Chapter 12
When Wednesday rolls around, I once again have a panic about my outfit—I can’t bring myself to wear the fandom tee again and risk a full-on eye roll from Max this time.
I forgo Daphne’s assistance with my makeup this week, promising I’ll try the look again soon but not sure I have the confidence for it right now, and instead make a dash for the bus with her calling after me, “Good luck! Go get your man, Cerys! Morning debrief at Costa with the girls tomorrow!”
I turn around long enough to grin and wave, already looking forward to it, glad that the free-period coffees sound like a staple in the calendar, one I’m firmly included in.
October has arrived with brisk winds, even if the sun is still bright and warm.
The leaves haven’t turned yet, and there’s a summery feeling still clinging to things.
Today, my outfit is the same blue floaty sundress I wore to the convention a couple of weeks ago, but layered with a woolly sweater and paired with sneakers instead of sandals.
Maybe it’s not quite the weather for a sundress, but I’ve had to compensate for Max third-wheeling again by putting a little more effort into my look.
My hair is piled into a bun, slicked back with some serum that Nikita lent me, and held in place by about a thousand hairpins.
It’s making my head ache after being so stiffly in place all day, but when I catch sight of myself in the reflection off the bus window, I don’t dare mess with it.
It does look really good. Sophisticated. Older.
Like someone who knows how to flirt with boys and signal to her best friend that she’d very much like for him to kiss her, thank you.
This time, when I get to Jake’s house, I notice Max’s car parked crookedly once more on the pavement. Ginny’s car is there too, but only because she doesn’t take it to uni with her; Jake’s planning to use it to practice driving, much to her chagrin.
“Thomas never had to share his car” was her argument, according to Jake, to which their mom replied, “Yes, but Thomas had moved out and graduated uni by the time you were learning to drive. Your car is sitting here doing nothing, and since your father and I pay the insurance, you can share it with Jake while he’s learning and you’re at uni. ”
Mom and Dad have both said they’ll take me out to learn in one of their cars since I got my learner’s permit this summer, but that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s another fight I’ve avoided causing between them, sure that somehow they’ll use it to find another way to be at each other’s throats and ruin the whole experience anyway.
I cast a glare at Max’s car, annoyed—jealous—then steel myself and go knock at the front door.
There are voices on the other side, laughter about something, and then it swings open to reveal Jake.
He’s in his school shirt and a pair of gray tracksuit bottoms, beaming at me but already moving back inside.
“All right, Cerys? Ready for another round of your favorite show?”
I laugh. “Don’t you know it! Fangirl official, right?”
He doesn’t send me upstairs like last week, so I follow him to the open-plan kitchen/dining room to help as he starts making snacks. Grilled cheese again, of course.
“Sometimes I think if we cut you in half, you’d bleed melted cheese.”
Jake snorts. “That is weirdly morbid. And also, absolutely true.”
“Sooo,” I singsong. “How’s school?”
“School’s fiiiine,” he sings back, a smile resting gently on his lips as he pulls slices of bread out of the packet to butter. I set the kettle on to boil and lean on my forearms on the island in the center of the kitchen, across from Jake.
I study the easy slope of his narrow shoulders, the lean definition in his arms that’s appeared since the end of our last school year.
He must’ve had a haircut since last week, because his sandy-blond locks are neater and shorter than when I saw him last, and as immaculately styled as if he’d only recently done it, rather than spent the day at school.
There’s a fingerprint on his metal-frame glasses, right in the middle of the lens, and I reach out to pull them from his face.
Jake jolts, but doesn’t question me when I clean his glasses on the fabric of my dress, scrutinizing them to make sure they’re properly clean before I hand them back.
Then I course-correct, and place them gently back on his face, letting my fingertips softly graze against his cheeks.
It could be passed off as just friendly, an accidental touch, but at the same time it feels almost recklessly bold, especially when I let my hands stay there just a second too long and smile as I say, “There. You’re perfect. ”
His bright blue eyes blink rapidly—maybe just testing the clean lenses or, hopefully, reading into my gesture for what it really is—then he flashes a smile my way. “What would I do without you, Cer?”
“I really don’t know.”
