You Have a Match(41)

“Uh…”

“So, eight o’clock?”

Before I can say yes or no, Finn ducks under the table and literally rolls across the floor like he’s in the middle of an army drill. I blink down at him, wondering what the hell Leo and Mickey put in the waffles, until it becomes clear that he’s still avoiding Victoria and her piercing gaze. Only then does it occur to me that he was probably supposed to be at kitchen duty last night, too, but never showed.

I jolt when Leo touches my elbow and is suddenly so much closer to me than he was before.

“You’re not actually meeting him, are you?”

Leo’s jaw has gone tight and his eyebrows are furrowed.

“We’re not going to do anything, like, evil,” I say, waving a hand in front of his face. “It’s me, Leo.” I throw a piece of banana in my mouth.

Leo doesn’t shake it off the way I’m expecting. “That’s ‘Make Out Rock.’”

I almost choke, so fully expecting him to pick the “go easy on your secret sister” moral high ground that I don’t know how to respond, the banana taste in my mouth going sour.

“It’s a hookup spot,” Leo iterates.

My heels dig into the legs of my chair. “And what’s the problem with that?”

Leo’s eyes widen.

“You’re into Finn?”

No. But I’m decidedly not into Leo deciding he has an opinion about my budding friendship with Finn, either. Especially after he made it perfectly clear on the ferry how over our almost-kiss he is.

“What do you care?”

It’s a way of asking without asking, the coward’s way out.

And I get exactly what a coward deserves when that tight jaw of his all but unhinges, and he doesn’t make a sound. A quiet, awful confirmation of the thing we’ve been dancing around for way too long—he doesn’t like me the way I like him. And if he did once, he doesn’t anymore.

It shouldn’t be difficult to wrap my head around. In fact, it should be a relief. It means Connie didn’t lie. That my friendship with her, at least, is something I can rely on, something I can trust. But for some unhelpful reason, my face is hotter than a sauna and my eyes are starting to sting. I get up to leave, but Leo touches my elbow.

My heart lifts too fast, like it’s on a carnival ride.

“And honestly, I wish you’d give this thing with Savvy a rest. Let it go.”

It’s the worst thing he could possibly say to me in this moment, even if he’s right. Forget carnival rides. This is a high-speed crash. “So you are on Savvy’s side.”

“I’m on your side,” he emphasizes. “And hers.”

I blow my hair out of my face. “Great. I’m already outnumbered by an entire camp full of people on her side, and now you, too?”

Leo presses on as if I didn’t say anything. “At least let me walk you out there later. People get lost on the path after dark. It’s not safe.”

I don’t let myself blink, mortified that if I do, there’s a very real chance a tear is going to slip out. I’ve never been more mad at my eyeballs than I am right now. As if it isn’t enough of a blow to my ego that Leo doesn’t like me, he’s going to play the big brother card, too?

“I don’t need you to Benvolio me,” I tell him through my teeth.

“To what you?” he asks. He frowns, no doubt remembering my essay. “Are you seriously sucking me into your Benvolio-hatred manifesto right now?”

I take in a breath, trying to focus on my irritation, anything to keep myself from crying or using more Shakespeare character names as verbs. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’ll be fine.”

I grab my tray and start walking it to the sinks, glad I’ll at least have the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to make up for the breakfast I’m about to waste to get away from him.

“Maybe you do need a babysitter, if you’re really going to climb that stupid rock in the pitch dark,” says Leo, hot on my heels. The two of us look so equally irritated that other campers are giving us a wide berth in the mess hall. “You walk around like you’re invincible, but you have to think of the risks—”

“I’m plenty aware of the risks,” I say, just as Leo gets ahead of me and stops so abruptly that I have to stop, too.

We scowl at each other. I sigh, opening my mouth to attempt something conciliatory, but Leo beats me to it.

“Tell that to this,” he says, grazing a scar I’d forgotten was on my elbow with his knuckles. The lingering touch stuns the anger right out of me. “Or this,” he says, gesturing down to my knees, still scraped up from falling off my skateboard. Then Leo looks me right in the face, where the scar digs into my eyebrow. “Or—”

“Would you give it a rest?”

This is new territory for us. I don’t snap at Leo. But it’s too much. I’ve always known he keeps track of these little things, of the times I’ve fallen off skateboards or fences or one unfortunate rooftop straight into a dumpster, but it’s different, hearing it all at once. Like I am suddenly aware of my body in a way I never bother to be. Aware that he knows it so fully and doesn’t want any part of it.

“I’m sorry,” says Leo. He takes a step in, and I have to consciously plant my feet to the sticky mess hall floor to stop myself from moving in, too.