“Bye, Zoey.” I hung up the phone, cutting her off.
This pandemic might have completely turned my life upside down, but nothing was going to change the fact I would never consider getting together with Aiden. The sooner Zoey accepted that, the better.
3
Aiden
Clary James was in my house. I swore under my breath as I stepped away from her bedroom door. Of all the girls I could have been stuck in lockdown with, why did it have to be her?
Clary wasn’t like the other girls we went to school with. She didn’t bat her eyelashes at me, and she didn’t swoon whenever I turned my attention on her. If anything, I only seemed to annoy her, and as a result, I only wanted her more.
My feelings for Clary were hardly something new. I’d been obsessing over her for as long as I could remember. I’d even been crazy enough to ask her out once—not that it did me much good.
I’d been an awkward freshman at the time and had finally worked up the courage to ask her on a date. I had no idea she was dating someone else, so I must have looked like a fool for asking her out. She’d let me down gently enough, but being the immature idiot I was, I’d played the whole thing off as a joke—and I’d been playing with her ever since.
I’d come to enjoy our interactions though. There was nothing I liked more than seeing her get flustered. And bringing out the fire in her eyes was pretty much my favorite hobby.
It was a little messed up, and I imagined there were whole psychology books dedicated to my little problem. I wanted the girl I couldn’t have, and my heart refused to give up on her.
I made my way downstairs in bit of a daze. I couldn’t decide if having Clary in the house with me during lockdown was a dream come true or my worst nightmare. She never paid me any attention at school, and I had to wonder if being stuck at home with her was going to be just as brutal.
It’s not like she completely ignored me—although she tried her best. The problem was that none of my flirting tactics worked on her, and I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. She felt like a puzzle that was impossible to solve. It was as if I was the only one who was struggling to crack the code though, because Clary got on just fine with everyone else at school.
Her friends were all popular, but she never seemed to get caught up in all their drama. She was much quieter than them and always had her nose stuck in a book. She seemed to prefer watching people rather than diving into conversations. It was probably why a lot of guys didn’t seem to notice her. They either got distracted by the big personalities she surrounded herself with or had no idea how to approach her.
That was the thing about Clary. She was so damn beautiful it intimidated people. My heart got lodged in my throat anytime she entered a room; I had no idea how other guys worked up the courage to talk to her. It was easy for me though. Who needed courage when you were trying to annoy her rather than impress her?
I stuck my head into my brother’s room. He was sitting on the floor by his TV playing some zombie video game. He was obsessed with the damn things, and I imagined his eyes would have popped out of his head if he’d seen the zombie survival tee Clary had been wearing earlier.
“What do you want?” Elliot grumbled, not bothering to glance in my direction as he continued to play his game. If he had his way, he’d probably spend all of lockdown in his room with his video games. The controller cord for his PlayStation was more like an umbilical cord. It was his lifeline, and it was nearly impossible to separate him from it.
“I’m heading out.”
This got his attention, and his eyes briefly flickered in my direction. “Where are you going?”
“Seth’s place.” My best friend lived just down the road, and I needed to talk to him now more than ever. He was the one and only person who knew about my fixation on Clary, and I needed him to knock some sense into me if I was going to survive being trapped with her.
“Mom said we can’t see our friends,” Elliot replied.