Uh-oh.
I nod, and we walk to a quiet spot at the edge of the lockers. She leans against the wall. Normally the prospect of having one-on-one time with her would make me smile. Right now, as a side effect of my recent activities, which have been distinctly not Nice, my hands start trembling. I tuck them into my pockets.
“So, Caden,” she says. “You know how, when you first got here, I needed someone to model for me?”
I nod slowly. Kaylee scripted a scene about me modeling for Juliet, so I know which direction to steer the conversation. “Yeah. Are we ready to start? I’ve been doing a lot of chin-ups and have been avoiding the free drinks at work to make sure all this”—I gesture toward my chest—“is ready.”
“No, it’s … Don’t take this the wrong way, but I asked Dyl to pose instead. I’m good friends with you now, so staring at you pretty much naked for hours would be weird for me, and I think he would help me do well on the assignment. That’s all this is about, getting a good grade. Is that cool?”
I frown and my shoulders slump. In the script, she said yes, and I model for her. Kaylee even wrote a few witty one-liners for me to say while I was posing. Now I’ve lost all that time with her. I can’t help but think that kissing Dyl, or my outburst this morning, is what caused this.
“Juliet, I totally understand. I’ll do whatever makes you happy.”
School passes slowly because all I can think about is the fact that Juliet chose Dyl over me. Point blank, she picked him. I think about pretending to be sick so I can leave early, but that’s what the Caden who got me into this mess would do. For me to claw my way back into this contest, I need to fully recommit to being a Nice. My true thoughts and feelings are the enemy, so I need to bury them.
After lunch, I head down the hallway to English. Dyl is walking toward me, staring at his stupid poetry book. I glare at him. He’s going to strip in front of Juliet. I picture the way he’ll slowly pull his shirt up and over his body. The way he’ll grin as he balls it up and throws it away. How the ridges of muscle along his ribs will ripple as he flexes.
I think about grabbing him by the shirt and shoving him up against a locker. I’d press my forearm into his neck, just above his collarbone. I imagine his eyes, wide and startled, and the way his mouth would drop open for a second before he’d smirk and call me Nice guy.
He never forgot about the contest. Not even for a second. All day I’ve been distracted and he’s been making moves to pull Juliet away from me. I want to scream at him, to ask him how he could kiss me and then keep playing like nothing has changed. Instead, I clench my fists and walk past him.
After the final bell, Juliet is waiting for me outside my classroom. She’s leaning against the wall, glancing at everyone as they stream out of the room.
“Hi,” I say as I approach her. “It’s nice to see you.”
She bites her lip and detaches from the wall. We make our way down the hall toward the exit. “Caden, you know you can tell me what you actually feel, right?”
I gulp. “What makes you think I don’t?”
“Just the way you’ve been acting today. Like, it seems like you’re upset about me doing the art assignment with Dyl, but you don’t want to let it show. It’s fine if you’re mad at me or whatever, but please don’t pretend to feel something you don’t. It’s what my dad does and I can’t stand it. Promise that you’ll never do that to me?”
“I promise,” I say. “Well, from now on, anyway. In case it isn’t screamingly obvious, I’m not cut out for this whole lying thing. You can see right through me. So yeah, I’m a little bit upset that you’re doing the assignment with Dyl because I was looking forward to spending time with you. That’s it. I’ll get over it.”
“Thanks for being honest, Caden. But I want you to know the reason I’m doing the assignment with Dyl is that I like you so much, not the opposite.”
“For realsies?”
“Yep, for realsies. To do the assignment you’d have to be half naked. It’d be weird with you because, you know, you’d be shirtless.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
Too bold, Caden. Get awkward, fast!
My smile drops. “About the me-being-shirtless thing, I mean. Sorry, I was trying to sound sexy and I epically screwed it up. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”
She laughs. “It’s okay, Caden. I like the idea of seeing you without a shirt on. It’s … it’s why I asked in the first place. But, well, our relationship is different now. It’s stronger than attraction, or at least I think it is. So I don’t want to screw it up by throwing a whole lot of lust into it, especially when you’re naked and I’m not. So let’s drop it, okay? Speaking of dropping it, Trevor and Natalie are coming over to my place before the party starts to get ready. Do you want to join us?”
“Dropping it? What is this, a Pitbull song?”
“Move past the bad segue, Caden.”
“I do as you command, Juliet. But wouldn’t I be intruding?”
She shakes her head. “Dude, they both love you. And I … I like you a lot, so it’d be awesome if you came. No one is being sympathetic by inviting you over. We like spending time with you because you’re funny and cool, so it’s for our benefit as much as yours. Plus, we may even have a couple drinks before. Mom is cool about alcohol as long as we don’t get drunk, so she got us a bottle of wine. It’s going to be really fun, and I want you to come. So are you in?”
Am I in? I’m as in as it is possible for me to be. I thought for a second that I’d ruined everything, but maybe the few times the real me emerged he didn’t do as much damage as I thought. I still need to be very careful about how much I let my personality come through, but it’s not as grim as I previously imagined. I’m not out of the running yet.
“Lead the way,” I say.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Juliet’s house is only a couple hundred yards away from the school, so the four of us are walking there, following the paved pathway beside the road. As we pass under the school gates I recall the e-mail Kaylee sent me last night. She thought it’d be a good idea to take advantage of my friendship with Juliet in order to damage her relationship with Dyl. Kaylee said that Juliet would listen to me as long as I didn’t come across as a “possessive fedora-wearing asshole.” Those were her words, obviously, but I agree with the sentiment.
I turn to Juliet. “So how much of Dyl have you been seeing?”
“Not much. Why do you ask?”
“He seems to like you a lot. It’s kind of creepy.”
“Liking me is creepy?”
Oh boy. Wrong tack.
“No, of course not—I mean, you barely know him and he seems kind of obsessed. Liking you isn’t creepy at all. It’s the most obvious thing in the world.”