“I still think you should give it to him.” Hannah nudged me, and I tore my gaze from Dean.

“What?” I blinked at her, and she laughed again.

“Your V-card.”

I gaped at her, my mouth opening and closing several times. “Stop it,” I finally managed. She’d brought it up more than once since Brandon and I broke up. “If I didn’t give it to Brandon—”

“Come on,” she said. “Brandon was an absolute dick. And you broke up two months ago. Dean would be perfect for you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Really?” she asked. “I think it’s time you admitted it. It makes total sense. He’s a hacker, you’re a hacker—”

“That is horrible logic,” I cut her off. “That’s like saying you play basketball, he plays basketball…”

“Ugh,” she said. “That is so not the same thing. And you know I meant more—”

“I’m happy with the way things are.”

And I was. I’d dated Brandon for a year too long. I wasn’t ready to dive into a relationship again.

“You’ve been friends with Dean almost as long as you have with me,” she said, like that explained everything.

“Right, but it’s not like we’re out of school friends. We only hang in the coding room or random times at lunch.” I sighed.

“He gave you his cell number a year ago.”

“Yeah, to swap tech or stories.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like he told me to call him for fun.”

And why would he? He was Dean effin’ Winters. A hot hacker-boy-after-my-own-heart genius. In a snap, he could have Sabrina, the most beautiful, popular, and hard-to-get girl in school, turn to putty in his hands. Besides, we may have been friends in class, but my dating Brandon had always made me see Dean as a non-datable entity.

“Right,” she said. “And he just happens to bring you venti iced green teas to coding class…for what? Professional hacker courtesy?”

“Exactly,” I said. He’d brought me my favorite late-night fuel on four different occasions, but I tried not to read into it. He was a decent guy. A good friend. A gorgeous, mysterious, funny, perceptive, way-out-of-my-league friend.

My eyes drifted back to him. His fingers flew fast and confident over the keys. What would it be like to cross that line with him? To feel those fantastic fingers in my hair as we kissed…

I bet he tastes like that spearmint gum he’s always popping. I bet his lips are warm and—

“You can have herpes without even knowing you have it.” Ms. Conner’s voice was higher than a mouse’s, but it soared easily enough through the domed lecture hall, dousing my thoughts with a giant bucket of ice water.