Love and Fame Games (Book 1)

13

"By the way, I showed them one picture. One."

"Um, what?"

"'Cause I don't have a hundred pictures of you on my phone, okay?" My words came out flustered; my face felt like it was on fire, and there was a voice in my head yelling at me to shut up, to not bring it up anymore, but the need to set the record straight was more insistent.

Seth looked amused. "I'm surprised you don't have more than that . . . "

"Wow. Full of yourself much?"

"I just meant, I probably have at least three times that many of you."

There were no comebacks from me this time, just a glare when he stopped talking.

Because he was delusional if he thought and he could spring something like that on me and not be expected to elaborate.

"You've been photobombing me since preschool," he said, laughing. "I should've known it goes both ways."

I decided I could live with that explanation and chuckled as well. When our laughter died down, Seth grabbed a book off the shelf and started leafing through it. A quick glance over his shoulder let me know that it was the same book I had been pretend-reading and almost crushed his foot with earlier.

I didn't even notice that he had taken it with him.

"You read some weird-ass books, you know that?" he said, sticking the judge's memoir haphazardly back in the shelf and pulled out a different hardcover, which he opened to a random page right in the middle.

"What are you guys doing here anyway?"

"Earlier at lunch you guys were talking about meeting here after school."

"Who invited you?"

"Real nice, Adrian," he said, closing the book he was reading to make a face at me.

"I just meant, " I said, flustering, "you guys have been busy and we never see you anymore. I didn't expect that you'd wanna come along."

"Yeah, we needed a break, so . . . " He made a ta-dah gesture with a flourish of his hand.

"Oh. Well, no one else has arrived yet," I said after checking my phone for messages.

"Yeah? And those two dumbasses are probably tied up right about now. Hah!" He sounded a little too gleeful saying the last part, which made me laugh as well. "Guess it's just us for now."

"I guess," I said, smiling back.

In spite of everything, it felt nice being able to hang with him in a familiar setting.  Except for being accosted by snotty middle-schoolers, it was beginning to feel like old times.

The two of us wandered aimlessly through the store. Once in a while, he'd examine some items like games and headphones and then he'd lose interest and dash off to another part of the store, leaving a glittery blue and grey blur in his wake. It was making me dizzy.

"Um, you should probably give that back now," I said, referring to my hoodie, which he still wore.

"Hold on, those girls could still come back." He backed away when I held out my hand, like I was gonna take it off him myself. "Besides, I'm starting to like it."

"You must be joking." I stared at him with one raised eyebrow. He had made such a big deal about not wanting to wear it just a few minutes ago.

"It's comfortable, you know?" he said, as if I didn't know what my own clothes felt like. He took a deep, exaggerated breath—just to irritate me, I was sure. "And it smells real good."