I felt my cheeks flush. I smiled up at him, but I couldn’t help but look at Axel out of the corner of my eye. It looked like he was about to murder his supposed best friend. Or me. Or both of us. But Sophie was beaming.

“You okay?” Liam whispered to me.

“Yeah, I’m good.” I think. Actually I was really freaking confused.

“This is the best first day ever,” Sophie said. “Everything’s turning out perfectly. And love is in the air.”

For just a second I wanted to kill her.

“That droolworthy computer science teacher is my ticket to love,” she added.

Oh. She was talking about her love life, not mine.

Liam choked on his water. “I guess you don’t know yet?”

“Know what?” Sophie asked.

RJ laughed. “You’ll find out soon.”

“What, is he even hotter than everyone is saying?”

RJ just stared at her. “You asking me that is gross on so many levels.”

“What is with men not being able to rate other men? What about you, Axel? On a scale of 1 to 10 how hot do you think Jacob is?”

God, Sophie.

“A two,” Axel said, deadpan.

“What?” Jacob lifted up a fry and threw it at his face.

Axel dodged it with a laugh.

And just like that, everything felt normal again. All of us laughing and joking around. Any tension completely abandoned. It didn’t even feel weird that Liam and RJ were here. Probably because I was used to them tagging along everywhere we went.

“I can’t wait till coding class,” Sophie said, putting her chin in her hand with a long sigh. “I can already feel the sexual tension in the air.”

RJ made a disgusted face and Liam laughed.

“Me too,” I said. “I mean, not for those reasons,” I quickly clarified. I didn’t really care how hot the computer science teacher was. But I was excited for that class, because it was the only one I had with Axel. And Jacob.

I glanced over at Jacob and he was staring at me licking the side of my ice cream cone. Our eyes locked. And I swore no one had ever looked at me like that before. It was the way I dreamed Axel would look at me. But this? This was real, not just a childhood fantasy. Jacob and I had always been friends. But we definitely weren’t looking at each other like friends right now.

He leaned down and whispered in my ear again. “I was just kidding earlier when I said you looked hot. Or sexy as hell. Or whatever idiotic thing I said.”

Oh. I could feel my shoulders sag. Had Sophie told him about the jealousy plan without telling me or something? Had he just been playing along? I was surprised at how deflated I felt. For just a second I thought that maybe…