Goodbye Yellow Brick Road ✔︎

36 | Human Shield

|photo by Mche Lee from Unsplash|

Conner kicks the back of my chair—for the second time—and when I turn around, he drops his eyes to his textbook, tries not to smile. Fails.

The girl sitting beside him mouths, "Oh my god."

I roll my eyes, to keep up the pretense, but my insides are all strung out on helium because more and more over the last couple of weeks, he's been doing things like this: flirting with me at school, out in the open—in front of the cameras.

"Your middle school flirtation tactics are drawing attention," I warn him when we get to our locker.

"Hmm." He reaches over my shoulder to deposit his Government textbook, leans the front of his body against the back of mine and my stomach reacts the way it did the first time he held my hand.

Shouldn't I be used to this by now? We've been together—like seriously together—for nearly six weeks.

"Can you get out of lunch with Chase?" he asks, initiating a chill that travels to every extremity. Because he ditched Paige yesterday and Friday is definitely mine. Maybe he finally told her about us. Maybe that's my gift and he's just waiting until Valentine's Day to tell me.

"I can't today," I say, turning my head so that my nose almost touches his jaw. "We have a test in chemistry—this really complicated experiment—and I promised Chase we'd compare notes."

He drops his chin and angles his head and I hold my breath. Conner has never kissed me at our locker. The open door hides our faces from the hallway security camera but Paige would know. She's seen us here. She mentioned it once in an isn't-it-sweet-that-you-guys-are-sharing-a-locker tone, but her lion-gold eyes were twitching back and forth, studying us like she was looking for a weakness. Waiting to pounce.

Conner sighs and takes a step back, pulling his algebra book out of the locker, hugging it against his chest. "Then let's skip sixth period," he says, "spend some quality time in the stairwell."

"I can't. This relationship is having a negative effect on my GPA."

"Mine, too. That's why I'm going to tell Coach that I need to leave practice early today. I have an appointment with my tutor."

His waggling eyebrows make me smile. But it's not enough to ease the knot in my chest. Conner answered my question about Paige: he can't walk away from their friendship, but he's not confused about his feelings. He doesn't love her. He doesn't want her. And when the time is right—if her new medication works or maybe when they know for sure it's not going to—he's going to tell her he's in love with me.

But who knows how long that will take.

I slide my French binder out of the locker and close the door. "I'll see you in sixth," I say, walking away from him.

"Thea?"

I stop, turn around. He closes the distance between us and I know that look, I know what's coming. Conner kisses me with one hand cradling my jaw. With soft open lips.

In full view of the camera.

And when he pulls back he nods—the way he does when he's feeling oh-so proud of himself—and whispers, "I love you." Then he takes a step back, smiling my favorite smile. He lifts his arms over his head and yells, "I love Thea Allen!"

* * *

My body has to navigate the hallways on autopilot because my thoughts are rampant. It's a good thing, what Conner has done. He took a stand, made a choice. Good or bad, it's out there—we're out there. In the open. As a couple. And I'm thrilled.