Who and who?
But Claudia cursed in a whisper. “Oh, shit.”
Rika shifted on my left, and the next thing I knew someone sat down on my right, their knees blocking me in, like they were straddling the bench and facing me.
“What are you listening to?” a deep voice asked.
I had a moment to process whose voice it was before the earbud was plucked out of my ear.
Damon. They’d been talking about him. He’d been staring at me in the lunchroom. The scent of tobacco and cloves wafted off him, and I searched for ways to get rid of him.
He was bold. A lot bolder than I remembered, and I wasn’t used to it.
He was quiet for a minute, and I guessed he was probably checking out my playlist. The oldies I listened to when I needed something fun, light-hearted, and peppy to get me out of a mood. The same mood he put me in this morning.
The earbud dropped back in my lap, and his voice was low but sure. “It won’t be like that with us.”
Like that?
Like what?
And then I realized what song had been playing. “Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals.
He and I weren’t going to be like that couple in the song?
I tightened my jaw. Yeah, no shit. There was no ‘us’.
“Leave her alone, Damon.”
“Suck me, Fane,” he shot back.
I stopped breathing for a moment, registering the sudden sharpness to his tone. God, he was different.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I don’t want to talk to you. And you’re not supposed to talk to me.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and he didn’t move. Was he staring at me?
I faced forward, ignoring him.
After a few seconds, he cleared his throat. “I was Winter’s first kiss, ladies,” he told everyone, despite that we had another guy at our table. “I was eleven. She was eight.”
I felt him nudge closer, and his voice dropped a hair. “I wonder how many guys have kissed you since. But then, I guess I don’t really care, because I was first, and that’s all that matters.”
I balled my skirt in my fists. I wanted him to go away. “Don’t think for a second that you were any good at it, either,” I replied.
“And don’t think I’m going to go easy on you just because you’d trip over a speck of dust if someone wasn’t holding your hand to walk ten steps.”
I heard a snort from somewhere farther away, my lips tightened. “I’m not scared of you.”
“It’s early.”
I shook my head. “What do you want?”
“To pick up where we left off.”
Where we left off? He nearly killed me when we were kids. There was no moving forward.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” he mused. “I have a short attention span, and you interest me at the moment. I have questions. Like, can you see anything?”