Bookishly Ever After (Ever After #1)(9)

“If this is about Jon, he was the one who dropped me for genie girl.” I tilted my head and corrected myself. “I think.”

Satisfied we were alone, she got up and dropped onto the bench next to me. “Forget about Jon. This is important.”

I frowned at her. “Is everything okay?”

She took a deep breath and focused her serious brown eyes on mine. “How do you feel about Dev?”

Out of everything Em could have asked me, I wasn’t expecting that. What did Dev have to do with anything? “Dev? I’m not mad at him about the dance thing, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, dummy. I mean, do you like him?”

“Dev?” I blinked at her stupidly for a few seconds. The image of him sliding across the dance floor rose up in my mind. “I…I never really thought of him like that. I mean, we’re sort of friends, I guess—”

She had that expression on her face that let me know she was getting frustrated. “But do you think he’s hot?”

“I—” I had no idea what to say. I cringed under her stare. “I guess? I mean, he’s really cute, but he’s Dev.” His grin popped into my head again and I had to shake my head slightly to focus. “What’s all this about?”

“He’s totally crushing on you.”

My brain just couldn’t compute this complete and total course change. It was as if someone had switched books on me and I was having plot whiplash. “No, he isn’t.”

She grabbed my arm and shook it like she was trying to shake some sense into me. “Yes, he is. I saw him staring at you at the pep rally, then I noticed that every time you’re at your locker, or God, even in the middle of orchestra, he keeps looking at you. It’s almost stalker-y. And then this whole dance thing—”

I cut her off. “He needed a redhead. I was just the closest one.” I ran my fingers through the waterfall of extensions currently brushing my lap.

Em shook me even harder. “Please. Ms. Zhdanova was, like, two people away from you. And her hair is freakin’ fire hydrant colored. He totally strayed from the teacher theme on purpose to dance with you.”

“Stop being such a conspiracy theorist.” I yanked my arm out of her hands.

“I’m not.”

I lay back on the bench and stared at the ceiling. “This is ridiculous. I’ve never seen him watching me.” I ran a mental inventory and came up with nothing. “I’d know if someone was watching me.”

“You never see anything. You’re always buried in your books or one of your knitting projects.” Em lay down on the other end of the bench, mirroring me so we took up the entire bench, our feet pressed against each other’s. “I think the two of you would be freakishly adorable together.”

My neck grew warm again. Of everything I had to inherit from my father, this insta-blush thing was the worst.

I pressed my neck back until it touched the cool wood of the bench, and replied, “You said the same thing about Jon.”

“Jon was an experiment. Unless you like him, which I doubt, because you’re not out there trying to keep him from the harem bunny.” She kicked the side of my foot. “Just give Dev a chance. This girl,” she sat up and pointed at herself with a flourish, “is never wrong when it comes to guys. I’m like the Oracle of Delphi of relationships.”

“You’re just trying to yenta us together.” Maybe that conversation by the cupcakes was Em trying to do the same thing to Dev about me, which made me want to crawl into one of the lockers and hide.

An amused tone came into her voice. “No, I swear, he’s been following you like a puppy dog.” Em shrugged. “For some reason I can’t totally understand, weirdly dressed book nerds must be a major turn-on for him.”

I threw one of my arms over my face, partly to be dramatic, partly to hide my blush. “Oh my God. You are so making all this up.”

“Am not.” She stood and pulled my arm off of my face so I had to look directly at her. “So? What do you say about dating our Bollywood Casanova?” She faked a swoon.

I swatted at her but she jumped away, laughing. “Stop that.”

“He’s just so dashing and debonair, I can’t help but be equally dramatic when I’m talking about him,” she said with a flourish, then forced me up to sitting. “Here’s the thing. I think you need to give him a chance. “

“I’ve never not given him a chance. He doesn’t think of me like that and I don’t think of him that way. Because we’re just friends, Em. And not even sitting at the same lunch table kind of friends. We’re more like ‘snarking about Ms. Osoba making us sit out in forty degree weather for pep band’ kind of friends.”

“Sitting at the same lunch table regularly will be a good start. I’ll get on that Monday.”

“Em, don’t,” I pleaded. Now that Em had me and Dev on her matchmaker radar, I couldn’t even imagine how I’d even be around him without turning as red as the lining of his clarinet case.

She shook her pirate sword at me. “We’re going out there right now, you’re going to look cute and be nice to him, got it?”

“I’d rather stay in here and finish my book.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, though, I cowed to her unblinking stare and stood. “Tell me why I listen to you?” I checked my reflection in one of the long mirrors on the pillar behind me. The sparkly face powder did a pretty good job of hiding the red in my face.