Page 52 of The Match Faker

He reaches across the bed but stops short before he can touch my hand. “I really am sorry, Jasmine.”

“Save it.” I stare at the TV screen, unseeing, chest still aching and pride still bruised.

“Fine. I’m going to sleep.” He flips back the covers. “Do you want to keep the TV on?”

“No.” I roll away, clinging to the edge of the mattress. With a few clicks of the remote and the bedside lamp, we’re plunged into darkness.

“Goodnight,” he says.

Rather than answering him, I pull my mask over my eyes and pretend I have the power of miraculous, immediate sleep. Nick strikes me as the type of person who can sleep anywhere, and that makes me irrationally angry.

He shifts, the sheets stretch, the mattress dips; how am I supposed to sleep with these constant reminders of his existence beside me? Every movement is larger than the last, closer, like he could push me right off the bed or pull me into him.

“Would you quit it?” I yank at the blanket.

“You quit it.” He yanks back. “I can feel you over there, festering.”

Ew. “I amnotfestering.” Festering sounds like an infection. I am not an infection, he’s an infection.

“Then relax your body, please. It’s like sleeping next to a statue.”

Mentally, I do a full body scan. He’s right. I’m clenching. I practice a round of the deep breathing exercises I learned about when Jade downloaded meditation apps on my phone.

“Please don’t say festering anymore. It sounds like something a witch’s cauldron does,” I say through barely ungritted teeth.

“That’s boil and bubble,” he says, likeduh, because he just has to have the last word.

Don’t clench. Don’t clench. Don’t clench.

I roll onto my back, and he rolls to face me.

Don’t look at him. Do not.

My pinky finger is so close to his body, it buzzes from its proximity. If I slid my hand a couple of inches across the sheet, I’d be touching Nick. His leg, his hip maybe.

Jade’s deep breathing exercises have never helped. I’m better with lists, like Reasons I Do Not Want to Touch Nick:

I want to strangle him, which is technically touching. Shit.

He lied. He’s a lying liar who lied. Though he’s right that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t asked him to lie for me first.

My heart sinks. Never before has list-making betrayed me in this way.

His gaze is boring into the side of my face. This close, sharing a bed, I’m overwhelmed by his scent. Sharp, sweet, fresh, and citrus. Like if oranges grew from pine trees.

“What?”

Nick shifts onto his back. My heart races.

“Nothing,” he says. “Goodnight.”

My pinky finger, my hand, my whole arm, tingles. I make list after list in my head. Why I hate Nick, why I don’t want to touch him, why I’ll never forgive him. But my body doesn’t get the memo and I lie awake for a long, long time.

14

JASMINE

Hot air blows across my face in time with the telltale wheeze of a mouth breather. I open my eyes, only to be confronted by the owner of the morning breath.