tie slid in a disorderly way on his shirt. His hair was messier than usual and didn’t have any gel in it.
“Will you have dinner at my place one of these days?”
William’s suggestion piqued my curiosity. “Why?” I asked quickly, without hiding my skepticism.
He’d let me down countless times. Inviting me to dinner wasn’t enough to make me forget what had happened.
“To introduce you to my parents,” he declared calmly. I raised my eyebrows.
“Ah, when do they get back?”
“Tomorrow.”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Will.”
“What you said the other day made me think. Really, June. If we aren’t honest with each other from the start, we risk laying the groundwork for a nonexistent relationship.”
“Maybe it’s just me, but lies scare me away,” I said.
He smiled, running his fingers through the hair on the nape of his neck. “Are you always this direct?” I didn’t know how to answer that. Maybe I’d given him the impression that I was so insecure that I’d accept anything just to be with a guy as hot as he was?
“It’s true, Will. If you want me to hold a grudge against you for two days, not answer your messages, and then play hard to get so you can apologize for the millionth time, I can.
But I don’t care about your apologies. I don’t like those kinds of games.
If you want to be with me, I’m just asking for one thing. Honesty. It’s not hard.”
My words seemed to strike a chord. I noticed it when his crystal-clear gaze intensified.
“Yeah, but the girls I’ve been involved with before didn’t usually reason like that. You’re really mature,” he asserted.
“Did you think you could just show up with that pretty face of yours and everything would fall into place?” I teased with a hint of sarcasm.
“I was hoping.” Smiling, he shook his head to ruffle his hair, then became serious. “All jokes aside, I agree with you. I just wanna get to know you better before I tell you everything.”
Now I was skeptical. The line between pathological lies and mistrusting others was blurry in this case.
“You’re always with Ari, Poppy, and Amelia, and those three aren’t known for keeping their mouths shut.”
“Well you’re always with James, what should I say?” We heard a cough behind us.
“It’s wonderful to be the couple of the year’s favorite subject. But haven’t you got anything better to talk about?” James knocked on his locker door and then pretended to smile at me.
William took my hand and kissed me.
“Nasty,” I heard James remark.
“Shouldn’t you three be in class?” The gym teacher ran up next to us and rebuked us.
“Of course. It’s just that Romeo and Snow White are reenacting High School Musical. Have you seen how they make out?”
“Let it go. He’s just jealous.”
“He’s hateful, not jealous,” I muttered, as Will checked the time on his phone.
“I have to go, the teacher’s calling to interrogate the people who did badly on their history exams.”
He leaned in to kiss me, but I pursed my lips again, limiting it to a peck.
“Okay, see you later,” I mumbled with what little enthusiasm I had left.
Will and James walked away as I put my science books in the locker.
“June!” I jumped when I heard Brian’s voice in the distance. “Come help me with something!”
I turned around to see him knee-deep in strings and leaves.
“What is all this?”
“I’m decorating for Fall Fest,” he answered, trying to untie the tangled strings.
“Wasn’t Ari gonna take care of that?”
“We were supposed to do it together.”
He seemed tense as he handled the decorations, twitching nervously.
“Where is she? I haven’t seen her in a while,” I commented.
“The school doesn’t have a ladder. Does that seem normal to you?” he answered, waving his arms around.
What was going on? Why was it such a sore subject? Brian handed me an enormous poster.
“Do you trust me?” he asked me.
“What do you mean?”
“Can you reach if I lift you up?”
I looked up to where he was pointing.
Did I really have to help him hang all these banners?
“I’ll hoist you up, you sit on my shoulders and hang this there.”
I stared at him. “I’m really heavy! You’re used to lifting Ari, who’s light as a feather. I’m—”
“You’re heavy? In what universe?” he exclaimed, leaving me speechless.
I smiled at the veiled compliment. The truth was that I was about twenty, maybe thirty pounds heavier than Ari. I didn’t know Brian well, but from what I could tell, there was a mix of sweetness and fragility under all that armor.
