“Thanks,” he said, waving something in front of her face. It was the pictures, printed out on shiny paper. Most of her body was hidden behind her cello, but it was obvious that she was naked. Mac looked past him to his car; his friends hung out the windows, laughing at her. Her heart had sunk.
“I just wanted to let you know you won me an important bet.” Nolan chuckled, then tossed something at Mac—a wad of bills. Before she could put the pieces together, before she could throw the money back at him, he hooted again and sauntered back to his car, pics tucked in his back pocket. When Mac came to her senses, she burned that money in the backyard. And then she’d cried for what felt like days.
No wonder she’d wanted revenge.
When she finished the piece and opened her eyes again, Blake was staring at her. “That was . . . wow.”
Mac ran her hands down the length of her face, trying to refocus. She’d been so lost in the music that she’d forgotten Blake was there. She glanced away, his gaze too intense, too potent.
“Why do you always do that?” he asked.
She glanced at him again. “What?”
“Look away. Hide.” He was watching her closely now, his eyes a piercing blue. “It’s so weird. When you play, you look so . . . so confident. Like nothing could faze you. But then you stop, and you get quiet and hidden. It’s like you save the best of yourself for your music.”
Color rose in her cheeks, her heart stuttering in her chest. “I’m not hiding anything.”
“No?” He reached toward her and carefully took off her glasses, folding the stems in and setting them on top of the amp. She blinked, the world blurred without her lenses—but Blake was so close to her she could see him perfectly. His eyes moved slowly across her features, like he was committing her to memory.
“Do you even know how beautiful you are when you play?” Then, to her shock, his lips were on hers, soft but insistent.
For a moment, she sat perfectly still, too confused to react. Blake tasted faintly of chocolate and peanut butter, his unshaven jaw lightly scratchy against her chin. Mac knew she was supposed to do something, to stop this, but soon everything fell away: her jitters, her concerns, what happened to Nolan. It just felt . . . right.
That was when a Feist song erupted from his phone. Mac knew the ringtone: It was Claire’s favorite song. She pulled away fast, her cheeks red.
Blake broke away, too, a guilty expression crossing his face. “Shoot.”
He walked uneasily through the door to the kitchen, but not before she overheard him say, “Hey, baby, what’s up?”
Mackenzie sat frozen, her lips still tasting like peanut butter. She squirmed, as though Claire could see her through the phone. As if Claire knew.
She shot up, grabbed her things, and stole out of the cupcake shop before Blake could stop her. She banged through the front door, the bells jingling. As soon as she got outside, the rain misting her face, she realized the enormity of what she’d done.
She’d kissed her best friend’s boyfriend. And she’d liked it.
CHAPTER FOUR
AVA JALALI SLID INTO HER desk in the film studies classroom just as the bell rang for fourth period on Friday. She was usually fashionably late to class, but she’d had so much on her mind this week that it was worse than usual.
“Cutting it close, Miss Jalali,” said Mr. Granger, but she could tell he was mostly teasing. Mr. Granger was one of the youngest teachers in school, just a year or so out of college. He couldn’t even pretend to have an authoritarian air when his students were only five years younger than him.
Ava turned her thousand-watt smile on her teacher. “Sorry, Mr. Granger. Vending machine emergency. Sour Patch Kids are back in stock, everyone!”
A ripple of laughter cut through the classroom. Her boyfriend, Alex, craned around from the seat in front of her and winked. A different teacher might have gotten mad, but that was what Ava liked about Mr. Granger—and why she knew she could get away with this stuff. He just gave her a dry smile.
“Well, now that our candy-shortage crisis has ended, we can focus on what we’re here to do.” Mr. Granger picked up a piece of chalk and started to write in sloppy handwriting across the chalkboard: MORALITY AND ETHICS IN CRIME FILM. “We’re starting a new unit today.”
Ava flipped her notebook to a blank page and poised her pen to take notes, ready to think about something other than Nolan. His picture was plastered every two feet in the hallways, and she’d barely made it through the assembly yesterday. Advanced film studies was her favorite class—she’d originally signed up because it sounded like an easy A, a chance to watch movies all semester, but she’d ended up really getting into the classic films they watched. So far, they’d talked about representations of women in early monster movies, the way World War II–era Bugs Bunny cartoons had been used as American propaganda, and identity and trauma in psychological thrillers. There was so much to learn. Under the glitzy, glamorous surface of the simplest popcorn flick, there were often hidden depths of meaning.