A few hours later and my stomach was growling.
I was stretched out on the bed, fully clothed. Shay was at his desk again, and we hadn’t talked in the last hour. It felt wonderful. It was one of those silences where nothing needed to be spoken—just like being at home.
He looked up now. “Want to go out for something to eat?”
I checked my phone. It was around ten. “What’s open at this time of night?”
He named a local diner that was open twenty-four hours, and because of that, it was a popular studying hangout. I rolled to my side so I could see him better. “You sure you want to go there?”
He tapped his computer. “We’re classmates, and we have a project due. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
I shrugged. I’d hidden enough for the day. It was time to face the world, even if it was a local diner. I brought my feet around and sat up. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
It didn’t take either of us long. I toed on my shoes and had my stuff in my bag and then waited while he went to the bathroom. He put his stuff in his bag, grabbing his keys on the way out. I went first, his hand on the small of my back, until we got to the top of the stairs. His floor was relatively quiet, had been the other time, too, but I could hear male voices in the kitchen on the main floor.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do they know about me?” I didn’t know if his phone was off, but no one had bothered us all evening. I had a hard time imagining Shay could go a couple hours without someone emailing, calling, or knocking on his door.
“They knew I had a girl up there, but not that it’s you. Linde would be confused.”
That was what I was worried about.
Shay studied my face. “You still don’t want him to know?”
“I—” I hesitated, biting my lip. “I’m worried he’ll look at me differently.”
“I’d hope he would.”
“What do you mean?”
He moved around me. “Come on. Let’s continue this conversation in my Jeep.” So, we did. I tiptoed down the stairs behind Shay. When he noticed, he started laughing. “They’re not going to open the door. They’re respecting my privacy. They’re good friends like that.”
I still remained quiet, waiting on the last step with my heart in my throat, and a hand on his back as he pulled on his shoes. When he was done, he grabbed my hand again, and led the way outside, down the driveway, and to his Jeep. I’d parked behind it, but even as I thought about just driving behind him, he said, “Don’t even think it. Get in the vehicle, Clarke.”
Hearing my last name unwound the last of the knots in my stomach. For some reason, I loosened, and it stayed that way on the drive to the diner.
We didn’t pick up the same conversation until we got a back booth and ordered. Once the server left, our water and coffee already filled, I asked, “What did you mean about Linde looking at me differently?”
Shay angled his head to see behind me before focusing on me again. “I didn’t see anyone I knew in the other section.”
I hadn’t either. “Shay.”
He hunched forward, picking up his coffee. “Linde likes you. I’m sleeping with you. Yeah, call me selfish, but I’d be okay with him looking at you differently.”
I sat there. Stunned.
He noticed my look. “You didn’t know?”
I shook my head. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” There was no question on his face. “I don’t think he has it bad for you, but yeah. He’s interested.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“And he thought that since you didn’t hate him, you had the hots for him.” He shook his head, sipping his coffee again. “You might want to deal with that before it gets awkward.”
“You guys are good friends.”
“Look.” His mug was lowered to the table, and he leaned close. “I didn’t poach, if that’s what you’re thinking. He didn’t lay claim to you, and the shit that went down between us, that was happening long before I realized he was interested in you.”
I widened my eyes. “I didn’t say you did. There was no judgment there.”
He frowned. “Maybe I do feel some guilt, but I shouldn’t.” His jaw clenched, and his eyes grew hooded. “If you do end up going on a date with him, you and I are no longer doing what we’re doing. I’m not going to sleep with a chick my friend is dating.”
I sat there and could only blink a few times. Those words were so fast and had such bite to them.
He was jealous. Right?
I frowned. “Are you pissed at me because your friend is interested in me? I’m not going to date Linde. I had no idea how he felt until you told me. I thought he was my friend, only my friend.”
“But now that you know, does that change your feelings?”
“For him?”
“Yes.” He rolled his eyes. “Who else do you think I was talking about?”
Him, but that’d be ridiculous. There was a rule. We didn’t talk about us, though that was all we’d been doing since we got to the diner. Or, well, kind of. We were, but we weren’t. We were definitely avoiding talking about one aspect of us, the emotional stuff.
Because there is nothing there, I had to remind myself. Sex and now friendship. That was it. And he was my classmate.
“Clarke.”
“What? No. No. I don’t want to date Linde. I wouldn’t have wanted to date him even if you and I weren’t doing what we’re doing.”
“Good.” And that was all he could say because the server returned to take our order.
I hadn’t looked at the menu yet.
Shay said, “I already know what I want.”
The girl looked annoyed. She had a glazed-over expression in her eyes, and she began tapping on her order pad.
