At least I hadn’t told Emma who I had a crush on. I knew better because if Emma got it in her head to play matchmaker, I would never know a moment’s peace.
“Come on, just give me a hint,” Emma said. “If you tell me who you like, I can help.”
“That’s exactly what I don’t want.” I snuck a glance at Will out of the corner of my eye. He looked thoroughly engrossed in whatever he was looking at. One lock of his floppy brown hair hung into his eyes, making my hands itch with the need to shove it away.
Who could focus on anything with hair in their eyes?
One side of his mouth was hitched up in the start of a smile. Was he listening?
Was he laughing at me?
Ugh. Paranoid much?
This was why Will Lansing made me uncomfortable. He’d transferred to our school last year when we were juniors, but every time I looked at him, I got the feeling he was laughing about something. The paranoid part of my brain seemed convinced he was laughing at me.
I moved closer to my friends and lowered my voice. “Could we please just drop this topic?” I asked, more than a little pleading in my tone.
“Oh, come on, just take a look,” Emma said, thrusting the magazine in my direction so I was forced to grab it or have it fall at my feet. I glanced down. Ways to Land Your Man.
Ew. I cringed at the headline alone.
“I’m not trying to land my man,” I said, forgetting for a second to keep my voice to a whisper as I handed it back to her. “He’s not mine to land. He doesn’t even like me like that.”
It hurt to think it, let alone say it, but I was nothing if not pragmatic.
“How do you know?” Lulu asked. If it was anyone else, I might have huffed or rolled my eyes, but she was all sweetness and innocence with those big blue eyes, so I managed to say evenly, “I just do.”
“You can’t know unless you’ve tried,” Emma argued.
The other students were leaving now, so it was just us.
And Will.
Who was inexplicably not going anywhere.
And Emma was inexplicably not letting this go.
“Hazel, you’re a lot of things, but you are not a quitter,” she said, her voice growing louder with enthusiasm.
I scrunched up my nose at the ‘you’re a lot of things’ comment. “What does that mean?”
But my bestie was on a roll, and she ignored the question. “Once you set your mind to something, you don’t let anything stop you from achieving it. That’s one of the things I love most about you.”
I shifted my gym bag and looked around nervously. Emma was starting in with her motivational speaker voice. If I didn’t shut this down quick, she’d be shouting to the rooftops about all my excellent virtues, and I’d be burning with embarrassment in front of Will ‘everything is one big joke’ Lansing.
“Thanks, Em, but this isn’t like trying to learn a new language, this is—”
“Trying to get a boyfriend,” Emma finished way too loudly. “It’s not all that different.”
“I don’t need a boyfriend,” I hissed.
“Of course, you don’t need one. No one needs a boyfriend.” She rolled her eyes, and I caught Lulu biting her lip to keep from laughing. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t want one.”
“I don’t—” I stopped mid-sentence.
I did.
I’d never been good at lying, especially not to Emma. She knew me too well. I shifted closer and lowered my voice, still paranoid that Will, despite his seeming indifference, was listening to every word we were saying.
“Fine, maybe I do want a boyfriend, but it’s not like I don’t have a complete, fulfilling social life without one.”
“Oh, yes,” Emma said with an arched brow and a dry tone. “Your social life is so very fulfilled.”
I thought I heard a snort from Will’s row, but when I looked over, he was frowning down at the camera as he clicked a button on the side.
“I don’t need a boyfriend.”
“How many times are you going to say that?” Emma asked. “No one is saying that you need a guy in your life. But since you happen to want a guy—a very particular guy—why not at least try?”
“Why not make a move, Hazel? You’ve got the guts for it.” Lulu beamed so sweetly it was impossible to refute that optimistic hogwash.
Did I have guts? Yeah. Plenty. I wasn’t some weak wussy girl who didn’t have confidence or a spine.
Which was exactly why I wasn’t going to chase a guy like I was some fifties chick in a poodle skirt with nothing but boys and dances on the brain.
No, thank you.
“Yeah, why not?” Emma added, a teasing glint in her eyes making me wary. “Are you chicken?”
I gave a snort of exasperated amusement. “What are you, twelve? That hasn’t worked on me in years.”
Emma arched a brow. “Hasn’t it?”
I pursed my lips in annoyance because I knew she was thinking about how she’d convinced me to go see the latest horror movie at the theater with her by asking me if I was too scared. Of course I’m not scared, I’d said.
And then twenty minutes later, I’d found myself angrily eating popcorn and getting scared out of my wits.
So fine. Maybe my best friend knew how to manipulate me. That wasn’t exactly something to be proud of.
But try telling her that.
“Seriously, how can you know he’s not interested in you too if you don’t at least try?” Emma asked.
I planted my hands on my hips. I so did not want to be having this conversation, especially not in public. “I know, okay?”
“How? Have you even spoken to this guy?”
She was prying.
A muscle by my eye twitched.
Maybe it would be easier to just tell her who my crush was because then she’d stop trying to pry it out of me.
Loudly.
And in public.
Fine, we weren’t exactly in the middle of Times Square, but there was a relative stranger by the name of Will just sitting there, waiting for...what, exactly?
I shot him another look, and this time I caught him looking at me. He didn’t look away, just grinned at me like watching me and my friends was the most entertaining part of his day.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. “Just looking over the shots I got today. I got some great ones of you, Haze.”
I stared at him because, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Was he being sarcastic?
He had to be. I wasn’t photogenic, and I wasn’t particularly pretty.
“Hazel?” Lulu said.
I turned back and realized my friends had said something while I’d been distracted by Will. I glanced over, but he was once again engrossed in his camera.
“Sorry, what?” I asked, too distracted to remember what they’d been talking about.
“Have you talked to your crush?” Lulu asked.
I swallowed. I talked to him every day.
“Because if you haven’t, he probably doesn’t know—”
“I have.”
Emma and Lulu exchanged glances. They were trying to figure out who it could be. Ugh. Heaven save me from prying friends.
“Look, I told the rest of the team I’d go to celebrate at the diner, so can we—”