Well, this party just went places I never expected it to go. I’m handcuffed to Libby Bennet, who’s looking totally unlike herself in a red dress that’s hugging her in a way that no guy at this party has missed. Including George Wickham, but I’m not letting myself go there. We’re being led down the hall by a guy with purple hair who’s playing a game only he knows the rules to. I don’t know what’s coming, but I’m definitely along for the ride.
The purple haired guy—Jeremiah—says he’s locking us in a little girl’s room while he uses the toilet. Bennet’s livid. I think the whole thing’s hilarious. I’ve been to enough of these parties that they’ve gotten predictable—beer pong, video games, flirting. It was cool the first twenty times, but this—this is way more interesting.
Jeremiah steps outside and closes the door, and I hear the key turning in the lock. He really did lock us in. Hilarious.
“You.” Bennet’s pointing her finger at my chest as soon as we’re alone. “You could have stopped this.”
I’m supporting her with one arm, and she tries to shove me off her and almost falls over before I reach out to steady her. My hand closes around the red fabric kissing her hip, and it sends a zing right through me. It’s hard not to notice Bennet’s hot, but tonight. Tonight it’s impossible.
I force myself to pull my hand away. “Chill out, Bennet. It’s a joke. You take things too seriously.”
I want her to see this is funny and laugh with me, but her face has that hard, set in stone look.
“Sorry,” she says, in a way that means she’s not sorry. “But being locked in a room with you—handcuffed to you—is like my worst nightmare.”
“Your nightmare or your fantasy?” I say before I realize that joke’s going nowhere. My eyes are running over her again before I know what I’m doing. “Hot dress. Not your usual style.” Unless. No. “Don’t tell me you wore that for—”
“What is up with you tonight?” She takes a step back. “What’s with all the fake flirting?”
She dodged the question. So she did wear it for George. “I thought that’s what you liked now,” I say, and now my words are coming out all hard edged and pointy too.
“What are you talking about? Wait.” Her mouth drops open slightly. “Are you talking about George? Because you have no right—”
“There’s more to that story, whatever he told you.” I don’t have to be a genius to figure out George unloaded one of his sob stories on her, one where he’s the victim, and my family are the villains. I just thought Bennet was smart enough not to fall for it.
She’s still looking at me, watching my mask slip until she can see every vulnerable part of me. “So tell it to me,” she says.
For one crazy moment, I want to. I don’t like thinking Bennet believes George’s stories about me. I don’t know why I want her good opinion, but I do. But when I see her propped against one crutch, staring at me like she can see through me, I just…can’t. So instead I slide on an easy smile and bat her serious question away. “You are just dying to know everything about my life. Are you writing a book?”
Most girls would laugh and recognize the game, catch the flirtation and volley it back to me. But Bennet isn’t the type to play games. She keeps watching me, waiting for me to say something real.
“Bennet, I—” But I can’t tell this story now, at a party, handcuffed to a girl whose eyes are already brimming with judgment. “I really don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”
I expect her to see that for the cop out it is, but, “Yeah,” she says, and I feel something heavy leave me.
I gesture to the bed that has a bunch of My Little Ponies jumping around on the bed spread. “You wanna sit?”
“Yeah,” she says, and the word has an edge of vulnerability to it, like it’s painful for her to admit that there’s no way she’s getting to that bed without my help.
I shouldn’t think it’s funny, but I do. Bennet, forced to play the damsel in distress, and me, who she’s always acted like she’s hated, as her knight in shining armor. I loop her arm around my shoulders, my handcuffed wrist dangling awkwardly below hers. She hobbles beside me towards the bed, and she’s warm, and her hair smells like vanilla and flowers.
“I’m going to lift you onto the bed,” I say.
But she’s already pulling away. “I broke my leg, not my head. I can figure out how to get on a bed.”
She hoists herself onto the bed, yanking me forward so that I almost fall on top of her before I catch myself on the edge of the bed. I’m hovering over her, and her smell surrounds me, tickling my nostrils and messing with my mind. “Geez, Bennet, do you ever let anyone help you?”
She doesn’t answer, just stills beneath me, eyes moving over my face. For a moment, I’m sure she feels it too, this pull between us, but then I shift away quickly because that’s a web I promised myself I’d never get caught in.