I said to Shay, “You order, and I’ll look.”
He took his time, stalling for me, and once he was done, I just ordered a muffin and some fruit.
“That’s it?” he asked once the server left.
“I ate shitty last night and at lunch.”
“You want to keep talking about Linde?”
“No.” I waved my hands between us. “Time out on the Linde talk. I don’t want to date him. I won’t be dating him, and there was never any intention of me dating him.”
“As long as we’re clear.” His smirk was back in place, and goddamn, a part of me settled just seeing it. It’d been a long-lost friend at this point. I laughed under my breath at that, pulling my laptop out of my bag.
“What?”
I looked up. “What?”
“You laughed at something.”
“It’s nothing. You have this smirk you get when you’re being cocky. You know you’re being kind of a jackass, but you think you’re so irresistible.”
His eyebrows went up. “That’s what my smirk says to you?”
“It doesn’t? You don’t think that when you’re smirking?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m just usually laughing at something stupid in my head. I don’t even know I’m smirking half the time.”
“Well.” I had to laugh at that. “Whatever you’re thinking, it works.”
I was beginning to have a weakness when it came to his smirks.
I pointed to his textbook. “Our studying was drastically cut short. We need to do more of that, less of this.” I pointed between the two of us.
“What is this?” He repeated the same motion. “What are we doing?”
“We’re flirting.” I gave him a look. “You know that as well as I do, and it’s just going to end with us not studying and going back to your room.”
His eyes warmed. “Would that be so bad?”
“Yes. If my grade average is affected by what we do, we’re going cold turkey until my grades go back up.”
He snapped to attention. The smirk dropped. The flirting banter ended, and he coughed. “Incumbents and oversight, huh? Let’s talk about those.”
That was more like it.
We ate our food and studied for another two hours. It was around midnight when we left. Once we parked on the street outside his house, he looked over. “What’d you mean earlier?”
“What?”
“You said you didn’t want Linde to look at you differently. We talked about what I meant, but not you. What’d you mean by that?”
“Oh.” I shifted in my seat, tugging down my shirt and smoothing it out. “It’s stupid.”
“What is it?”
The lights were on in his house, and a few people were leaving through the front door. I thought I recognized them, but I wasn’t sure. “It’s—I don’t know how to explain slut shaming to a guy.”
His mouth lifted in a half-grin. “You don’t think a guy knows what that is?”
“Do you?”
“Guys are every bit as observant and intelligent as girls. There are some stupid guys, but there are stupid girls, too. Same thing with being smart. Some of us do exist. Yes, I know what slut shaming is. You think that’s what he’d do to you?”
“I think he would look at me like I’m a whore. We’re having sex and we’re not dating. A lot of people would call me a whore, but call you a player.”
That was why the Dick Crusher movement weighed on me so heavily, because those guys weren’t mad at Carruthers. They were mad at me. I didn’t have a right to talk back to him, to defend a friend, or defend myself when he came at me. He could do those things, but not me. That was the culture I lived in.
I held those words in and only said quietly, “Rules are different for girls.”
“You’re not a whore, and you’re not a slut, and I know Linde wouldn’t think of you that way.”
“You’d be surprised at who would think of me that way. You don’t know what people really believe deep down until you do something you’re not “supposed” to do because it’s ‘not your right.’ Like being raped. Girls aren’t supposed to say no, right?”
He drew in his breath, his eyes hard on mine. “You really think that?”
“No, but I know some who think that way. It’s all those assholes who were coming at me today. Carruthers, the guys from the food court, the guys I ran from before my second class, they’re not saying anything about how Carruthers would’ve physically attacked me. They’re mad that I humiliated him.”
He was quiet a moment.
I said too much. I was already regretting it, and then I heard from him, “What guys who you ran from?”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The dangerous side of Shay was staring back at me. He was heated, but he was keeping it restrained. Barely. I sensed the danger under his surface. A shiver went down my spine.
My mouth felt dry. “Just some idiots. I ditched them.”
“What guys at the food court? Did you have problems in your second class?”
“Shay—” I started but stopped. What could I say? “What are you going to do? Hunt them down and beat ’em up? Do you realize how many guys you’d be doing that to? You’d get kicked off the team. Every one you hit down, two more pop up. It’s endless. You can’t beat up everyone.”
He cursed, his jaw clenching as he sat back in his seat and raked a hand over his face. “I don’t want them messing with you.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Not you.”
I fell silent, sitting with him for a minute. “It’s always different when it’s someone you know.”
He frowned, saying so soft that I almost didn’t hear, “Yeah.”