“Hi?” he replies, shooting his eyes between me and Lucas as if asking my permission to continue the conversation.
“You care if I sit with Ophelia today?” Lucas asks, smiling to reveal his flawless, straight teeth. He never even had braces; he just got lucky. He still hasn’t looked at me.
“Uh, are we allowed to do that?” Wesley asks.
“I doubt Waitley will care if we switch partners for one day,” Lucas says, rolling his eyes and biting his lower lip. He finally looks at me, and I feel my organs flip inside out. “That good with you, Ophelia?”
I nod, suddenly unable to speak.
“Oh, okay,” Wesley says, looking disappointedly at me before moving to work with Lucas’s partner.
Waitley turns down the lights and starts up her lecture slides. We don’t have a lab today, making it impossible for Lucas and me to talk. I sink into my seat, diligently taking notes about mole conversions when Lucas slides a folded paper onto my side of the desk. I look up at him before pulling it into my hand; a smirk plays on his lips while his eyes remain facing forward.
I unfold the note discreetly in my lap, years of passing notes with Agatha having prepared me for this. I’m convinced my eyes aren’t seeing properly in the dimmed light, but the words are written in bold, blocky letters, clear as day.
Lunch tomorrow. Meet at your locker.
I look at him again, sure he’ll snatch back the paper and say he made a mistake and meant for me to pass it to someone else. But he just flashes me another smile and, under his breath, says, “I’ve got a meeting with the team today at lunch.”
Part of me is torn. He dumped me last year. He’s hardly spoken to me this year. And on the few occasions he has, he’s left me feeling confused and anxious, like I am now.
But this is Lucas, the boy I spent an entire summer heartbroken over. I owe it to that girl to at least give whatever this is a shot, don’t I?
Plus, he’s still cute as hell.
I jot down yes and pass back the note, but he slips it into his pocket without even checking it. He winks at me, sending a flutter through my chest. Before I can focus on the lecture again, I feel Wesley’s eyes on me across the room. I flicker mine to meet his gaze momentarily before he turns away, his unreadable expression leaving me uneasy for the rest of the period.
* * *
By lunch, Wesley’s weird look has washed clear of my mind. But watching him laugh with Talia and Zaq while Sammie swallows a chocolate bar whole reminds me of the ordeal. I take my seat between Agatha and Talia and avoid eye contact with Sammie, which isn’t too hard considering he’s not attempting it.
“You’re still coming over today, right?” Talia asks as she takes a bite out of a red apple. I sip my water as I wait for her to stop pressing her mouth into the crisp flesh, too distracted to speak otherwise. Eventually I settle on nodding.
“What are y’all getting up to?” Ags asks. I feel a surge of gratitude that she, unlike Sammie and Lindsay, has never been inclined toward jealousy. She’s genuinely curious about our plans, not passive-aggressively fishing for an invite.
“Working on the end-of-unit paper for English,” I reply, finally regaining control of my voice. Sammie scoffs, likely annoyed that I didn’t offer to help him like I usually do.
“Oh, I was going to ask if you can look over mine for me,” Ags says, digging around in her bag. “Shit, I forgot to print it out. Can you check it out tomorrow at lunch? I can just make the last-minute edits during my free period before English.”
I’m about to agree when I remember Lucas’s note. “Well…,” I say. Agatha looks up from her chaotic mess of a backpack.
“Well … what?” She tilts her head. Sammie goes still, watching us out of the corner of his eye.
“Can you just send it to me after school? I actually have plans tomorrow.”
“During lunch?” Ags asks.
“Yeah,” I reply, feigning ignorance about her curiosity. I quickly turn to Talia, who has nearly finished her apple while I wasn’t watching, thank God.
“So is that a Fuji or Granny Smith?” I ask her.
“Granny Smiths are green,” Zaq inserts.
Ags grabs my shoulder and turns me to face her. By now, Lindsay has also looked up from her cold lasagna and Sammie isn’t even pretending not to watch us.
“Who are these plans with?” Agatha asks. “Do you have a new friend we don’t know about?” Her lips quirk in amusement.
“Oh, you know,” I say airily as I take a bite of Mom’s chicken, leftover from the dinner I refused to come downstairs to eat last night. “Just … Lucas,” I mumble, loud enough to hear but quiet enough to hear my embarrassment even better.
“Lucas?” Sammie asks, breaking our radio silence.
“The plot thickens,” Ags says as Lindsay clasps her hands together excitedly.
“I’m sorry, who is Lucas?” Zaq asks.
“Ophelia’s ex-boyfriend,” Talia replies, leaning past me to give him a pointed look. She doesn’t meet my eyes though.
“Emphasis on the ex,” Agatha says, looking straight at me. “He ghosted you and figures two months till graduation is as good a time as ever to hit you back up?”
Everyone stops eating, homing all their attention in on me. I know I should feel giddy, act flustered the way they expect me to with hope in my eyes and a cliché in my heart. But truthfully, I don’t know what Lucas wants. I barely know what I do.
I thought I wanted him to ask me to prom, for us to get back together for a few sweet weeks before graduation inevitably drew us apart again. But talking about it now, aloud and with real possibility, I’m stuck. It’s like when he’s right in front of me, I’m under a spell. But the second I step away, the illusion shatters.
“I don’t know,” I reply, my answer carrying more meaning than my friends could possibly know. “He mentioned prom, but…”
“Do you want to go with him?” Talia asks, finally looking at me. Her expression is just as unreadable as Wesley’s, but where his left me uneasy, hers leaves me dizzy and spiraling toward conclusions I have no right to jump to.
“I don’t know.”
“Fingers crossed he asks!” Lindsay squeals from across the table, reaching to squeeze my hands briefly. I know her excitement is for my benefit, so I try to perk up. Agatha watches us both, a frown tugging at her lips, but she offers me a tight, closed-mouth smile when she catches me staring.
Wesley and Zaq awkwardly shift the conversation to helping Agatha with some designs she has for graffiti-printed evening gowns.
I wager a look at Sammie, who I expect to be furious over me entertaining romantic possibilities with Lucas again. But his expression is soft, almost patronizing in its gentleness.
“Be careful, O.”
The bell rings before I can reply, but his words swirl through my head for the rest of the day.
* * *