“Someone else then?” He raised his eyebrow.

I’d already said too much. “No. You have my undivided attention.” I forced myself to keep my eyes glued to his face instead of his abs.

“Good,” he said. He leaned toward me.

My heart started racing. Was he about to kiss me? He kept leaning forward. And then he reached around me and grabbed one of the framed photos off my nightstand.

I forced my heart to calm down.

“Did you cut Sarah out of this?” He held it up and laughed.

“Who?”

“The girl I was dating that summer.” He pointed to where I’d cut the photo.

I grabbed the frame from him. “This was a forever kind of photo. And she wasn’t a forever kind of person.”

“Of course she wasn’t. It was just a summer fling.”

He said it so casually. Like it was normal to have them. Like it meant nothing. But it had meant a lot to me. I’d cried so much that summer. I put the photo back.

I cleared my throat. “Actually, let’s do the princess idea for the game.”

“Yeah?”

I nodded.

“Great. It’ll be fun. We can figure out a way to make it unique.”

Maybe we could make it about a knight that only kissed the princess in dark closets. That would be more realistic and definitely unique. But I kept my mouth shut.

“When was the last time we had a sleepover?” Axel asked.

My heart started racing again. Was he asking to sleep over right now? “I don’t know...since we were like ten or something?”

“It feels like forever since I’ve seen you in pajamas.”

I looked down at the tank top and pajama bottoms I’d changed into. And I realized that my old top was practically see through. Had Axel been looking at my top?

“I remember your pjs being...baggier.”

I quickly folded my arms across my chest. I was practically as exposed as he was. And even though he hadn’t said it, it seemed like maybe he preferred when my pjs were baggier. Like how he suddenly preferred when I wore glasses. “It’s late and you need to get out of here before my dad catches you in here...” my voice trailed off when there was a knock on the door.

“Pumpkin?” my dad said.

God, what were the odds?!

Axel sighed. “I think it’s too late for that.” He sounded so casual. Why was he not freaking out?

Because I was definitely freaking out. I’d only just gotten ungrounded. “Hide!” I hissed.

“There’s nowhere to hide...”

And it didn’t matter.

Because my dad was already opening the door. He took one look at Axel and the smile on my dad’s face fell. “What is going on in here?”

“We were just working on our project,” I said and quickly got off my bed.