Meet Your Match

8

"Of course I'm fine, why wouldn't I be fine?" So my teeth were stuck together with caramel. Still fine.

"Why? Maybe 'cause you're chocolate-stuffed to the ears?"

What an exaggeration. My ears were perfectly chocolate-free. ...I even checked to be sure.

Crushing the giant heart box to my chest, I defended myself. "Hanna said she doesn't like chocolate."

Amira crossed her arms. "Really? I saw her hoover up today's last chocolate bar faster than anybody else could grab it...bold to pretend that wasn't her."

Amira and Thomas, having been the first couple to return from the so-called truffle hunt, had won all of the unclaimed money (and unclaimed chocolate).

I sighed. "Maybe she didn't want these anymore since I drooled on them..."

Circling my bed to sit behind me, Amira picked something up on the way. I knew what it was when she started brushing my hair.

"What happened?" she asked.

Late last night, I'd acted foolishly after sticking my nose out of our window at the wrong moment.

In the middle of a phone call, Hanna had been heading for the woods, too distracted to notice a dark object falling out of her bag as she adjusted it on her shoulder.

She hadn't heard me calling to her, but once I'd caught up to Hanna, she'd whirled around with the energy one might give to something many-legged and sharp-toothed. "Halle! What are you doing? Did you follow me?"

"Y-yeah, I saw—"

Face disconcertingly lit by her phone's screen, she'd spoken over me, and I'd felt myself shrinking. "Look. Just because we're partners and part of this show together, doesn't mean I want to spend every second with you. You have no right to—"

She'd gone quiet, finally seeing her wallet in my raised hand.

"I'm sorry," I'd said, passing it to her. "I just realized that I could've really scared you. I'm sorry..."

"Halle—you have nothing to be—I'm the one—let me walk you back—" Flustered was not a word I ever would've attached to Hanna, but there we were.

"No! No, that's okay. You shouldn't lose any more time. I'm gonna go for a swim. Night!" I'd fled, waving over my shoulder.

"So embarrassing," I whined to Amira, who had won her battle with my tangles and allowed me to rest my head in her lap.

I kicked my feet in misery.

She scoffed. "What was embarrassing? You almost gave her a heart attack trying to return something she lost. Hanna overreacted—"

"What? Where'd you get that idea?"

"From the fact that you're about four inches shorter?"

"She was as calm as a painted pond!" I wailed. Ma Rubi's saying, though Ma tended to use it sarcastically, not in despair.

Amira patted my head. "To sum it up: you'll both laugh about this later."

Right. I was complicating what had actually been very simple: perceiving a lack of boundaries on my part, Hanna had pushed back. It only felt terrible because I'd been misunderstood—but from Hanna's point of view, it was a reasonable misunderstanding.

This whole thing had been a sucky but much-needed reminder of where we were and what we were doing. There would be plenty of those reminders in the future.

I didn't always have to analyze things to death before I could process them...but this was a unique situation.

"You're a sensitive bee when you like someone," Anthony had told me more than once.