Page 66 of The Charlie Method

“You were staring first.” I grin at her. “I thought that meant it was cool for me to do it too.” When she starts to turn toward the microscope, I reach out and touch her arm. My voice becomes gruff. “Hey. Did I do something to piss you off or to annoy you? Because I was kind of digging this partnership, but if you want to switch lab partners—”

“No,” Charlotte interjects, eyes widening. “I don’t want to switch. It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

She falls silent again, glancing toward our TA’s workstation. Monica has her head buried in the stack of papers she’s been grading all afternoon.

Charlotte leans over her chair and slips her hand into the navy-blue canvas bag at her feet. She emerges with her phone, one dainty finger touching the screen. Finally, she slides the phone across the table, and I find myself looking at a picture of myself and Beckett, taken at a pool party at Shane’s place this summer.

“I don’t get it. I’m friends with Beckett? That’s the problem?” I smother a groan. “Did he say something to you? He’s a huge flirt, but I swear he’s harmless.”

She taps the screen with a polished fingernail. “How did I get this picture, Will?”

My brow furrows. What the hell is she—

Oh shit.

Understanding strikes like a bolt of lightning.

“Yeah,” Charlotte says, noting my expression.

She makes the picture disappear, leaving only the chat thread where it came from. The profile name at the top is impossible to miss.

LARS & B

Charlotte locks her gaze on mine again. “I’m Charlie,” she says, sounding so miserable I almost laugh.

My shock, though, eclipses the humor.

This must be a joke. Charlie, the sexy free spirit who fantasizes about getting drilled by two guys on the hood of a car—that’sCharlotte Kingston, the girl I’ve been sitting next to in the lab? The girl in pleated sorority-girl skirts and matching sweaters, whose makeup is never smudged and who never has a single hair out of place?

I’m stunned speechless. And while I sit there trying to make sense of this, she snatches the phone back and closes the chat.

Closes it…but doesn’t delete it.

I find that interesting.

“Will…” She bites her lip. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Please.”

“Tell them what? That you were trying to arrange a threesome?”

“I wasn’t trying—” She lowers her voice when we draw the attention of a few other classmates. “Youwere the one trying to arrange it.”

“You were into it.” I shake my head in amusement. “Well, shit. This is great.”

“This is not great,” she hisses. “It’s mortifying.”

“Or…” I slant my head at her. “Was it meant to be?”

“Meant to be?”

“Yeah, like fate.”

“I don’t believe in fate.”

“Really. So. For six weeks, you and I have been working with other lab partners and never exchanged one word with each other. Then we unknowingly match on the app mere days before our partners write a Romeo and Juliet letter demanding they be paired together. And now I’m your lab partner, and it turns out you’re the one I matched with and who Beckett and I are obsessed with.”

She blinks. “Obsessed?”

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