Why?
I was in the library during my Free, looking for a book for my essay, and Zane just happened to be in there that day for his class.
Right.
Now I knew what was going on, I was going to get on with it.
I wandered the shelves with this niggling feeling in the back of my head. I knew it wanted me to look at Zane – I could hear him laughing and hear the teacher telling him to get back to work – but I wasn’t going to give it the satisfaction.
I was going to get my book and head back to the Common Room where I’d left all my stuff. Couldn’t really work on my essay without my laptop and my exercise book, could I?
But I didn’t do that. I didn’t go back to the Common Room.
I found the required book and, for some ridiculous reason, sat at a table in the library and read it. Well, I say I read it… It was more like I scanned my eyes over a few lines, then had to pull them off Zane. Again.
This was getting really old.
I forced myself to stand up. I was still looking at Zane so, when he looked up and saw me, he smiled warmly. He waved a ‘yeah, gimme a minute’ hand at Cody and got up. As he jogged over to me, I looked around and wondered if it was possible to make a quick exit without talking to him.
“What’s a place like you doing in a girl like this?” he quoted. Bastardised was more like. But it was a thing we did. A normal thing.
I tried smiling, but it felt forced. This was weird and I didn’t like it. I didn’t even know why it was weird so had no idea how to make it stop being weird. I held up the book.
“Reference for Mr Mack,” I answered.
He nodded. “That man does like his references.”
I nodded as well. “Yep.”
“You good?”
I nodded again. “Fine. You.”
“Fine,” he chuckled. “You sure you are? You seem weird.
“You’re weird,” I said quickly. “I should go.”
But instead of walking away from him like a normal person, I took a step forward. At the same time he did. We collided and I hurriedly looked down.
“Your crush just walk in or something?” he joked.
“What?” I asked, immediately looking around guiltily.
The panic I felt was real. And I wasn’t quite sure why. I needed to cover to the best of my ability.
“My crush!” was what I chose to zero in on. I was regretting it madly while furiously trying to come up with answers to any possible questions I knew he was about to ask me. “Yes. It was my crush. He walked in and sent me mad with desire.”
Zane smirked like he was going to joke about it being him. But he didn’t. Not entirely. “Oh yeah. Because it looked like you were staring at me.” He turned to look behind him as he leant on the table next to us. “Who is it?”
My spit stumbled a little into my wind pipe as I swallowed. My eyes teared up and my cough reflex spluttered to life loudly enough that most of the people in the library turned to look at me.
“Wow. You like the guy so much you’d rather die than tell me who it is?” he asked.
I shook my head. It was virtually impossible to talk after my body had made a storm in a teacup out of a minor inconvenience. Instead of words, I pointed behind him. Which actually turned out in my favour, because I didn’t have to know who any of them were.
“Who?” Zane asked again as he followed my waywardly pointing finger. “Lincoln?”
I shook my head wildly. Definitely not him.
“Fred?”
God, no. Not Fred. Another definite head-shake.
“Brock?”
I shook my head less certainly. I didn’t know Brock.
“The guy with the red hair?”
He’d do. I didn’t know him so bets were that Zane didn’t know him either. I nodded.
“That’s Brock.”
Shit.
I cleared my throat one last time and rasped, “I don’t know him.”
“Then how are you crushing on him?”
I gave him my fiercest tear-laden stare. “I don’t need to know a guy’s name to be into him.”
“Why don’t you go and say hi to him with that super sexy husky thing you’ve got going on?”
I frowned at him. “I need to get back to work. And you have a class to get to if I’m not mistaken.”
We both looked over at his teacher, who had her arms crossed and was looking like she was waiting for Zane to re-join the rest of class. Zane just gave her a nod in acknowledgement and turned back to me.
“You really don’t know Brock?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you. Don’t know him. Barely knew he existed.”
“But you’re crushing on him?” Zane was all confusion and I didn’t blame him.
Shit. “Yes! What I mean is… The name Brock. I don’t know that. That that was he. He was him.” My eyes narrowed in thought now. “I didn’t know there was a Brock in our year to know his name was Brock…” That sounded right.
Thankfully, Zane didn’t disagree with me. “Fair enough.” He opened his mouth again and I stopped him.
“Do not say anything more. I don’t need you making me more nervous about it.”
I felt a little guilty about how easy it was to lean into the lie. But what else was I going to do? Admit I had been staring at him and never live it down? No way. That wasn’t going to happen. All I was doing was avoiding awkwardness. There wasn’t anything wrong with that…aside from the whole lying to him thing.
But it was just a white lie.
What was a little white lie now and then?
A terrible idea, is what.
Because it all came back to bite me in the ‘behindus’ – another of our things – later that day when Zane fell into step with me.
“So, I’ve been thinking about your crush,” he said.
“My what?” I asked him, having completely forgotten about the whole thing.
“Your crush on Brock?”
I choked on my Coke. “Sorry. What on who?”
Zane paused so I stopped to look at him. “You said earlier. In the library. You said you had a crush on Brock.”
It all came flooding back. “Oh. Uh. Yeah, totally,” I scoffed self-assuredly. “I definitely have a crush on Brock. I just…don’t like to go broadcasting it around.”
He nodded. “You haven’t told Jett or Penny.”
Sure. We’d go with that. “Why do you assume that?”
“Because you always tell me everything first.”
“Do I?” I challenged.
“Who’s the one who knows about your crush? Huh?”
I nodded. I would give him that to hopefully spare me too much more conversation about it. “The defence rests.”
“Thank you. Now, I have some ideas for you.”
“Why do I already hate what you’re about to say?”