The Dating Game

THIRTY-SEVEN

"You seem hurried," Anna tells me with crossed arms and a skeptical stare. "Something wrong?"

I roll my eyes at her and almost walk away before a moment of realization hits me and I turn back around.

"What were you and Chase talking about on Monday?" I ask her with little patience and even less thought. It's obvious that Chase doesn't have feelings for me, but if his conversation with Anna was him confessing feelings to her, I simply wouldn't be able to recover from that. Imagine leaving me, someone with an IQ actually over sixty, for a volleyball girl whose main goal is making everyone around her miserable. I have to know the truth—for my own sake.

"Why?" Anna asks, shocked. Her eyes search my face until she pouts her lip and her eyebrows fall. "Oh, I see. You're jealous."

I shake my head with a sarcastic, "Yeah, sure." Stupid of me to think she'd actually tell me.

"Well, you don't have to be jealous," she continues, catching me by surprise. It kills me that she thinks I'm seriously jealous of her, but I think it kills her more to be admitting this to me—whatever this is. "He asked to talk to me beforehand and I thought he was finally coming to his senses and asking me out, but he was going on and on about how he'll never have feelings for me and that he's 'completely dedicated' to you even though you're not even..."

Her mouth keeps moving but my brain filters out her voice. As soon as those words leave her mouth—he's completely dedicated to you—my mind settles itself back on Chase. I can't deny the fluttery feeling rising in my stomach when I hear it, or the heat spreading through my cheeks when I think of how stern he must've been to Anna to finally get her to lay off him. Could there actually be a chance that he's—

"It's like he's in love with you," I hear Anna say when my brain tunes her back in. "I don't understand why, but if you're his type, then I must've dodged a real bullet. There's no way he's mentally sane."

I just stare at her as she turns on her heel and walks toward the English classroom, hands glued to her hips. She joins the other volleyball girls waiting at the door for her, visibly impatient. One of them glares at me until Anna calls her off like an owner to her pet, and they both head inside. There's no way we're friends now—I have much more self-respect than that, especially after everything she's done to me—but could it be possible that she's finally given up on making my life a living hell?

I shake my head, trying my best to rid myself of any Anna-related thoughts before heading to the English classroom as well. It hardly works; instead, I keep thinking about Chase, which is the second to last thing I want to be thinking about right now, right behind Anna herself. I know I'm being dramatic but if I keep thinking about Chase knowing how I feel and how he doesn't, I'll just end up hurting myself. Still, for hours, I'm barely getting by in my classes, only paying enough attention to do the work, and not even doing it well.

Until, of course, Chase shows up in front of me at the end of the day and I'm forced to face everything all at once, all over again. His smile is so kind and charming—two words I would've rather died than admit to using to describe him a month ago. His hair is perfectly in place, as it always seems to be, and my heart is close to leaping out of my chest when he reaches for my hand on our painfully typical walk to my house.

Stopping myself from staring up at him in awe while he rants about his day proves to be an impossible task, which I think he notices halfway through the walk. He starts staring back, which, to no surprise to me, triggers a reaction on my face. A big, blotchy red reaction that makes my cheeks hot and my mouth unspeakably dry. I try my absolute hardest to avert my eyes and prevent him from seeing my stupidly blushing face, but he stops the two of us in front of my door and turns me around to face him.