Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Milo

“Hey, best friend,” Tom said on Monday afternoon, walking up to my locker. He’d been calling me his best friend for the past few weeks, ever since I’d accidentally nicknamed him. He was eating that slipup of mine like the Jolly Ranchers he was always shoving into his mouth.

“What’s up?” I asked as I shut my locker and swung my backpack onto my right shoulder.

“I wanted to invite you to the best party of all parties in the history of parties this coming Saturday. I’m officially turning eighteen. My parents will be out of town, and I’m throwing a rager.”

“Do people still say rager?” I muttered as we began walking toward our next class—English. My favorite hour of the day.

“People still say rager. It’s me. I’m people.” He pulled out a card from his backpack and handed it to me. “Here’s your invite.”

“You had invites printed?”

“I’m just that level of extra.”

I glanced down at the invitation in my hand and arched an eyebrow. “Choose your own Tom costume party?”

“Any Tom of your choice—except Tom Cruise from Risky Business . I claimed it. Be creative.”

“I’ll do my best.”

He paused his footsteps. “Wait, you’re actually going to come? And you’re going to dress up?”

“Didn’t you just invite me, and isn’t it a costume party?”

“Yeah, but I mean, you’re kind of, you know…anti-social.”

“I show up to the hangouts all the time.”

“I mean, you’re there, but not really there. Plus, the bigger the crowd, the less likely it would be that you’d show.”

That was true. The bigger the crowd, the more people I’d have to avoid having conversations with. People loved small talk, but I hated it.

“About how many people are coming?” I asked, now concerned that I agreed to show up.

“Nope! No take backs. You said you’ll be there, so now you have to show up.” Right before I could answer, Starlet walked past the two of us. Tom let out a low whistle. “She’s so fucking hot, man.”

“What?” I snapped, taken aback by his words.

“Hey, Ms. Evans! I like your hair today,” he said with a singsong tone over to Starlet, making her turn to look toward us.

Her eyes locked with mine briefly before she turned toward Tom. “Thank you, Tom, that’s very kind of you.”

“It’s really nice. Then again, everything looks nice on you, Ms. Evans,” he flirted.

Yup.

That was right.

He was flirting with my secret friend that I wanted to be more than a friend with, and rage built inside me that I wasn’t even able to act on. Secrets were fun.

Starlet smiled. Damn. I wished that smile were against my mouth. “I’m not the one grading your homework this week, Tom. No need to suck up to me. I’ll see you both in class.”

I’d hoped she’d look back at me one more time, but she didn’t. She was too much of a professional for that.

As she walked away, Tom’s eyes followed the movement of her hips.

“Dude,” I said, shoving him. “That’s our teacher.”

“Student teacher. She’s pretty much our age. You know, after my birthday, I bet I’d even have a shot with her.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I muttered.

Tom shrugged as we continued on our way to class. “You’re probably right. If she were ever going to go for a student, it would probably be you, seeing how I think she has a crush.”

The words threw me for a loop, and I almost tripped over my own feet as Tom popped another Jolly Rancher into his mouth.

I narrowed my eyes at him, somewhat trying to convince myself that he didn’t say what I thought he’d said.

“What?” I asked.

“I think Ms. Evans has the hots for you,” he repeated.

My chest tightened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He raked his hand through his hair. “I just noticed how she stares at you when she hands out assignments. She lingers.”

“That’s bullshit,” I muttered, walking faster. “She looks at everyone the same.”

“Maybe, dude. But if you ever get the chance to unlock that door…please, for the good of all of us guys who have daydreamed about her, walk through it. Because I would screw her in a heartbeat.”

“People don’t daydream about Ms. Evans,” I said, trying to hide my annoyance as my hands formed fists.

“Are you kidding me? Everyone talks about that woman. Even Chris talks about her! Well, okay, he doesn’t talk, but he looks. How could he not? She’s like a damn supermodel. Her curves…” He bit his fist and rolled his eyes as if he were getting off from the idea of her alone.

“Chill, man. That’s our teacher.”

“I bet if I had the chance, I’d teach her a few things myself.”

Rage.

Straight-up rage was all I felt.

I knew we were friends and all, but man…I wanted to punch Tom square in the jaw for talking about screwing my girl.

Well, my secret girl.

My secret friend.

What the hell ever it was that we were.

I was in a shitty mood now.

Fuck Tom. Fuck him and his daydreams about the girl who wasn’t openly mine but was…mine. And I was hers. Completely fucking hers.

***

“You can’t look at me like that,” I told Starlet as I walked into our study room after school.

