“Just checking.” Julius fixes me with that beautiful, infuriating look I hate almost as much as I love. “No backing out if you lose.”
I slow to a stop in front of the math classroom. Lift my chin. Meet his gaze. “You’re the one who’s a sore loser.”
“Only because losing is so rare for me,” he says. “It offends my very being.”
“You offend my very being.”
He huffs out a laugh. “Excuse me?”
“Okay, that was unnecessary,” I say. “You don’t offend my very being. Well, you do, or you used to, but only sometimes.”
“When did you become so romantic?” he says dryly, but he reaches into his pocket and hands me a strawberry-and-yogurt granola bar. It’s both my favorite brand and flavor, the ones that are only available from the organic supermarket all the way on the other side of town, where everything costs triple the price and the customers almost exclusively wear Lululemon.
I blink at the bar in my hand, confused. “What is this?”
“Has all that late-night studying impaired your ability to recognize basic food, Sadie?”
“I know, but—I mean, why? Are you trying to poison me?”
He scoffs. “We’ve gotten dinner together like fifty times by now. I literally made you that steak dinner in my house just the other week—”
“It was delicious, by the way, I loved the sauce—”
“I can cook it for you again,” he says immediately. “But my point is, if I wanted to poison you, I would’ve had far better opportunities to do so.”
“Valid,” I concede. “But then—”
“You always lose your appetite before a test, don’t you? You can take a few bites or save it for later if you’d like. I just don’t want you fainting from hunger in the middle of class.”
As I slip the bar into my blazer pocket, I feel a rush of gratitude for him so strong it’s almost violent, like an attack on my system. Everything in me rendered raw and vulnerable, left reeling in his wake. God help us the day he finds out how much he affects me. “Thank you,” I tell him. “And—good luck with the test.”
The expression on his face is half smile, half smirk. Smugness without malice. “I don’t need any luck.”
“Yeah, sure you don’t,” I say. Then, scanning the corridor to make sure there aren’t too many people looking our way, I quickly step toward him. Reach around the back of his neck, hands finding his hair, and stand on my tiptoes. Before he can react, I press my lips to his. Soft, slow, open. Perfect. He exhales shakily, his arms already tightening around my waist, leaning into me, as if he’s amazed this is happening.
When I release him, his eyes are wide, dazed, like he’s forgotten where we are for a few seconds, before sharpening back on me. “You definitely did that on purpose,” he accuses. “To mess with my head before the test.”
I have to bite back my laughter. “Then maybe you shouldn’t let yourself get distracted so easily.”
“Can you blame me?” he says, with an air of something like resignation. Like defeat. “Have you seen yourself?”
And it’s almost as if I’m able to: I see myself reflected in his eyes, my cheeks flushed and my ponytail swishing, and he’s watching me with such clear, unabashed affection that it’s difficult not to believe he wants me. Makes me slightly dizzy, to imagine I could hold that much power over another person, let alone someone like Julius Gong.
Then the first warning bell sounds and I straighten, forcibly pushing aside all tender thoughts of him. For the next period, he will not be my first and greatest love but my first enemy, my greatest rival. I will obliterate him. And then I will hold him gently while we celebrate my victory.
“See you in there,” I tell him, and turn on my heel before he can do something evil and ruinous, like kiss me back.
For a decade, Julius did his best to avoid being seated next to Sadie Wen.
He realized very early on that nothing was more detrimental to his studies. Her closeness was too overpowering. He’d find himself staring in her direction more often than he stared at the board. He became overly aware of his own body, his posture, and if he’d styled his hair well enough that morning and whether his blazer was wrinkled.
And her.
He was always instantly, pathetically aware of her in every room she entered, but it became unbearable when they were sitting side by side at the same table. His own thoughts taunted and betrayed him; he shouldn’t be noticing how the freckles on her cheeks looked more prominent in the morning light, how she adjusted her bun whenever she had a headache, how she chewed the end of her pen when she was trying to solve an equation. He shouldn’t be tensing whenever her shoulder accidentally brushed against his, or when she reached over his desk for a worksheet. He shouldn’t be keeping track of how many times she faked a smile at the teacher or her classmates or nodded along when she was clearly uncomfortable, and how many times her face lit up with genuine excitement. He shouldn’t be concerned that the latter happened far less frequently than the former, and he most definitely shouldn’t be wondering how to change that, as if her happiness had anything to do with him.
But that was back when he was still fighting against the idea of her, and no matter how strong his willpower, he can see in hindsight that he was destined to lose from the beginning.
Now he is grateful for every class where the teachers have allowed them to sit together. It makes even the dullest subjects interesting—and today, it also makes the wait for their results that much shorter.