I’ve always noticed Bennet, but she’s been wedged in my head since that day at the hospital. She has this smart, conceited thing going on that people pretend is annoying when really it’s hot as hell. But I’ve got to get over it because everyone knows that Libby Bennet is Not Interested. And I’m not stupid enough to go after a girl who doesn’t want me when there are plenty of girls who do. I try not to inhale as I lift her cast and rest it on the bed, raising my eyebrows at her when, like some kind of miracle, she doesn’t fight me.
Her face softens, like maybe she’s finally dropping her weapons. “You could have stopped Jeremiah’s whole thing before it got this far,” she says, but it’s almost like she’s asking. “Why didn’t you?”
I lower myself onto the bed beside her, my fingers brushing hers. By accident or on purpose? I’m not sure, but she pulls away immediately.
I think about her question. Leave it to Libby to go from one probing question to another. “I don’t know,” I say. “It was funny.”
She makes a face. “You saw I hated it.”
“Yeah.” I pretended I didn’t for the crowd, but, “I guess I did.”
She lets out a long breath, like, “Well, that’s Will for you. He’s an insensitive ass.” And maybe I’ve built that impression for her on purpose, but suddenly I want to destroy everything I’ve built up.
“Everyone was laughing and having fun, and I liked that,” I say, and it feels like the confession it is. “I like it when people think I’m funny and the life of the party. But you don’t care about that kind of thing.”
I’m trying to get the wrong person to understand. Because Libby Bennet has no idea what it’s like to care about what other people think, to build your whole image around other people’s opinions.
She studies me, as if she’s searching answers in my face. But then her gaze changes, lingers, runs over my hair and down to my chest and arms and then back up to my eyes, settling there for a long time. A really long time. Holy—Is Libby Bennet checking me out? Well, well, well. Maybe that zing I felt wasn’t so one sided after all.
“Do you like what you see?” I ask because if she does, I can think of other things we could do besides ask deep and uncomfortable questions.
But her brown eyes are already rolling to the ceiling. “Every girl likes looking at you, Will. You know that.”
A spark I’m pretty sure I don’t want flickers to life in my chest. “But I didn’t know you did. I definitely didn’t know you did.”
“Oh, totally.” She flicks her dark, curly hair off her shoulder. “In my spare time, I make little clay statues of you kicking little clay footballs, but it’s so frustrating. I can never quite make anything that looks as good as the real thing.”
I love it when she’s a smart ass. “I’m the quarterback, so you should really sculpt me throwing the football. But go on. Tell me more about these sculptures.”
She laughs, and it fans that spark in my chest into a flame. There’s something gratifying about pulling a laugh out of Bennet.
“Throwing the football,” she says. “You would correct me about that.”
Ha. Is that girl calling me conceited? “What’s that mean?”
“Nothing. I’ll come to your next game and take notes on everything you do for my statues.”
I try to picture Bennet in the stands, watching me, cheering for me, and I know it’s a fantasy. “You never come to the games. Why not?”
Her eyes widen, and I realize I’ve given too much away, admitted I notice things about her that I shouldn’t have noticed.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Is that, like, a graduation requirement or something?”
I flip back to easy, confident Will to hide my mistake. “Practically. Everyone else goes.”
She looks away, and I study her profile, the way her hair falls in curls onto her shoulders.
“There’s no big reason,” she says. “I just do my own thing, I guess.”
“You do.” Scenes flash in my head of Bennet saying what she wants, wearing what she wants, hanging out with who she wants. Being who she wants. “I wish I did more of that.”
“What are you talking about? You do your own thing. Your thing is just, you know, the same as everyone else’s thing.”
This draws a laugh out of me. Saying exactly what she wants. “Thanks for the pep talk, Bennet.”
Her free hand is fidgeting with the bedspread. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way or anything.”
“I know,” I say, and I do. Bennet says what she wants, but she’s not unkind.
But let’s focus back on how she couldn’t stop checking me out five minutes ago. “So we’re at a party with the door locked, and you think I’m hot.” I toss her a smile. “Want to make out?”
She makes a show of studying her nails, pretending to be bored, but I see the color rise to her cheeks. “No point,” she says in a voice that’s a little too disinterested. “It’d be too hard to get your shirt off with these handcuffs on.”
I laugh so hard I can’t talk for a minute. “Oh man. You surprise me sometimes, Bennet.”
