“Hey!” she said. “Is it okay if we revise now? Like, right now?

I have cheerleading practice later today . . .”

Jasper stared after Seth for a few more seconds. Then he directed his attention at her and said, only sounding a little bit strained, “Sure, no problem. What do you think, we could grab a coffee at the vending machine downstairs and see if there’s a seat in the common room?”

“Awesome! See, I’m not that good at English Lit, so I’m glad I got paired with you . . .”

Jasper was barely listening. Waving good-bye to Noelle and me, he followed Elina into the hallway, heading in the direction opposite to the one Seth had darted.

“That was weird,” Noelle commented as soon as he was out of earshot, swinging her bag over her shoulder.

“Do you think they . . . ?”

“I sure as hell hope so,” she laughed, stepping out the door after me. “Anyway, about that homework. Is it okay if we do that later this evening? I scheduled two hours of extra basketball practice today.”

“Sure, that’s fine. I have to work in the library later, so we could do it there?”

“Perfect.” She sent a quick glance down the hallway before hooking a finger through the strap of my bag to pull me into a short kiss. It wasn’t much more than a peck, really, but it was enough to make my heartbeat stutter.

“Perfect,” I echoed, unable to hold back a grin, and watched her disappear down the stairs.

° ° °

Seeing as everyone else was busy, I for once had time to catch up on some reading, so the next two hours flew by like minutes. At around five o’clock, I left my room to go down to the library, but I hadn’t even made it downstairs yet when my phone suddenly vibrated.

When I finally managed to fish it out of the depths of my bag, my mom’s caller ID flashed on the display. “Hey, Mom!”

“Hi, sweetie!” she exclaimed, so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “You haven’t called in so long, I thought I’d check in on you!”

“I was going to call you later today,” I said. “There was just so much going on these last few days, so I kept forgetting—”

“But everything’s okay? You’re doing well?”

“I’m doing really well,” I said, involuntarily smiling as I crossed the entrance hall at a leisurely pace. Around this time, most students were hanging out in the common room or busy with extracurriculars, so no one was there to overhear me.

“That’s so good to hear! Your dad and I were a bit worried after you said you had some problems with your roommate in the beginning.”

“I wasn’t worried,” my dad’s gruff voice interjected in the background.

Already having suspected that I was on speaker and he was hanging about somewhere near, I laughed, “Hey, Dad. It was a bit difficult, but we’ve sorted it out. Everything’s really good right now.”