Page 18 of It Was Always You

Her jaw dropped, and she punched my arm. "Get over yourself, Noah. I-I..." She shook her head, so flustered she couldn't finish her sentence.

I laughed, loving how red her cheeks were getting. She had always been so fun to tease.

"Hey," I said, holding my hands up. "I'm just saying it'snot too crazy of an idea. I mean, Brielle is totally in love with Easton."

"Brielle is only eight. I'm twice that." She said it like the only way she'd get caught on a date with me was if it was fake.

Ironic, I know.

"I was just joking with you, Lexi. No need to bring me down a notch."

"Sorry, I just..." She sighed and lowered her voice. "You know as well as I do why we gotinvolvedin the first place." She raised her eyebrows as if to communicate something to me that she couldn't say in front of the students surrounding us in the lunch line.

"Because you can't resist this chiseled jaw and magnificent physique of mine?" I gestured to myself, standing as tall as my six-foot-three-inch frame allowed.

She rolled her eyes. "Sure, Noah. Who can resist that."

Her tone told me that she was exactly the type of girl who could resist that. It shouldn't have stung, since we were just pretending to date, but it kind of stung, anyway.

She seemed to notice that she'd offended my man-pride, so she stepped closer and tentatively slipped her hand up to squeeze the inside of my bicep. My skin felt warm where she touched me.

"I was thinking more along the lines of how anyone could resist that shaggy brown hair and million-dollar smile." She winked at me through her black-rimmedglasses. And I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it, but her cheeks got even darker. Could there be some truth to what she'd just said?

We reached the front of the lunch line and grabbed our trays. I'd been starving all morning, having been in a rush to get to school early enough to shower in the locker room while the drill team practiced. And then I'd been too embarrassed to get breakfast at the cafeteria because someone was bound to ask why I hadn't eaten at home like I usually did.

So I loaded up my tray with food, grabbing the biggest slice of pizza they had and the biggest helpings of the other sides.

Lexi eyed my tray as she scooted hers down the row. She had chosen the chef salad and fruit cup. Was she going to fake dump me because I didn't eat as healthily as her?

"Hungry today?" she asked.

Not wanting to go into why I was hungry, I just said, "Yup."

The lunch cashier added up our food and charged our accounts. When we were back in the commons area, Lexi stopped, as if unsure of where to go.

"You should probably sit at my table today," I suggested.

"You think so?"

"Of course. You’re mygirlfriend,right?"

She sighed, like she was relieved I'd been the one to suggest it. "Thanks. I've been table swapping ever since Juliette went to Paris."

"You should have said something sooner. Easton and I would have let you sit with us." I led her through the maze of tables to where Easton and Raven were arguing over some vampire show they both watched but could never agree on. I offered Lexi the chair I'd sat in earlier and stole an empty one from the table behind ours.

We ate quietly for a while, listening to Raven go on and on about how the main characters were clearly meant for each other and that the head vampire was just sabotaging everything for them. I tuned her out and took a bite of my pizza.

"Don't look now, but I'm pretty sure Ashlyn and Luke are staring at us." Lexi's voice broke me out of my trance.

"What? Where?" I darted my gaze around until I found them sitting at their usual table with Eliana and Jess. And they were indeed looking our way and seemed to be saying something about us.

"Do you think they're talking about us?" Lexi dabbed her mouth with a napkin, looking uncomfortable under their scrutiny.

I glanced at them again. They weren't looking at us anymore. I knew Ashlyn and Luke weren't the type of people to gossip, but what could they be saying? Were they surprised to see me dating Lexi? Ashlyn had hungout with Lexi, Easton, and me a few times at their house while we dated, so I wondered if she could tell that this was fake. I had certainly not taken much notice of Lexi in the past.

But who's to say that something couldn't have changed between us? People started dating people they already knew all the time. Wasn’t that what happened to them? One moment Ashlyn and I had been together, and then the next, she was falling for my rival on the football team.

I scooted closer to Lexi and draped my arm across the back of her chair. "If they're hoping for a show, we can give them one."

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