“You too, actually.” Her smile’s almost flirty now. “I didn’t know it was possible to make you more conceited.”
“Anything’s possible. Including the shirt and handcuffs thing.”
“Will.” I can hear the eye roll in her voice. “You’re fake flirting again.”
It hits me that I’m not faking anything. But since I know that’s not what she wants to hear, I laugh and say, “I can’t stop. You make it fun.”
She gestures to her cast that’s propped on the bed. “By the way, thanks a lot for signing my cast. While I was sleeping. Creeper.”
I’ve been wondering when she’d bring that up. “You deserved it for falling asleep in the middle of our game. There I was, waiting for you to make the next move, and when I look over, you’re drooling all over yourself.”
“Did I really fall asleep in the middle of it?” She touches her chin, as if checking for drool, before getting that conceited glint in her eyes. “I probably did you a favor. I was about to finish you off anyway.”
“Um, no. I was maybe two moves away from a check mate.”
I watch the questions pass through her eyes, and I can tell she’s trying to work out if I’m lying or not, so I hold a steady smile that gives nothing away.
Finally, she asks, “Are you proud of beating a girl with a concussion who was on pain meds?”
Is that a real question? “If it’s you? Oh yeah.”
When I hear the door handle jiggling, I realize this whole moment’s been a repeat of when I hung out with her at the hospital—time spins faster; she makes me laugh, and I make her laugh, and it becomes my whole goal to make her laugh again. She’s like a black hole, pulling me in, probably waiting to rip me apart, but when I see her with that teasing smile that I put on her face, it’s like I don’t even care.
Jeremiah swings open the door, pocketing the key like he plans to hang onto it.
“Finally!” Bennet breathes, swinging her legs off the bed.
Finally. If I’d thought she was starting to feel the same way, she killed it with that word. For a moment, I see it. I’m going to become one of those dozens of broken hearts that Bennet stuffs in her locker, sliding her books around them like she doesn’t even know they’re there. But then I remember the way she stared at me, like she couldn’t look away even if she’d wanted to. And I remember I’m Will Fitz. Whatever Bennet’s feeling, I can charm her.
She raises our linked hands to Jeremiah. “Unlock us. Please.”
“You’re in a hurry.” I throw her a smile. “Wait. Bennet, you knew I was joking about the shirt, right?”
She groans. But I see the faint blush on her cheeks.
The purple haired guy—Jeremiah—says he’s locking us in a little girl’s room while he uses the toilet. Bennet’s livid. I think the whole thing’s hilarious. I’ve been to enough of these parties that they’ve gotten predictable—beer pong, video games, flirting. It was cool the first twenty times, but this—this is way more interesting.
Jeremiah steps outside and closes the door, and I hear the key turning in the lock. He really did lock us in. Hilarious.
“You.” Bennet’s pointing her finger at my chest as soon as we’re alone. “You could have stopped this.”
I’m supporting her with one arm, and she tries to shove me off her and almost falls over before I reach out to steady her. My hand closes around the red fabric kissing her hip, and it sends a zing right through me. It’s hard not to notice Bennet’s hot, but tonight. Tonight it’s impossible.
I force myself to pull my hand away. “Chill out, Bennet. It’s a joke. You take things too seriously.”
I want her to see this is funny and laugh with me, but her face has that hard, set in stone look.
“Sorry,” she says, in a way that means she’s not sorry. “But being locked in a room with you—handcuffed to you—is like my worst nightmare.”
“Your nightmare or your fantasy?” I say before I realize that joke’s going nowhere. My eyes are running over her again before I know what I’m doing. “Hot dress. Not your usual style.” Unless. No. “Don’t tell me you wore that for—”
“What is up with you tonight?” She takes a step back. “What’s with all the fake flirting?”
She dodged the question. So she did wear it for George. “I thought that’s what you liked now,” I say, and now my words are coming out all hard edged and pointy too.
“What are you talking about? Wait.” Her mouth drops open slightly. “Are you talking about George? Because you have no right—”
“There’s more to that story, whatever he told you.” I don’t have to be a genius to figure out George unloaded one of his sob stories on her, one where he’s the victim, and my family are the villains. I just thought Bennet was smart enough not to fall for it.
She’s still looking at me, watching my mask slip until she can see every vulnerable part of me. “So tell it to me,” she says.
