“Okay,” I said. “Mine’s 7289—right over here. Stop here first?”
“Okay.”
Nicole fiddled with the strap of her book bag while I twisted the combination lock. I opened the locker and carefully hung my bag on the back hook, pushing it against the back wall so it didn’t stick out too much. I pulled out the green folder where I kept my homework and then straightened the books lined up at the bottom.
“You have got to have the most organized locker I have ever seen,” Nicole said.
“I don’t like things out of order,” I said with a shrug. I pushed against the twisted up edge of one of the books. It still kind of bugged me. I should have gotten a new one. While I was doing that, Nicole reached around me and pushed at the spine of one of the books, leaving it askew.
“Hey!” I exclaimed. I grabbed the book and lined it up again. “Don’t do that.”
Nicole giggled. Giggled.
I glared at her.
“Oh, this is going to make things interesting,” she said softly.
“Don’t push your luck,” I said with a growl, but I couldn’t glare at her for long when she looked up at me all innocent-like and bit down on her lower lip. “I’m being the nice boyfriend. You have to be the nice girlfriend, too.”
“I don’t recall agreeing to specific terms,” Nicole said with a raise of her brows. She leaned close to me. “You are a fool, dear Thomas.”
I smiled down at her, closed my locker door and wrapped my arm around her shoulders as we went down the hall. I noticed the looks some of the guys were giving her, but a stern glare from me had them staring at the ceiling pretty fast. I was going to have to put a clear end to that kind of shit. No touching, no talking, and no looking at my Rumple.
Mine.
I was going to have to keep the wolves at bay.
We rounded the corner and Nicole flipped the combination lock until it opened. Inside, her locker was a total disaster. It hurt just to look at it.
“How can you even find anything in there?” I asked as she dug around in a pile of papers, shuffling things from her book bag, which I realized was equally catastrophic, to the locker and vice versa.
“I have my ways,” she mumbled with her head still inside the metal cabinet.
“It’s a fucking mess!” I said.
“Fuck you,” she snapped back.
I felt an involuntary twitch as I turned up the corner of my mouth a little bit, and my head cataloged other times people had uttered the same phrase to me. It had always been met with either indifference or violence. Rumple, though—she just amused me.
When she was done orchestrating the movement of disaster one and disaster two from one place to another, I wrapped my arm back around her and led her down the hallway to her literature class. People continued to stare with open mouths, and Nicole continued to hide behind her hair. When we got to her classroom door, I pulled her over to the side and backed her up against the wall. I held her hips and she looked up at me with wide eyes. She was definitely a little nervous.
I leaned close to her ear.
“Relax,” I whispered. I reached up and pushed her hair back behind her ear. She tensed a little but then seemed to take my advice to heart.
“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled back.
I looked down at her, trying to ignore the throat-clearing from some of the students as they walked close to us. My eyes dropped to her mouth for a second, and I remembered again the feelings I had when I woke up with her—primarily, the desire to kiss her. My tongue darted out over my lips, and my eyes met hers again.
“Everything is good,” I told her. “I’ll be here right after your class is over, okay?”
“If you say so.” She sounded about as convinced as a collection agent talking to a guy about his back child support.
“I do,” I replied. I tried to keep my eyes off her lips as best I could. I wanted to kiss her. It seemed natural, like I should have kissed her right then.
But we hadn’t talked about anything like that.
Fuck.