“Like what?” Her eyes were on me, and I felt it all: her gentleness, her care, and her falling for me.

“Like that,” I said, gesturing toward her. “Like when you see me…you actually see me.”

“I don’t know how to stop that. Besides,” she confessed, shrugging her shoulders, “you look at me the same way.”

I couldn’t argue with that fact.

But I was still in a pissy mood. I was annoyed that Tom and other guys were checking her out and talking about how they wanted to screw her brains out. During the class, I watched how all the guys’ eyes seemed pinned on her, and it only made me angrier. Could I blame them for their attraction? Of course not. Did it piss me off? Absolutely.

If it had been any other girl I’d previously fooled around with, I couldn’t have given a rat’s ass about their attraction to said girl. But Starlet was different. She wasn’t like those girls. She was my person. Precious, unique, weird, and mine. Solely, undeniably, mine.

She arched an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” I shot out. “I’m fine.”

“You’re grumpy.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re grimacing.”

“I’m not,” I growled.

She laughed at me. Yup, she laughed as if my annoyance were tickling her. “You’re so weird. What’s going on?”

“My friend Tom thinks you have the hots for me.”

Her laughter faded off. “Wh—why would he think that?”

“Because of how you look at me. He said if you had the hots for any student, it would be me.”

“Oh no. This isn’t good.”

“Don’t worry. I shut it down fast. Lucky for us, Tom has the brain of a toddler and was already onto another topic.”

“If that’s the case, why are you so upset?”

I grumbled and crossed my arms as I sat back in my chair. “Because, they, shit…” I sighed and tossed my hands up in surrender. “They all know you’re hot, all right?!”

She raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“The guys at school have been going on about how hot they think you are, how they want to hook up with you, and all this other bullshit. It’s as if they have no moral compass.”

“Says the guy who screwed me in the back of my Jeep forty-eight hours ago.”

I went to shoot a comeback to her comment, but when I saw the smirk and tongue-in-cheekiness of her words, I couldn’t help but feel less intense. “Whatever.”

“You’re jealous,” she mentioned.

“I’m not. Psh, I’m not the jealous type.” Yes, I was. I was damn jealous. I’d never experienced that before, though, which left me feeling exposed and embarrassed that she was right.

“Oh my gosh, you are the jealous type.”

“Let’s start on our homework,” I muttered, unzipping my backpack.

Starlet sat back in her chair and shook her head. “No. I want to focus on this jealousy thing a little bit. It’s kind of sexy.”

“It would be sexy if it were true, but it’s not. I’m not a jealous guy.”

“Don’t worry. I get jealous over you, too.”

I arched my eyebrow. “Bullshit.”

She nodded. “Yup. On the school’s lower level, in the girls’ bathroom, there’s a list of the hottest guys in school. And the girls add tally marks with who they think is the hottest. Guess who the leading man is?”

I smirked, sitting up a bit straighter. “No shit, me?”

“You.” She pulled out her cell phone and started scrolling through her photographs. “In the bathroom by the cafeteria, there’s a list of names of girls’ initials who would like to”—she cleared her throat as she read the picture—“sit on Milo Corti’s face.”

She held the phone out toward me. The list was massive and completely ridiculous.

“A few other messages talked about how you hooked up with them. You have quite the reputation around these parts.”

“Being a manwhore to avoid dealing with my shit was somewhat my thing for a long time.”

“That was until me.”

I smiled. “Yeah. Until you. I honestly don’t understand why the girls are writing that shit in the bathrooms. It wasn’t like I was connecting on a deep level with them.”

“What can I say? We, girls, tend to like emotionally unavailable men.”

I snickered as I glanced closer at the list. “Is that an S.E. I see at the bottom of the list?”

Her cheeks rose, and she pulled her phone back from me. She shrugged. “I didn’t want to feel left out.”

The thought of her sitting on my face would remain on my mind for the remainder of the evening.

“Can I be inappropriate real fast?” I asked.

She laughed. “You can’t be inappropriate real fast.”

“But I want to be inappropriate real fast.”

“Fine. You get ten seconds to be inappropriate real fast.”

“I’ll need fifteen seconds.”

“Twelve seconds tops.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you going to time me?”

She pulled up the timer on her cell phone. “And…go.”

“Being in this library just makes me realize that I want to fuck you in the quietest places and make you scream so fucking loud.” Her jaw dropped open as shock washed over her. No words left her, so I continued. “Oh, and I like your hair when you straighten it like that. It looks very yankable.”

“Milo.”

“Yes.”

She grew flustered and combed her hair behind her ears. “Take out your freaking math book.”