And yeah, I’m pouting. And yeah, I know that’s messed up. And yet. And yet.

PEAK: Oh god, I was just teasing you.

ME: So . . . There is no “hottie”?

PEAK: Well, I mean, there is? But he’s just some rando who hangs out at my mom’s store. N E V E R going to happen.

I bolt up in bed, choking on my spit when I read the words on the screen, my mind whipping around itself, alternating between holy shit, she’s talking about me and wait, did I just cockblock . . . myself?

Oh god. Seriously, no. I have to tell her. This is so messed up.

But I can’t. I can’t screw this up. My father is counting on me, Gray is counting on me, and even worse, what if telling her means I lose her on both fronts? Not that I have her on both fronts, but I could? Maybe? If we keep talking and hanging out.

No.

But now the silence is stretching on too long, and I have to get a grip. I have to write back. I have to handle this. Compartmentalize. Don’t cross the streams. Figure it out.

thinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthink

ME: Lucky me.

PEAK: Lucky you.

God, this girl. This girl. She makes me feel like my brain is electric, in a good way for once. And I don’t know. Maybe other people have felt like this before, but I haven’t. Not like this. I don’t know how anyone could? How do you go to the store, how do you eat, how do you buy toilet paper and brush your teeth and do anything other than sit inside your head with this feeling? I thought I had this before with Chandler, but this, this is next-level stuff, and I don’t even know what to do with it.

I don’t even know.

•  •  •

A knocking sound pulls me from my sleep, and I jolt up in bed. Suddenly, I am seven years old and I overslept again, and maybe it’s my dad coming to wake me up for school. But he never would, not even then, and I’m a decade past seven, so.

The knocking continues, and it’s not a hard knock, not a Dad knock, and not my sister’s either.

“Ridley?”

Shit. If there was anything that would make me crash hard after getting high on Peak—or Jubilee, I don’t even know how to keep that sorted or separated anymore—it would be the she-devil on the other side of my door. Satan’s Comics indeed.

“Ridley?” Allison calls again, still knocking.

I glance at the time; it’s nearly midnight. “What?” I groan, yanking open my door. I’m standing in boxers and no doubt have pillow creases on my cheek.