Where There's Light | ✔

22. You're A Coward

I was slipping. Like a baby deer on ice, struggling to keep my balance.

The thing I didn't take into consideration before agreeing to the whole fake dating thing was that a person only came with one set of feelings. There wasn't a backup set that could turned on and off when needed.

And the set of feelings I had felt very strongly about Nolan Chambers.

It had been a month since the photo booth incident and I still found myself thinking about it. The black and white photo strip was taped to the inside of my locker for the sake of keeping up appearances. At least that was what I told myself.

Denying my feelings for him was difficult. He was making it difficult, playing into the role of the perfect boyfriend all too well.

Ever since the thing with condoms he'd been more attentive. Walking me to my classes, sitting with me, Bee, and whoever she was seeing that week, during lunch.

It was like he didn't want to let me out of his sight. He kept me protectively by his side at all times, or at least when he could.

We didn't talk about the sudden shift in his attitude or how he was suddenly behaving like a bodyguard. The question burned at the back of my mind, though. Wondering why he felt the need to stand between me and everyone else.

I would admit, though, since he'd been keeping close to me the whispers and dirty looks that were aimed at me had died down almost completely.

People didn't greet me in the halls the way they did Nolan, but they didn't call me a skank either. Progress.

Another thing I didn't expect was that as Nolan's popularity increased, so did the amount of female eyes that lingered on him a little too long for my liking.

I never thought of myself as the jealous type. Being an athlete, Deshaun had girls shamelessly flirt with him all the time and it never bothered me.

But whenever I caught a girl chatting up Nolan in the hall I had the urge to interrupt, step in and let her know that he was spoken for. Then I'd remember that he wasn't. Not really.

I guess that was why I blurted out the question I'd been trying to keep contained only in my mind.

Nolan blinked, pausing his process of smearing ranch on his pizza. "What?"

The back of my neck burned. I tried to remain nonchalant as I took a sip of my apple juice, shrugging. "I mean, prom is months away. That's a long time to be in a fake relationship. What if one of us met someone? Someone we'd want to actually date."

His eyes focused back on to his pizza as he added more ranch. I tried not to gag. I'd been watching him do that almost every day during lunch and I still couldn't get over how gross it looked.

When his gaze came back to me his brows were narrowed with curiosity. "Did you? Meet someone, I mean?"

"No!"

My quick response caused something to flash across his face. He looked away, suddenly interested in his fries, before I could decipher it.

"Is it Nick?" He turned back to me, face void of any emotion. "You remember what I told you about him, right? You can't trust him."

I noticed the sudden death grip he had on his bottle of water. There was something he wasn't telling me. Probably something about Nick and the real reason he didn't want me talking to him.

There was a lot he didn't tell me.

My mind went back to girl with the orange hair. How she begged him to leave with her.