He looked back at the list. “Why are the 13 guys at the bottom in a different color?”

God, why had I highlighted my baker’s dozen? I slammed the lid of the laptop closed. “Axel, you’re already here late. Can we please just focus on our project instead of something I’m doing for another class?”

“Sure. Ready to brainstorm?” He sat down on my bed like he used to do when we were still kids. My dad had made a rule several years ago about no boys upstairs. But Axel had sat exactly there a million times before we became teenagers. Never without a shirt looking like that though.

I swallowed hard.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I quickly said and sat down next to him.

He moved one of my pillows and leaned so that his back was propped up against the wall. “So what concept were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought much about it. I’ve never really wanted to make a videogame. They’re not really my thing.”

“We used to play videogames all the time when we were little.”

“Yeah, like a million years ago.”

He smiled. “Not that long ago.”

It felt like a lifetime ago. He used to come over after school with Sophie and Jacob. But that had pretty much stopped since he started football. Even when it wasn’t football season. I assumed Axel always hung out with his girlfriends after school during the off-season.

Axel put his hands behind his head and just stared at me.

I awkwardly tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

And he just kept staring.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

He smiled. “I was just thinking about how you use to make me play Pretty Pretty Princess with you all the time.”

I laughed. “That was my favorite.” But probably not for the reason he thought. I enjoyed the game. But I was never dead-set on winning. I actually preferred to lose. Because then Axel would always tell me I was still the prettiest princess he’d ever seen.

I looked away from him. We weren’t kids anymore. Feelings changed. At least, his did. I looked down at my phone.

“We could do something with a princess then,” he said.

“Like a Prince Charming or knight in shining armor kind of thing?”

“If you’d like.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Aren’t there plenty of games like that already? Besides, knights in shining armor don’t really exist.” I glanced at my phone again. The closest I’d ever gotten to a knight in shining armor was a kiss thief. A kiss thief that ignored me half the time. And that hardly seemed knightly.

“Why do you keep looking at your phone?”

“I’m not.”

Axel laughed. “You are.”

I pushed it to the side. “I’m not.”

“Are you waiting for a text from Jacob?”

“No.”