Page 9 of Stuck with You

Clary James was in my house. I swore under my breath as I stepped away from her bedroom door. Of all the girls I could have been stuck in lockdown with, why did it have to beher?

Clary wasn’t like the other girls we went to school with. She didn’t bat her eyelashes at me, and she didn’t swoon whenever I turned my attention on her. If anything, I only seemed to annoy her, and as a result, I only wanted her more.

My feelings for Clary were hardly something new. I’d been obsessing over her for as long as I could remember. I’d even been crazy enough to ask her out once—not that it did me much good.

I’d been an awkward freshman at the time and had finally worked up the courage to ask her on a date. I had no idea she was dating someone else, so I must have looked like a fool for asking her out. She’d let me down gently enough, but being the immature idiot I was, I’d played the whole thing off as a joke—and I’d been playing with her ever since.

I’d come to enjoy our interactions though. There was nothing I liked more than seeing her get flustered. And bringing out the fire in her eyes was pretty much my favorite hobby.

It was a little messed up, and I imagined there were whole psychology books dedicated to my little problem. I wanted the girl I couldn’t have, and my heart refused to give up on her.

I made my way downstairs in bit of a daze. I couldn’t decide if having Clary in the house with me during lockdown was a dream come true or my worst nightmare. She never paid me any attention at school, and I had to wonder if being stuck at home with her was going to be just as brutal.

It’s not like she completely ignored me—although she tried her best. The problem was that none of my flirting tactics worked on her, and I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. She felt like a puzzle that was impossible to solve. It was as if I was the only one who was struggling to crack the code though, because Clary got on just fine with everyone else at school.

Her friends were all popular, but she never seemed to get caught up in all their drama. She was much quieter than them and always had her nose stuck in a book. She seemed to prefer watching people rather than diving into conversations. It was probably why a lot of guys didn’t seem to notice her. They either got distracted by the big personalities she surrounded herself with or had no idea how to approach her.

That was the thing about Clary. She was so damn beautiful it intimidated people. My heart got lodged in my throat anytime she entered a room; I had no idea how other guys worked up the courage to talk to her. It was easy for me though. Who needed courage when you were trying to annoy her rather than impress her?

I stuck my head into my brother’s room. He was sitting on the floor by his TV playing some zombie video game. He was obsessed with the damn things, and I imagined his eyes would have popped out of his head if he’d seen the zombie survival tee Clary had been wearing earlier.

“What do you want?” Elliot grumbled, not bothering to glance in my direction as he continued to play his game. If he had his way, he’d probably spend all of lockdown in his room with his video games. The controller cord for his PlayStation was more like an umbilical cord. It was his lifeline, and it was nearly impossible to separate him from it.

“I’m heading out.”

This got his attention, and his eyes briefly flickered in my direction. “Where are you going?”

“Seth’s place.” My best friend lived just down the road, and I needed to talk to him now more than ever. He was the one and only person who knew about my fixation on Clary, and I needed him to knock some sense into me if I was going to survive being trapped with her.

“Mom said we can’t see our friends,” Elliot replied.

“Yeah, well, Mom’s not here.” She never was. Mom practically lived at the hospital, and that was before all this pandemic stuff started. I couldn’t imagine she was going to stop working so hard now. “And you don’t need to worry your little head about it, I’ll be keeping six feet from him.”

“But—”

“I’ll be back in a while,” I continued, ignoring my brother’s objections. My stomach tensed with a feeling of guilt though. I wasn’t supposed to be leaving the house, and I wasn’t supposed to be seeing my friend. The rules had only just grown stricter though, and I’d been able to see him two days ago without any issue. How bad could it really be if I went to see him now?

“Clary’s upstairs and settling into her room, so leave her in peace,” I added.

Elliot shot a scowl in my direction. “Yeah, whatever.”

I couldn’t tell if my brother would listen to me. I suspected he’d be too consumed with his game to bother Clary, but there was a chance he was more intrigued by her. Odds were, he’d be too nervous to go seek her out though. The kid was pretty confident, but I doubted his courage extended to knocking on a hot girl’s bedroom door.

His eyes flicked back to the screen as a loud explosion rocked his speakers. Elliot started swearing and threw his controller down on the ground. He swiftly picked it up again to continue playing, and I closed the door on him, satisfied he was well and truly distracted again.

I sent Seth a message to tell him I was on my way. He replied straightaway to let me know he was already out front, so I set off to his house at a jog. He lived just around the corner from us, and even though I knew Mom had told us not to see our friends because of the pandemic restrictions, this felt like an emergency.

I found Seth standing on his driveway shooting hoops when I arrived. He had such natural control of a basketball, and with his height and agile build, he was practically born for the sport.

Seth turned as he gathered the ball from under the hoop, and his eyes crinkled with a smile when he saw me. I couldn’t see his mouth because he was wearing a facemask, and I felt a little stupid I wasn’t wearing one as well. I was still getting used to all these lockdown rules, and I’d completely forgotten. It wasn’t a good enough excuse though. Especially since Mom had been reminding me constantly. We had a ton of masks at home. They weren’t the hospital grade ones because they were running low on them, but it was better than wearing nothing.

“So, this is how you spend quarantine?” I asked as I walked up the driveway to greet him.

“Sure as hell beats bingingOutlanderepisodes with my mom,” he replied. “The woman’s obsessed with the Scottish dude in it. I think Dad might be in trouble.”

I laughed. “You don’t think it’s cute your mom has a TV-boyfriend?”

Seth cringed. “Please don’t say that.”

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