Page 26 of One More Chapter
Ant lifts his perplexed little gaze from where he’s working at his makeshift desk—it’s really a table, because we ran out of furniture—his expression an innocent picture ofWho? Little old me?
“Uh… It’sfun.”
He blinks, as if that answer will change my opinion.
“Well, it’s giving me a headache,” I reply, tossing him an unamused expression through narrow eyes.
I step over to the long cord and switch off the lamp, sighing in relief at the absence of penetrating neon. I make it two steps toward my desk when I can sense the glow behind me. Stopping in my tracks, my shoulders hitch. But before I can even so much as turn around and kill him with my death stare, he steals the breath from me.
“You know, my ‘fun’ cured your headache once upon a time.”
It’s the first time he has actually brought it up. Or, it’s the first time I haven’t been able to put a stop to it before the stupid words come tumbling from his stupid mouth.
A wave of a memory floods over before I can stop it.
My head on his shoulder, his broad hand rubbing up and down my goose-pimpled skin.
“That last beer was a bad idea.”
So was pressing those words directly against the skin of his neck, but I did it anyway. He matched my temptation, pressing his inquisitive hum to my temple. We were flirting with kissing without really doing it.
“Hmm. And why is that?”
Another brush of his hand up along my forearm. I replied with my bent knee skirting over his thigh. Just a little higher and I might be able to tell if…
“I can already feel my morning headache,” I giggled.
That was the first time he actually pressed his lips to my skin. It was chaste and sweet and barely there, like he was asking the question without using the words, because words made it real. Instead of backing down like I should have, I leaned into it.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Pen?”
I jolt back to reality before my brain can conjure up the images I only allow myself before bed, of Anthony tipping my chin up to his mouth, and the time that followed in both a blur and a frame by frame chronology.
“Hmm?” I reply, painting my annoyed mask on over the flush that I’m sure crept in along with that memory.
“I can uh… I’ll take it down. If it bothers you.”
He shrugs, and I realize that the sign has been turned off. For the first time, I actually allow myself to see Anthony’s emotions warping over him in technicolor. The faint redness in his cheeks, his hands clasping in and out nervously, the way he avoids my eyes. I’ll break down every reason for this three secondexpression before bed a thousand times and then scold myself after. For now, I let the ache of my heart be soothed by the fact that although he knowingly hurt me, it’s hurting him too.
He feels bad. And heshould. But maybe I should ease up on him just a little? Maybe he didn’t hang his decoration to get under my skin, but to feel a little more at home in an unfamiliar classroom.
I sigh. I’m being petty again. And although I don’t have it in me to fully let go and move on just yet, I can probably let him have his little sign hanging on the wall.
“It’s fine. Just don’t turn it on before I’ve had my coffee.”
He smiles, and another faint clip plays in my memory.
His smile in comparison to the billions of stars against the backdrop of us. The way that, in my hangover stupor—of both the alcohol and us—I’d felt compelled to turn him into poetry.
I can’t let that smile break me again.
I throw up my wall of armor, turn my back, and say, “I’m heading out,” over my shoulder before grabbing my laptop and booking it down the hall to Juliet’s classroom.
“He decorated my classroom like a college dorm!” I bellow, barging into Juliet’s classroom without bothering to knock. She freezes, hands halfway to the wall with a new poster to attach with Sticky-Clips. Her lips curve up sheepishly. She finishes hanging the poster before climbing off the step ladder.
“Technically, it’shisclassroom for the year too,” she says, approaching me with slow steps.