For one crazy moment, I want to. I don’t like thinking Bennet believes George’s stories about me. I don’t know why I want her good opinion, but I do. But when I see her propped against one crutch, staring at me like she can see through me, I just…can’t. So instead I slide on an easy smile and bat her serious question away. “You are just dying to know everything about my life. Are you writing a book?”
Most girls would laugh and recognize the game, catch the flirtation and volley it back to me. But Bennet isn’t the type to play games. She keeps watching me, waiting for me to say something real.
“Bennet, I—” But I can’t tell this story now, at a party, handcuffed to a girl whose eyes are already brimming with judgment. “I really don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”
I expect her to see that for the cop out it is, but, “Yeah,” she says, and I feel something heavy leave me.
I gesture to the bed that has a bunch of My Little Ponies jumping around on the bed spread. “You wanna sit?”
“Yeah,” she says, and the word has an edge of vulnerability to it, like it’s painful for her to admit that there’s no way she’s getting to that bed without my help.
I shouldn’t think it’s funny, but I do. Bennet, forced to play the damsel in distress, and me, who she’s always acted like she’s hated, as her knight in shining armor. I loop her arm around my shoulders, my handcuffed wrist dangling awkwardly below hers. She hobbles beside me towards the bed, and she’s warm, and her hair smells like vanilla and flowers.
“I’m going to lift you onto the bed,” I say.
But she’s already pulling away. “I broke my leg, not my head. I can figure out how to get on a bed.”
She hoists herself onto the bed, yanking me forward so that I almost fall on top of her before I catch myself on the edge of the bed. I’m hovering over her, and her smell surrounds me, tickling my nostrils and messing with my mind. “Geez, Bennet, do you ever let anyone help you?”
She doesn’t answer, just stills beneath me, eyes moving over my face. For a moment, I’m sure she feels it too, this pull between us, but then I shift away quickly because that’s a web I promised myself I’d never get caught in.
I’ve always noticed Bennet, but she’s been wedged in my head since that day at the hospital. She has this smart, conceited thing going on that people pretend is annoying when really it’s hot as hell. But I’ve got to get over it because everyone knows that Libby Bennet is Not Interested. And I’m not stupid enough to go after a girl who doesn’t want me when there are plenty of girls who do. I try not to inhale as I lift her cast and rest it on the bed, raising my eyebrows at her when, like some kind of miracle, she doesn’t fight me.
Her face softens, like maybe she’s finally dropping her weapons. “You could have stopped Jeremiah’s whole thing before it got this far,” she says, but it’s almost like she’s asking. “Why didn’t you?”
I lower myself onto the bed beside her, my fingers brushing hers. By accident or on purpose? I’m not sure, but she pulls away immediately.
I think about her question. Leave it to Libby to go from one probing question to another. “I don’t know,” I say. “It was funny.”
She makes a face. “You saw I hated it.”
“Yeah.” I pretended I didn’t for the crowd, but, “I guess I did.”
She lets out a long breath, like, “Well, that’s Will for you. He’s an insensitive ass.” And maybe I’ve built that impression for her on purpose, but suddenly I want to destroy everything I’ve built up.
“Everyone was laughing and having fun, and I liked that,” I say, and it feels like the confession it is. “I like it when people think I’m funny and the life of the party. But you don’t care about that kind of thing.”
I’m trying to get the wrong person to understand. Because Libby Bennet has no idea what it’s like to care about what other people think, to build your whole image around other people’s opinions.
She studies me, as if she’s searching answers in my face. But then her gaze changes, lingers, runs over my hair and down to my chest and arms and then back up to my eyes, settling there for a long time. A really long time. Holy—Is Libby Bennet checking me out? Well, well, well. Maybe that zing I felt wasn’t so one sided after all.
“Do you like what you see?” I ask because if she does, I can think of other things we could do besides ask deep and uncomfortable questions.
But her brown eyes are already rolling to the ceiling. “Every girl likes looking at you, Will. You know that.”
A spark I’m pretty sure I don’t want flickers to life in my chest. “But I didn’t know you did. I definitely didn’t know you did.”
“Oh, totally.” She flicks her dark, curly hair off her shoulder. “In my spare time, I make little clay statues of you kicking little clay footballs, but it’s so frustrating. I can never quite make anything that looks as good as the real thing.”
