Page 20 of You Belong With Me

I stepped away from him, taking a deep breath of clean air. When exactly had Sebastian’s cologne begun to have such a dizzying effect on me?

“I don’t play soccer,” I said. I dropped back down onto the bench, feeling a little stupid for packing up my books in such a hurry only to stay. But I wasn’t going to let him drive me away now. “And I really do have a lot of homework, so…”

Sebastian stared at me for so long that I started to wonder if he was trying to do some weird mind control trick on me. I wasn’t sure why he was so convinced he wanted to play soccer with me when I was a horrendous soccer player, although I supposed there was no way for him to know that, and because my argument about Tiffany hadn’t been wrong. I had to assume he was only so defensive over it because he didn’t want to admit the truth that Tiffany was actually just as possessive and jealous as I was saying she was. I couldn’t say for certain how much she controlled who he spent time with, but it was obvious from the conversation I’d overheard the other day that she tried to regardless.

Finally, Sebastian nodded and stepped back. “Next time then.”

“Definitely,” I promised, even though I knew there wasn’t going to be a next time for us. There couldn’t be any next times for us.

Even though I told him I had to work, I watched him as he walked back to the field and started playing again, dribbling the ball around as if he had an opponent. And a half hour later, when I got up to leave, I found myself walking towards the field instead of away from it. I didn’t want to get in the middle of his game, so I went around the side to the net that he wasn’t playing with, wrapped my fingers in the netting, and watched him. Watched the way he moved, how his muscles flexed with every step, the dark hair that stuck to his forehead.

When he spun around with the ball and saw me, he fumbled so hard that he almost fell over. I stifled a smile. I let myself pretend it was because he wasexcited to see me there, instead of surprised. I told myself that it was because he liked me so much that he couldn’t believe that I’d been watching him that whole time. Maybe he was starting to psychoanalyze what he had looked like if he’d been playing well if I would be impressed.

I let go of the netting, and stepped back, offering him a dainty wave while walking off. I swore I felt his eyes on me the whole time I walked away, but I didn’t let myself look back.

twelve

I’d beena student at Parkhurst Prep School for just over two years now, but in that time, I’d never been to a sporting event outside of a swim meet. So Ainsley’s offer for us to go to the soccer game together was unusual for me, to say the least, and when I showed up at her house that night, I really had no idea what to expect.

Mrs. Novak was the one to open the door today, unlike when I’d come by the other evening. She smiled warmly at me, the way she always did.

“Oh, hi, darling,” she said, in her posh British accent. “Are you here to drop something off for your mum?”

“No,” I said carefully. This whole situation, being friends with Ainsley, still felt like uncharted territory to me. “I’m actually?—“

“Nora!” Ainsley called, coming barreling down the stairs. She appeared by her mom’s arm a second later. “She’s here to go to the soccer game with me, Mum.”

Mrs. Novak’s eyes widened in surprise, probably notrealizing that we were friends, which was completely fair because until Monday afternoon, we had barely spoken.

“Well, isn’t that fun,” she said.

Ainsley grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside the house with her. I smiled at Mrs. Novak one more time and said, “It was nice to see you again,” as Ainsley tugged me upstairs.

I’d never been in the upstairs of the Novak house. I’d actually never been anywhere other than the main floor, so walking into Ainsley’s room felt like walking into another world. Multiple people’s music seemed to be playing from the various closed doors in the hallway and like when I’d come by last Friday for the party, the air seemed thick with the smell of perfume and hair products. Ainsley led me to a room at the end of the hall and flopped down on her unmade bed, sinking into the pile of fluffy pink pillows strewn across it. As I looked around, I realized that everything—down to the walls and the desk covered in textbooks and makeup—were shades of pink and white.

“You can sit anywhere,” she said, gesturing vaguely around the room. The place looked like a closet had thrown up on it, with clothes covering every available surface, so I looked for the spot that seemed the least cluttered. That came in the form of the desk chair, which only had two sweaters laying on it that I pushed aside so I wouldn’t sit on them. Seeing her room like this, I could understand how she had left her clothes in the back of Sebastian’s car on her way to dance practice.

“I’m so glad you decided to come with me,” she said. She sat back up and started digging through the mini makeup bag that was sitting on her nightstand. I glanced atthe even bigger makeup bag on her desk, as well as the various mascaras, lipsticks, and other products thrown haphazardly across the flat surface, and wondered just how much she owned.

Was I supposed to wear makeup to this thing? I’d just come dressed in the first outfit I found after getting home from school. I picked at my shirt—it was an extremely thin knit shirt from the ninth grade that didn’t fit me right, but Clementine claimed that was what made it cute. It was a little too short, so it showed off a bit of my stomach when I wore it with jeans, and was just the right level of tight. But was that the look I should be going for?

“Want some face paint?” Ainsley asked, spinning around to face me. She had what looked like blue eyeliner in her hand. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I should probably be showing some sort of school spirit at this thing. The closest I’d come was wearing a white shirt, so it looked close enough to our school color of silver.

“Sure.”

She crouched in front of me, biting down hard on her lip as she drew something on my face. The eyeliner pen was cold and a little ticklish, but I did my best to stay still so she wouldn’t smudge it all over the place. She took a while on the first side, not just drawing on my cheek, but adding lines that went up by my eye too. I thought she was just going to draw something on the one side, but then she spun the chair to move me enough for her to be able to draw something on the other cheek as well. This side took much less time and when she held up a mirror, I realized why.

On my first cheek, she’d drawn a paw printand some swirls coming out of it, which was why it came up so far. But on the other side, all she’d drawn was a 10. I frowned as I looked at it, trying to place what that meant.

“Sorry!” Ainsley said. I guess she misread my confused frown for an angry one because she grabbed a makeup wipe and held it out to me, like she thought I wanted to wipe it off. “I should have asked if you were okay with me writing Sebastian’s number on your cheek. We just always do it, so I didn’t think.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me that the number could be that. My face flushed a little as I thought about the idea of sporting his number on my cheek at the game, but I pushed away Ainsley’s hand with the makeup wipe in it.

“I like it,” I said. “You saidwe—are you all going?”

“Well, I’m not sure if Lavender is coming.” A look of sadness crossed her face and she backed up to sit on her bed again. “She’s been acting a little weird lately and not coming out with us much. I think she took what happened with Dad really hard. But Imogen’s coming. She’ll sit with us.”

I was a little surprised at that. I figured that Ainsley only asked me because she had nobody else to go with, but if her twin was going with her, why did she want me there? She looked at me curiously as she started putting her makeup away. “Do you and Imogen know each other?”

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