“I’ll help you,” I conceded.
Brian handed me a little metal hook, grabbed my hips, and lifted me until I could reach the top of the wall.
“You should try out for cheerleading,” I told him from up high.
“June, come on! Put the hook in the hole.”
I laughed.
“What’s so funny? I meant . . . put the little hook into the hole!” he corrected himself, cracking me up even more. His hands held me firmly, but at some point they started to tickle.
“You there?” I shouted from above.
“Move quickly, I’m about to lose you!”
Unaware of how ticklish I was, he pretended to lose me, making me laugh even more.
“Brian!”
“What?”
“God damn it.” He lost his grip and we both fell.
“Sorry!” he exclaimed, frightened when I landed on him.
“No, I’m sorry. I’m incredibly ticklish!” I pushed myself up, leaning on his shoulders. “It’s better that I was the one who fell on you, otherwise you would’ve killed me with all these muscles,” I joked.
Brian stared at me bewildered. I’d just given him a compliment, and that seemed to make him uncomfortable.
Maybe Will was right, I was too direct. I pushed up on Brian’s arm to get up. He really was well built under that shirt. I’d never noticed. And surely this isn’t the time to notice that, I scolded myself.
When Brian got up on his elbows, I felt his pelvis thrust under my skirt.
My eyes went wide with embarrassment as I realized that I was straddling him. I felt guilty. I got up confused, and he did the same.
“I gotta go now,” he sputtered, agitated. “I remembered that I have math. You can help me another time.”
I was fixing my skirt when a deep, grating voice took me by surprise.
“Well, who do we have here?”
Oh my god, no.
Anyone else.
The President.
The elementary school teacher who hated me. Even my mom.
I could have put up with anyone else, but not him. Not James Hunter.
“Weren’t you going to a class for a history pop quiz?” I asked acidly.
“I’m certainly not going to class to get interrogated. What are you doing here?” James was leaning against the wall, bringing a water bottle to his lips to take a long sip.
“I don’t know about you, but I got an A- on the test,” I retorted fiercely.
“Hold on, do you want another grade for the little show you just put on?”
“I fell. Don’t give me shit.” The way I answered him made him giggle.
He followed me when I started walking.
“Smooth move, slick,” he quipped.
“Look who’s talking.”
“So normally you only fall down on other people’s balls, White?”
“Are you looking for my knees to fall on yours by any chance?” I asked. Then he stopped me in the middle of the hallway. “Hunter, cut it out.”
“Cut what out?”
“You’re insinuating something. I don’t like it.”
“What don’t you like? Hearing the truth? That you were straddling that asshole Brian Hood on the floor?”
“I wasn’t—” I didn’t know how to react for a moment. What did he care? I put my fists on my hips. “Say that again, and I swear I’ll slap you.”
He licked his teeth looking amused, then lifted his chin and kept staring at me.
“But what’d I say wrong? It’s nothing to me, but what about for you two?” he taunted, summoning a few teammates who had appeared in the hall. “I just have to tell Will about it. We’ll see what he has to say about it.”
“It was an accident. You’re such a—”
James smirked at me as he lifted up his water bottle, and before I could act, he spilled it all over me. I backed away instantly as I felt the cold water pour all over me down to my stomach.
“Oops, that was an accident too,” he said, amused.
I heard the guys behind him laugh, and when I looked down I saw my white shirt turning translucent and exposing my bra.
“Have you lost your mind?” I screamed.
But James didn’t seem to care much. He pushed me against the locker.
“Dumbass meathead,” I growled.
“Say that again, White,” he prodded.
“What, does that turn you on, Hunter?”
Why didn’t I know how to keep my mouth shut when he was near me? He took that as an invitation to leer up and down my body, stopping at the curves of my breasts protruding from my blouse. I felt breathless when he licked his lips slowly and then bit his lower lip.
“I don’t know, White, does it?” If he’d said this with his usual tone I would’ve pushed him away, but he just whispered it so seductively.