Demetri’s stoic face suddenly broke out into the widest grin I’d ever seen. “You mean it?” He kissed my lips. “Tell me you mean it.” His hands were in my hair, threading it between his fingers.

“I mean it.” And I did. Because part of me loved him, part of me craved him. But another part would always belong to Alec. I just chose in that moment to tuck it away. Maybe if I ignored it, I wouldn’t feel the sting of rejection anymore. Maybe I could move on and actually be happy with Demetri.

“I really care about you, Nat. I’ve never felt this way before,” he whispered across my lips. His tongue licked my lower lip, and then he tugged it with his teeth as his mouth covered mine again.

“Me either,” I admitted, because I hadn’t ever felt this way before. I just didn’t expect to feel it twice.

A few cars honked in the distance. I felt myself blush as I noticed we were only a mile away from school and making out in the street. With our luck it would probably hit the news tonight. Great. That’s all I needed. My mom to suspect I was not only sleeping with both boys but skipping school with them too.

I groaned and slapped my palm against my forehead. All this drama was exhausting.

Demetri chuckled and reached around me, tugging my body in for a quick hug. “Food?”

“Food.” I nodded.

Chapter Sixteen

The next few weeks fell into a very nice and familiar rhythm. Demetri and Alec always took me to school and Bob followed me like a stalker every day. I even convinced him it would be in his best interest to join me at work.

He liked that.

He was currently on flavor thirty of five thousand flavors of taffy.

It never ceased to crack me up to see him digging through the different flavors and tasting them.

Even Evan warmed up to him. Well as much as you can to a guy who grunts more than he talks.

I didn’t see Alec. Ever. I still ran with him, but when we ran it was exactly as it had been before. We didn’t talk about anything personal and the miles always ended before I was ready for them be done.

At school he ignored me completely. Because of that fact, everyone forgot about my whorish newspaper spread and began talking about Homecoming and the upcoming football game.

I was happy.

I still missed Alec, but Demetri had been the best boyfriend a girl could ask for. He was attentive, charismatic, and caring. Sometimes, his ego got on my nerves, but I was comfortable enough with him to tell him when he was being a selfish pig.

Although his response was always confusion. Which always meant I had to explain to him why it didn’t sound good for him to refer to himself in the third person, or talk about a new car he wanted to buy in front of a girl who was using food stamps at the grocery store.

I was finally able to focus on something other than boys when my teachers decided our finals before the end of the first quarter would last three days and consist of nothing but papers and tests.

Who still did finals every quarter?

I was on my third and final test and ready to freak out when Demetri came strolling down the hall with Starbucks in hand.

“For me?” I asked, breathless.

He held out the coffee then snatched it away.

“I’m going to hurt you,” I spat.

“So violent.” Demetri sat next to me in the hall. I was doing a last minute cram session before the next test started.

“So tired,” I grumbled, leaning my head on his shoulder.

“The coffee is because you’re tired.” He held it out, but attached to the back of the cup was an envelope. I snatched it and opened it up.

It was a poem.

“You wrote me a poem?”

“No.” He shook his head as if disgusted. “I wrote you a song.”

Oh. My. Gosh.

“Y-you did?” I didn’t know what to say.

“Yup, I’m recording it with Alec when we have time.”

“Wait, I thought you wrote it though?”

Demetri leaned in and kissed me lightly across the mouth. “I did, though he always helps with some of the verses, plus we always sing together.”

If I wouldn’t have already been sitting I probably would have fainted. The words hit too close to home. It was too real. And suddenly I felt like crying.

“Hey, hey! Why are you crying?” Demetri chuckled and pulled me into his chest. “Baby, I thought it would make you happy!”

“It does, I mean, I am. I guess I’m just touched. Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me.”

“You deserve everything.” He kissed my nose. If only he knew what I liar I was. I exhaled.

“About Homecoming…”

My head popped up. He had all my attention. “Yeah?”

“I have this thing in L.A. It’s a music camp. A lot of the low income schools participate, and it lasts for a week. I offered to help teach some classes, and well, they called yesterday. I leave tonight.” His eyes were sad but more excited than I’ve seen them in a while.

“You need to go,” I said, happily squeezing his hand.

“You don’t mind?” He grinned. “Because, Nat, I can totally cancel, I mean… Well, I would be bummed. I found out I really like teaching, and I’m good at it, and I don’t know. It’s just so different than performing all the time, and—”

He had the same issue I did with talking. Whenever he got excited it was impossible to shut him up. I pulled him into a hug and laughed even though a stab of disappointment was barreling into my chest. Maybe it was for the best since I hadn’t bought a dress yet. Demetri had said we could make a huge date out of dress shopping. Guess that was out the window too. I pushed back from the hug and sighed. “Demetri, just go! I’m proud of you and I’ll be fine. I’ll just go with Alesha and Evan.”