“Ew,” I muttered to myself. “You nasty.”
When I met him at the car, there was a lingering hint of awkward between us. Although, I wasn’t sure how much of it was me projecting my awkwardness onto him, how much was just him responding to me being weird, or how much it was borne of a mutual awkwardness after the possibly-not-even-a-moment.
“Had a good day?” he asked.
I looked at him askance as I put my seatbelt on. “In the hour and twenty minutes since I last saw you? Sure.”
“No more cupboards in your life?”
“Blissfully cupboard-free, thanks.”
“You sound almost disappointed by that.” He leant towards me as he turned the car on. “You hoping your crush will give it a try.”
I jumped so guiltily that anything I said would make it worse. Especially when my rapid response was, “No!”
Zane laughed as he pulled out of the car park. “Shit! Do you have a crush?”
I tried to take a breath before I replied, but my, “No,” came out less self-assured and more self-doubt.
“Little Charley has a crush,” Zane sang with a laugh.
“I do not.”
Because honestly, I didn’t. I just particularly didn’t want him thinking it could be him after that moment in the cupboard. Especially if I was the only one who’d had a moment. Which was probable. If it was actually a moment. Which I still wasn’t convinced by. Basically, I was just digging myself further and further into some sort of hole of my own devising and I couldn’t rightly see a reasonable way out at this point.
“What’s that thing about protesting too much?” Zane chuckled.
“Something far beyond the understanding of your tiny mind,” I huffed back.
“Oh,” he exclaimed. “Someone’s shirty.”
“Someone doesn’t like being falsely accused. How would you like it if I accused you of…being a decent human being?”
Zane laughed. “God forbid. I might implode.”
I rolled my eyes and settled back against the seat, crossing my arms. “I could tell your friends how you feel about Thea dumping you.”
I wasn’t looking at him, but I knew he’d frozen as much as driving would let him. “The things I tell you are in confidence, Charlotte.”
Oh my, God. He actually thought I was serious. Shit.
“Relax, dude.” I backpedalled as fast as I could. “Doing so would just mean I’d have to talk to Cody.” I fake-gagged and the mood in the car shifted back to jovial.
“I think Bleeker’s got a little crush on you,” Zane said, throwing me a smile as he turned the corner.
This time, my gag was a little less fake. “Gross.”
“You are such a reverse snob.”
I nodded. “And I admit my faults.”
“Your many faults.”
“Countless faults.”
“Near-infinite.”
“Takes one to know one,” I quipped cheekily as I leant forward.
“Oi!”
The rest of his protests were drowned out as I turned up the radio. I stuck my hand behind my ear, miming I couldn’t hear him. Zane just grinned and went back to driving. I sat back in my seat and felt like whatever blip I’d encountered wasn’t going to be a problem after all.
Chapter 4: Zane
Charley had been even more moody the last few days. Which wasn’t particularly weird for Charley, but this still seemed slightly more testy than her usual.
I wasn’t going to worry. My trustworthy charm never failed to get a smile out of her. Even talking about the most mundane things, she couldn’t resist relaxing around me.
“You get an invite to Mitch’s?”
“I said you could stay if you were going to work,” Charley said tersely.
Well, I might have been a little wrong on that one.
“What have we said about rag-rage?” I replied and she glared at me.
Sure, I sort of deserved it. But in my defence, she’d been the one who’d started affectionately calling her period mood swings ‘rag-rage’, not me. It was also not my fault that her cycle ran like clockwork and I had the timing down-pat. This had nothing to do with me trying to be a good friend, this was all about self-preservation and knowing when I could and couldn’t make certain jokes.
“Right, I’m sorry!” I sighed. “If it’s not rag-rage, what is it then?”
She shifted in her seat and I tried to get a read on her. I was usually pretty good at knowing what she was thinking. A near lifetime of seeing her almost every day would have that effect. But I couldn’t work her out. She seemed awkward and almost…embarrassed? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Charlotte Baines embarrassed.
“Nothing. Just…be quiet,” she said quickly.
Knowing that there was no point in pushing it any further, I did as she asked.
I didn’t actually want to do my homework. I had zero interest in it. But it had been that or not coexist with my favourite human. So, I’d done as I was told and sat across from her at the kitchen table while she worked on her History assignment.
Every time she moved my eyes flicked up to look at her. I watched every time she blew at that annoying wisp of hair over her forehead that never made it into her ponytail and was never pushed off her face.
As she reached to stop her pen rolling away, I went to grab it as well. Our hands brushed and something happened. It was so quick I wasn’t sure I’d actually felt it. But it left me with this feeling so surreal that I kept trying to tell myself it was real.
There’d been a spark.
A palpable spark.
It had been like electricity, lighting everything up.
My heart had actually skipped as I’d looked at her from under my eyelashes. She paused for just long enough that I entertained the notion she’d felt it too. The way she’d snatched her hand back made me believe in it harder. That or she was just annoyed with me. Which was equally, if not more, plausible.
Charley cleared her throat and brushed invisible strands of hair behind her ear the way she did when she was a little uncomfortable.
She went back to her work and I pretended to go back to mine. But my eyes kept rising of their own accord to look at her. Sometimes, she was already looking at me and would hurriedly look away. Other times, she looked up and I couldn’t make myself look away.
“What?” she finally asked, dropping her pen.
“What, what?”
“You keep looking at me,” she accused.
“You keep looking at me.”
“Well…” she spluttered.
“Well, what?”
“Stop it!”
“Stop what?” I asked.
“Stop looking at me.”
“No. Shan’t.”
“Zane!”
“Charley!”
She was fighting a smile.