Can you hurt and be numb at the same time? Something like agony mixed with that shot the dentist gives you so you can’t feel your mouth. That’s close to what I felt in my bed, twisted covers around me, and my knees pulled to my chest. The red digits on my alarm clock showed 10:54. I hadn’t been in bed that early on Friday since I was eleven. My phone shook beside me. I nearly ignored it.

Kiera: Hey, seriously, I don’t want things to be weird between us. You’re a really great guy. I hope you know I know that.

Kiera: We still have a Pledge project to work out. Can we try again tomorrow? At the library? We can actually check out some books this time. LOL!

I sprang up, hunched over my phone, typed with superhuman speed.

Me: Yeah. Let’s do it.

The light at the end of the tunnel was apparent. This was a second chance.

Our timing couldn’t be bad forever. We were inevitable. It took her a while to see.

I could forgive her for that.

Chapter 16

IT TOOK ME TEN MINUTES on my bike, my laptop bouncing in my backpack. Ten minutes of imagining us squeezing in one of those tiny study cubicles in a dimly lit back corner. Two chairs wedged together, shoulders touching. Thighs, touching. While we discussed presentation options. She’d taken the lead by texting me, and inviting me here. She’d decide when things would go further. I was happy to be in her company.

Working my chain through my spokes and frame, I locked my bike down next to a rusted, tire-less ten-speed carcass someone abandoned a hundred years ago. While I did, a familiar minivan turned into the lot, releasing Bobby and Ralph Burton.

“Hey Del!” they said in unison, bounding past me into the library. Their mom gunned the minivan’s engine, gone.

Panicky, I snatched my phone from my pocket, sending a quick message.

Me: Are you here yet?

Kiera: Yes. We are all inside.

We?

Wary, I followed Ralph and Bobby. They led me to a study room packed with my Purity Pledge classmates.

A round table was covered in books and papers. Extra mismatched chairs had been dragged in. When I pushed through the door, I recognized the space fit the bodies nicely, but may have been too small for the Burton Brothers’ Axe body spray. I struggled to maintain normal breathing in a cloud of aerosol masculinity, and I wasn’t the only one, judging by the way others not-so-discreetly pressed hands to nostrils. The jolly brothers didn’t seem to notice, though.

Everyone greeted me, Kiera least enthusiastically, merely tossing a nod my way before refocusing on the open book in her lap. Jameer left his seat at the opposite end of the table from Kiera, pulled me into a bro-hug. “You’re confused, right?”

“Little bit.”

“Sit.” He pointed to an empty chair next to his. On the opposite end of the table from Kiera. I sat.