“So, how’s school with yoooou?” he asks then, drawing the word out brightly. It annoyingly interrupts the intensity of the moment we just had going on, but I suppose being hauled in for an impassioned kiss across the kitchen counter is too much to hope for.
I give him a more detailed answer than he offered me, although I suppose I am already fully up to date on his soccer drama, and Jake’s always preferred chatting about his friends and his hobbies than his classes anyway.
“It’s pretty good. My lessons are all okay—history’s a slog, but that’s mainly because we get so much homework.
And I think I’m officially part of the group now. ”
“With Evie from school and whatsherface, the Bridgerton girl?”
I giggle. “Daphne. Yes, that lot. We have Thursday morning debriefs now.”
It’s only after I blurt it out that I realize what I’ve said, and blush. Jake is too busy carefully layering slices of cheese to notice, at least, so he just asks, “Debriefs? That sounds very intense. What about?”
“Oh, um. Just. You know, how classes are going and stuff.”
Mostly stuff.
Mostly him.
“This sounds like when my mom puts a ‘weekly audit’ meeting on her work calendar, but she’s actually at spin class.
” He glances up at me with twinkling eyes.
“Dad’s been making fun of her since she let that slip.
She asked him to take the garbage out the other night and he said, ‘Sorry, I’m currently busy with my weekly audit’—you can imagine she was not impressed, so obviously we’ve all started doing it now. ”
Even though I laugh, the story leaves my chest feeling tight.
“I wish my parents would joke around like that instead of…whatever the hell it is they’re doing these days,” I confess. The kitchen is quiet but for the bubbling of the kettle, almost finished, and the scrape of the butter knife in Jake’s hand.
He pauses, not quite meeting my eye before he says, “Maybe you should sign them up to clown school for their Christmas present. Nothing says ‘shut up’ like a mouth full of colored cloths that just won’t stop coming!”
My laugh is hollow, but we both pretend not to notice.
And I try not to miss the Jake who talked to me more openly, more deeply, in the Discord on Sunday night.
But that’s okay, I tell myself; I know he cares, and now that I know he is capable of that sort of heart-to-heart, however awkward he might find it in person, it only makes him more endearing.
The kettle finishes boiling and I find the mugs. I pull down the Just Dandy mug and my mood shifts instantly, like it’s a cursed object.
I could take it back. It’s petty, maybe, but it’ll be a victory. I’ll be making a point.
But Max is Jake’s new friend, close enough that Jake wants to include him in our weekly hangouts, so I suck it up to prove that I am a good person, a compassionate future girlfriend, and I switch it for Ginny’s swearing pug mug.
Look at me, taking the moral high ground.
I am—and I’m sure Jake will see it any day now—such a catch.
—
This week, I sit farther up on the bed, closer to Jake but not quite next to him, and not near enough to the headboard that I might be tempted to relax into it; lying down on his bed with him feels a little too nerve-racking, even if we didn’t have our third wheel to deal with.
Instead, I sit with my skirt arranged prettily around me and my legs stretched out, crossed at the ankle, and prop myself back on my hand.
It’s not very comfortable, admittedly, but that’s beside the point.
Luckily, I don’t have to exchange much small talk with Max beyond a hello because Jake immediately queues up the next episode for us all to start watching, and the show takes over.
I can’t believe how into it they both are—Jake is bright-eyed and smiling as he watches, even mouthing along to parts of the show, and Max leans forward intently, his eyes focused entirely on the screen.
They both cry out at some apparent betrayal, both cheer at the appearance of a ragged, withered-looking man with stringy red hair turning gray and a broken pair of glasses, and they both wait for my reactions to certain moments with bated breath.
Mostly, it’s whenever Lady di Silver and her guard are onscreen, though they aren’t doing very much.
For a good chunk of one episode, all they do is ride horseback down a road and discuss politics, which is nowhere near as entrancing as the scene in the bedroom—even if they are sharing a horse, and cozied up together.
Actually, most of the two episodes is politics and characters swapping ancient myths and legends about the long-lost Eldritch King who will bring the realm back to rights, and it’s lots of dark, moody scenes in taverns and dramatic, foreboding one-liners that make the boys positively vibrate with excitement but go right over my head.
By the end of it, when Jake sits up to pause before episode seven—the season finale—plays, I flop back on the bed with a groan of despair, throwing my arm over my head.