I love it when she’s a smart ass. “I’m the quarterback, so you should really sculpt me throwing the football. But go on. Tell me more about these sculptures.”
She laughs, and it fans that spark in my chest into a flame. There’s something gratifying about pulling a laugh out of Bennet.
“Throwing the football,” she says. “You would correct me about that.”
Ha. Is that girl calling me conceited? “What’s that mean?”
“Nothing. I’ll come to your next game and take notes on everything you do for my statues.”
I try to picture Bennet in the stands, watching me, cheering for me, and I know it’s a fantasy. “You never come to the games. Why not?”
Her eyes widen, and I realize I’ve given too much away, admitted I notice things about her that I shouldn’t have noticed.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Is that, like, a graduation requirement or something?”
I flip back to easy, confident Will to hide my mistake. “Practically. Everyone else goes.”
She looks away, and I study her profile, the way her hair falls in curls onto her shoulders.
“There’s no big reason,” she says. “I just do my own thing, I guess.”
“You do.” Scenes flash in my head of Bennet saying what she wants, wearing what she wants, hanging out with who she wants. Being who she wants. “I wish I did more of that.”
“What are you talking about? You do your own thing. Your thing is just, you know, the same as everyone else’s thing.”
This draws a laugh out of me. Saying exactly what she wants. “Thanks for the pep talk, Bennet.”
Her free hand is fidgeting with the bedspread. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way or anything.”
“I know,” I say, and I do. Bennet says what she wants, but she’s not unkind.
But let’s focus back on how she couldn’t stop checking me out five minutes ago. “So we’re at a party with the door locked, and you think I’m hot.” I toss her a smile. “Want to make out?”
She makes a show of studying her nails, pretending to be bored, but I see the color rise to her cheeks. “No point,” she says in a voice that’s a little too disinterested. “It’d be too hard to get your shirt off with these handcuffs on.”
I laugh so hard I can’t talk for a minute. “Oh man. You surprise me sometimes, Bennet.”
“You too, actually.” Her smile’s almost flirty now. “I didn’t know it was possible to make you more conceited.”
“Anything’s possible. Including the shirt and handcuffs thing.”
“Will.” I can hear the eye roll in her voice. “You’re fake flirting again.”
It hits me that I’m not faking anything. But since I know that’s not what she wants to hear, I laugh and say, “I can’t stop. You make it fun.”
She gestures to her cast that’s propped on the bed. “By the way, thanks a lot for signing my cast. While I was sleeping. Creeper.”
I’ve been wondering when she’d bring that up. “You deserved it for falling asleep in the middle of our game. There I was, waiting for you to make the next move, and when I look over, you’re drooling all over yourself.”
“Did I really fall asleep in the middle of it?” She touches her chin, as if checking for drool, before getting that conceited glint in her eyes. “I probably did you a favor. I was about to finish you off anyway.”
“Um, no. I was maybe two moves away from a check mate.”
I watch the questions pass through her eyes, and I can tell she’s trying to work out if I’m lying or not, so I hold a steady smile that gives nothing away.
Finally, she asks, “Are you proud of beating a girl with a concussion who was on pain meds?”
Is that a real question? “If it’s you? Oh yeah.”
When I hear the door handle jiggling, I realize this whole moment’s been a repeat of when I hung out with her at the hospital—time spins faster; she makes me laugh, and I make her laugh, and it becomes my whole goal to make her laugh again. She’s like a black hole, pulling me in, probably waiting to rip me apart, but when I see her with that teasing smile that I put on her face, it’s like I don’t even care.
Jeremiah swings open the door, pocketing the key like he plans to hang onto it.
“Finally!” Bennet breathes, swinging her legs off the bed.
Finally. If I’d thought she was starting to feel the same way, she killed it with that word. For a moment, I see it. I’m going to become one of those dozens of broken hearts that Bennet stuffs in her locker, sliding her books around them like she doesn’t even know they’re there. But then I remember the way she stared at me, like she couldn’t look away even if she’d wanted to. And I remember I’m Will Fitz. Whatever Bennet’s feeling, I can charm her.
She raises our linked hands to Jeremiah. “Unlock us. Please.”
“You’re in a hurry.” I throw her a smile. “Wait. Bennet, you knew I was joking about the shirt, right?”
She groans. But I see the faint blush on her cheeks.
