Catch My Fall | ✔

18. Complicated

Andre sat on a low wall near the front entrance of the school and, for once, he was alone. School had let out and I still had time to kill before my mom came to pick me up. Her shift at the birthing center went longer than expected. I hopped up on the wall next to him and he slammed his notebook shut. "Hey, I didn't hear you come up."

"Clearly." A piece of paper stuck out of the notebook and I couldn't help but grab it.

"Wait!" He snatched the paper back, but I already saw what was on it.

"Why are you hiding your algebra homework?" I asked, brows raised.

Since the movie night, Andre and I had been messaging back and forth. A lot. Like, I-might've-slept-through-my-alarm-every-morning-that-week a lot. It started after Romeo took me home once we finished his mom's garage.

I was the last one he dropped off, which meant we were alone in his car for ten minutes. Awkward wasn't a strong enough word. The silence in that car was suffocating. We usually had endless things to talk about. That was the first time I had nothing.

Well, that was a lie. There was one thing I wanted to ask him, but I was afraid it'd make things between us even worse.

"Are you going to the game on Thursday?" Romeo asked, breaking the silence just as he pulled up in front of my house.

"That's the plan." It was Nia's last basketball game of the season and the dance team was performing. Even though I wasn't into sports, both Nia and Indy would've murdered me if I didn't come out to support.

"Will you need a ride?" He asked his steering wheel instead of me.

"I--"

"Unless you're riding with Andre." He looked up at me then.

Nia couldn't be right. Romeo couldn't be jealous right now. There had to be another reason he's been acting weird. "Do you have a problem with Andre?"

He scratched his brow. "Nope. Why?"

Ugh. He was so frustrating. "You're really gonna pretend things haven't been...off since I started talking to him?"

A muscle in his jaw twitched as he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Actually, yeah," he said, glancing at me. "Nia's been weirdly nice to me, lately. She wasn't even mad I didn't show up to movie night."

He couldn't be serious.

"I think she's getting desperate," he continued, leaning back in his seat. "Us being the last singles in the group. You two were whispering all day. Is she secretly in love with me?"

Whatever. If he couldn't have a mature conversation about it, I wasn't wasting my time.

He caught my arm before I left the car. "Hold on," he said, releasing me when I sat back down. "I'll save you a seat. For both of you."

I didn't know what game he was playing. That left a pit in my stomach because I could always read him. After I got up to my room, I wanted to talk to someone less complicated.

Andre was less complicated.

It started with me asking him if he wanted to go to the game and ended around two in the morning when I fell asleep during our back and forth about Percy Jackson. I'd only ever seen the movies and he wanted me to read the books.

Now Andre picked up his backpack from between his feet and threw his notebook inside. "It's chemistry, actually. And it's not homework."

"You do chemistry for fun?"

He gave me a sidelong glance, chewing his bottom lip. "You can't laugh."

That only made me even more curious. "What is it?"