Kiss and Break Up - Ella Fields Page 0,3
glue gun around on the table, resting my chin on my fist.
Daphne was the only one of us actually scrapbooking. Today, she’d brought along some vintage stamps she’d purchased for a huge sum on eBay, and she was using them to make a border in the album she’d been working on.
Though she didn’t seem to care, Daphne was the most popular out of the three of us. Her green eyes glowed in a way that snatched anyone’s attention. Paired with her silky straight dark brown hair, she was damn near mesmerizing to look at. Her confidence was another striking quality. It was the ease in which she held herself and the way she didn’t care about anyone else’s opinions of her that drew me to her.
“I’m done with Kayla’s shit,” she said, a long finger smoothing over her page. “She’s the worst kind of bitch.”
“Does that mean you’ll sit with us at school now?” Willa asked.
Daphne’s brows furrowed, and she sat back in the dining chair. “I do sit with you.” When we said nothing, she looked at me. “Pegs?”
“Well,” I hemmed. “I mean … sometimes?”
Her lips pursed as she sat with that a moment. “As I said, done. So sometimes will now be all the time.”
Willa and I remained quiet.
It wasn’t that Daphne was ashamed to hang out with us. We weren’t exactly losers. It was that she’d befriended us over our mutual love for crafting early last year in art class, but she’d been with the it crowd all through high school. Elementary too.
“Back to Byron.” I shifted a little. “Was he asking me out?”
“He was so asking you out,” Willa said.
Daphne raked her hands through her hair. “He didn’t ask you out. It’s not a date, but he does want to hang with you. That, my friend, was the least formal, official way of asking you to.”
Willa and I glanced at one another, then I nodded. “And I should?”
Daphne made a sound of frustration. “Do you need a slap to the face?”
“Uh …”
She continued, “You’re freaking gorgeous. He wants you, just as a lot of guys at school probably secretly do. So quit acting like you’re so shocked.”
My tongue dried thanks to my mouth hanging wide open. “But, um, I am shocked.”
Willa’s eyes ping-ponged between us with her soda can poised at her lips.
Daphne’s expression smoothed, and her voice gentled. “Look, guys have always noticed you. Dash just doesn’t let them notice too long.”
“Dash?”
Willa coughed.
“Yes, dummy. He’s stamping out fires before they even start.” She paused, green eyes narrowing on me. “You so already know that.”
“I guess, yeah.” I wasn’t lying. I knew he was protective of me in his own weird, asshole-ish way, but I wasn’t sure it happened as much as Daphne was implying.
Daphne and Willa shared similar smiles as Daphne murmured, “Well, I guess they are, or at least Byron is, done giving a crap what Dash Thane thinks.”
After they left, I cleaned up and took my unopened album to my room.
This non-date thing was confusing. Maybe Byron did just want to hang with me, and maybe that was okay. Or maybe not. Was hang code for something? I made a mental note to ask Daphne about it later.
I would’ve screamed at the sight of the body splayed over my bed, the combat boots and leather jacket in a heap on the floor, but it was too common an occurrence to startle me.
“You’re not bald.”
I smirked, dodging last night’s pajamas on my bedroom floor. “Never said I was.”
“You never said you weren’t either.” Dash set down the book he’d brought with him and pulled his thick, black framed reading glasses off.
I put the album on my desk, then traipsed over to the bed and crawled over his legs, clad in their usual black denim, to sit against the wall by the window he’d crawled through.
“It would’ve looked good on you.”
I raised a brow at him. “Shut up.”
He chewed on the arm of his glasses, narrowing his sea blue eyes on my face. “You look different.”
Yawning, I mumbled, “Haircut, remember?”
His golden blond hair was perfectly coiffed, pushed back one too many times and therefore permanently styled to stay off his face.
That hair, his angular cheekbones, and the dimple that appeared when he smirked had many foolish girls looking past his vulgar actions and nasty vocabulary, intent on trying to tame the untamable.
“Who would’ve thought getting that metal off your teeth would make you so brave?”
“Don’t even start.”
“Oh, I haven’t.” He sat up on his elbows