“Oh my god, he did not!” Chloe smacks me in the shoulder, but she’s laughing, which was the whole point. “And no, thank you, this is not about Frank with the Sweatband from the Deli. I don’t know. I just kind of feel like I’m over high school boys, that’s all.”
“Oh yeah?” I say with a snort. “Gonna start trolling the Saint Xavier’s parking lot, maybe pick up a sixth grader or two?”
“Wow, you are just on fire over there.” Chloe makes a face. “I’m just saying. We’ll be in college soon, and then . . .” She trails off, plucking a pot of lip stain off the rack and holding it up to the light. “I don’t know,” she says again. “Like, do you think you and Jacob will stay together?”
“I—” Haven’t thought about it really, but it feels messed up to say that out loud, even to Chloe. “I guess it depends where we wind up going,” I hedge, examining a tube of concealer instead of looking directly at her.
“You mean how close he is to Brown?” she asks with a grin.
“Don’t even say it!” I make a face. “We don’t know that I’m getting into Brown.”
“I know you’re getting into Brown,” Chloe declares, then holds up two red lipsticks. “Which one?”
I squint. “Those . . . are one hundred percent identical.”
Chloe huffs. “They are not!” she protests. “Ugh, they have completely different undertones. You’re useless, you know that?”
I hold my hands up like, What can you do? “You love me.”
“I do,” she admits, linking her arm through mine and tugging me toward the checkout. “Come on. I’m getting them both.”
Six
I’m heading for my locker after the last bell on Friday when I pass by the newspaper office and spy Bex lounging cross-legged on the sofa.
“Hey,” I say, rapping lightly on the open door.
Bex doesn’t have an office, per se, but a lot of times he hides out in here if he’s got grading to do and doesn’t want to deal with the teachers’ lounge.
“Hey,” he says now, struggling upright. He’s wearing khakis and a blue plaid button-down rolled to his elbows, glasses slipping down his face the slightest bit. “Headed out?”
“Almost,” I say, pulling my ponytail down over one shoulder. “Although, actually, if you’ve got a minute, can I run an idea for an article by you really quick?”
Bex nods, gesturing at the other end of the sofa before pulling a desk chair over to use as a footrest. “By all means.”
“Thanks,” I say, reaching down and pulling my planner out of my backpack. “Okay, so I was thinking—” I break off suddenly as he lets out a giant yawn, dark eyes squinched shut and the pink flash of his tongue. “Sorry,” I say with a laugh, a little embarrassed. “Am I keeping you awake?”
“No, no, no, I’m sorry.” Bex shakes his head, taking his glasses off and scrubbing a hand over his face before replacing them. “I just haven’t been sleeping much.”
“Uh-oh,” I say, a sharp little thrill running through me. The word sleeping feels weirdly intimate coming from him, like even mentioning it opens some invisible door to the thought of . . . whatever else people do in beds. “Too many exciting papers to grade?”
“Obviously,” Bex replies with a rueful smile. “No, um, honestly? My ex and I have been trying to work it out, and it’s just been . . .” He waves a sheepish hand. “Yeah. It’s just been.”
I blink. “Oh.” I keep my voice neutral, like teachers talk to me about their various romantic relationships all the time and he’s the fourth or fifth of the week. I really don’t want to think about what getting back together with his ex-girlfriend has to do with him not getting a lot of sleep—or, more truthfully, maybe I do, even if that’s totally crossing the line.
“Anyway,” Bex continues with a twist of his lips, “we ended it for good last night. Thus”—he gestures down at himself—“the desiccated corpse you see before you today.”
I smile. “That sucks.”
He shrugs. “It’s for the best,” he admits. “The thing about Lily is that she’s just really—” He breaks off. “I’m sorry. This is literally the last thing I should be talking about right now.”
“No, no,” I say, totally curious. I can’t help it. I pull one leg up underneath me on the sofa. “It’s okay.”
“I mean, it’s not, probably,” Bex counters with a shake of his head. “It doesn’t exactly win me any points as an authority figure, that’s for sure. But I don’t know, you just kind of seem, like . . . older than other girls in your grade. Has anybody ever told you that?”
Nobody ever has, actually; I think about how I secretly played Littlest Pet Shop until Chloe caught me at it halfway through seventh grade. “I do?”
“Yeah,” Bex says, no hesitation at all. “Honestly? I’ve taught a lot of teenagers. And I like teenagers, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes I listen to what, like, Emily Cerato and her friends are talking about in my classroom, and I think . . . Marin’s not like that. It’s like you’ve got an old soul or something.”
Pleasure blooms inside my chest, huge and sudden. “Well,” I say, ducking my head down and smiling at my planner. “Thanks.” When I look up again, Bex is smiling back.
We stay there for the better part of an hour, him grading and me working on a set of calc equations that aren’t due until halfway through next week. It’s after four when Bex finally stands up and stretches, his shirt coming a little bit untucked, so I can see a flash of smooth bare skin at his hip.
“Okay,” he says, stifling another yawn with a guilty smile. “Time to get out of here, Lospato. You need a ride home?”
“Oh!” It’s the first time he’s offered since that day a few weeks ago, when he told me not to tell anybody. And I didn’t tell anyone, not even Chloe, and maybe there’s a part of me that’s been holding my breath, waiting for him to ask again. “That’d be great, actually. Thanks.”
Bex nods, and I grab my stuff before following him out the side door and across the mostly empty parking lot, both of us squinting in the white light. The weather report keeps threatening snow.
“Shoot,” Bex says as he’s digging his keys out of his messenger bag, smacking the palm of his hand lightly against the hood of the Jeep. “You know what I didn’t bring you again today?”
“Uh-oh,” I say with a laugh. “Let me guess.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he mutters, buckling his seat belt and turning up the heat. “I mean, sleep deprivation, for one, but that freakin’ book has been sitting on my hall table since Halloween, and literally every morning I think, Don’t forget to bring that to Marin. And every morning I walk out of the house without it.”
“Sounds like you should write yourself a Post-it,” I tease him.
“If I thought Post-its were enough to get my life in order I’d literally buy stock in 3M,” Bex says with a grimace. Then a thought seems to occur to him.