“You never know,” Emmitt muses. “So it’s basically like an A level?”

My nose wrinkles. “Uh...sure.”

Emmitt hums. “I’ll get the hang of it eventually. I’m almost certain I know where most of my classes are now.”

“Good job, pretty boy,” I say, rolling my eyes. “It’s not like most of us figure that out within the first two days of school.”

“You have three separate gyms,” Emmitt grumbles. “It’s hardly my fault I keep getting lost.”

“Whatever you say.” I give him a cursory glance as we walk down the stairs, toward the main entrance. “Are you sure you don’t have interviews to attend? Press junkets? Film auditions? Something?”

“Grant’s father has been very lenient with my schedule in light of this arrangement,” he says, but the line of his mouth is crueler somehow. “Though if my mother had a say in it, I’m sure I’d have a packed schedule.”

“Oh?” He never talks about his mother at length, but the internet proclaims Claire Gong a workaholic. It makes sense that Emmitt would have to learn to accommodate that lifestyle. “Where is she anyway?”

“Back in London,” he says, tapping his fingers in an uneven pattern along my back.

“Do you miss her?” I ask, watching him carefully. “You never talk about her.”

Emmitt offers me a mild smile. “You act as if we speak about our lives with one another often, Samina.”

For some reason, that stings more than it should. It’s not as if Emmitt and I are friends. He might flirt with me all the time, but that doesn’t mean anything. He flirts with everyone.

Still, I thought something changed last week after we... I flush at the direction of my own thoughts and shove them to the back of my head. “I just meant—even around Grant, you don’t... I don’t know.”

“There’s enough about me online,” Emmitt says after a pause. His expression is more guarded than I’m used to. “I tend to protect what little privacy I have left.”

“I never thought about it like that,” I say, fidgeting with the end of my sleeve.

“I imagine most people don’t,” Emmitt says, a bitter twist to his lips. “But to answer your question, I do miss her...but I also don’t. It’s complicated.”

I wonder if that’s how I’m going to feel once I go off to USC. I can’t imagine missing my parents, but an uneasy part of me worries that I might not sing the same tune when I’m across the country.

If I even get in, says a tiny voice for the umpteenth time.