Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute(47)

Jordan snorts. “No, it’s his fault he’s pissed, so let him stew. I could give a good goddamn about Max Donovan and his stank-ass attitude. I only joined the soccer team ’cause I needed to make friends over here, and look: I have friends.”

That’s a great point. Why did I start playing football?

Because Dr. Okoro said getting out of my head and into my body would be helpful, and she was right. So, who cares if Donno won’t play me? Maybe I’ll jog after all.

While I’m having Very Important Realizations, Jordan’s still ranting. “Anyway, you had nothing to do with me finally telling him about himself. He can’t speak to people like he speaks to Celine. You know, she’s basically my homegirl now.”

My eyebrows fly north. “How is Celine your homegirl? She barely says two words to you.”

“Yeah, and? She’s shy.”

I want to bust up laughing at the idea of Celine as shy, only…she kind of is. In a really weird way. She’ll cuss out a complete stranger if she thinks it’s warranted, but it usually takes her thirty business days of acquaintance to feel comfortable with the question, Hey, how are you?

I catch myself smiling and realize that I find her suspicious nature dreamy and adorable. This crush is a sickness. A sickness, I tell you!

“Plus,” Jordan continues, oblivious to the steady degradation of my brain cells, “she’s best friends with Minnie, and I like Minnie.”

Oh yeah; it turns out Michaela Digby is indeed gay, so Jordan has transformed his interest into general hero worship. The past month or so, it’s usually me and him and Minnie and Celine hanging out between classes. Sometimes Sonam and Peter are there, chattering about a New Year’s party; sometimes a few guys from the team come over and Celine glares at them like they might be hiding deadly weapons in their socks. It works pretty well.

“And then,” Jordan finishes grandly, “there’s the fact that my best friend is in love with her—”

I swallow my spit the wrong way and come very, very close to choking to death on a Sunday afternoon with my bedroom door wide open. My obituary would be tragic. “What?” I croak, sitting bolt upright. “I am not— What are you—”

“Man,” he says. “Come on. What do you think I am, stupid?”

“Jordan,” I say. “Jordan, Jordan, Jordan. I don’t…It’s not…” I glance furtively at the door because Mason’s home, for once, and he has ears like a bat. “I’m not in love with—” Celine, I mouth.

“What?” Jordan says. “I think you’re breaking up.”

“I just…have the teeniest, tiniest crush on her,” I say. “That’s all. It’s so small. Sooo small. It’s microscopic!”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes,” I say, relieved that he’s being so reasonable about this. “Absolutely, yes.”

“Huh. See, usually when you have a crush on someone, you’re mad obvious about it,” Jordan says, “and you tell me right away—you don’t shut up about it—and then you spend a couple months spacing out while you daydream about your converted loft and your kitchen garden and your seventy-five adopted children—”

“Jordan,” I groan, flopping back onto the bed. What is he, a bloody modern history book? “Stop dredging up the past. I’m very nearly a mature adult and I only did that with, like, five people.”

“I know,” he says. “That’s why I thought this thing with Celine—you know, you trying to act like you’re not into her at all, and being friends with her, and finally admitting that you watch her TikToks, meant you had real, big boy, serious feelings for her.”

I don’t say anything; I’m too busy freaking out.

“But, hey,” Jordan says cheerfully. “What do I know?”

“Nothing. You know nothing, Jordan Snow.” See, my strategy is: if I ignore this, it will go away. Which is literally the opposite of what Dr. Okoro would tell me to do, but she’s not the boss of me, so there.

“Are you telling me you’re not in love with Celine?”

“No,” I say firmly.

“No, you’re not in love with her, or no you’re not telling me you’re not in love with her because you are?”

“What…No, as in, no, I’m not in love with her! Obviously!”

Someone rings the doorbell. I pop up out of bed and plaster myself to my window because I’m waiting for my paperback copy of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, but instead of the postman, I see a familiar scarlet coat. “Crap.”

“What?” Jordan demands.

“Celine’s here!”

“At your house?”

“No, at the Eiffel Tower. Yes, at my house.”

“The Eiffel Tower?” he echoes dryly. “Seriously, Brad?”

“Shut up! What do I do?” My room is a hideous mess and I’m wearing glasses instead of contacts and I have a halo of frizz around my head because I’ve been lazing around in bed all day without my do-rag. This is why people aren’t supposed to just show up unannounced. “I haven’t put my washing away!”

“Just…throw it in the closet and close the door.”

“Jordan,” I say, aghast.