How on earth was I supposed to do that?
She looped her arm through mine and pulled me out from behind the car. “Head up. This is still our year.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
She laughed. “You’re ungrounded on Wednesday, right? Maybe we can just pretend that’s the start of our senior year.”
A do-over certainly sounded like a good idea to me.
***
I thought it would be awkward around Axel and Jacob. But...it wasn’t. And for some reason that just made me even more suspicious. Lunch felt completely normal.Too normal.I knew I was taking turns staring at both of them, trying to figure out ifone of them could have kissed me. But...wouldn’t whoever it was be acting differently? That kiss had been epic.
At least, it had been for me.
Gah stop thinking about the dirty kiss thief.
Jacob smiled at me.
I blushed and looked down at my food.
He lightly touched my shoulder. “When do you want to get that ice cream? I think I was promised a date.”
I ignored the feeling of Axel’s eyes on me as I looked back up at Jacob. “How about Wednesday?” That was my new fresh start. And an ice cream date at lunch with him sounded pretty great for a new beginning. I could tell Jacob all about Operation Too Hot to Handle. And how I called it off. I didn’t want to pine over Axel for the rest of my life. And I wanted whoever the kiss thief was to leave me alone. Although for some reason, I kept checking my phone all day again...
“RJ, we need help tracing a number,” Sophie said.
What was she doing?! Talking about this in front of Axel and Jacob was a terrible idea! I turned to look at her.
She winked at me.
That didn’t make me feel any better.
“What number?” asked RJ. He was sporting a black eye from his time in the ring. I had no idea how RJ and Sophie were never grounded. I wished my dad was as cool as Uncle Rob.
“Something private. For Scarlett.”
I stole a glance at Jacob. He was just casually eating his food. And Axel was ignoring us completely. He’d taken one glance at me in his varsity jacket when I’d gotten to lunch, and he’d been on his phone texting ever since. He was most likely chatting with some girl. He was never single for very long. He’d probably hooked up with someone at the party after I’d left. I was surprised there wasn’t some blonde chick draped all over him at lunch today.
RJ shrugged. “Sure. Just text me the number, baby doll.”
“Operation Trap is over, so stop calling me by that weird code name.”
“I got used to it.”
“Then get unused to it.” I copied the number of the kiss thief and sent it to him. “And actually, I take back what I said. That operation isn’t over. We need to figure out how to fix up the hole in the floor.”
“I told you I had it covered, baby doll.”
“RJ.” I gave him a stern look.
“Something wrong, baby doll?”
“What did we just talk about?”
He laughed. “You literally just said the operation wasn’t over after all. So your code name still applies.”
I was going to kill him.