Antonio: Nipple?
She smiled at his message and nodded.
Cara: On a double word score. Beat that.
"Is that Jalen?"
Cara's head shot up at Adam's voice so fast that her phone fumbled in her hands and almost crashed to the ground. "Uh, no…"
Chelsea opened her eyes at the sound but kept her head down against Adam's shoulder. "Then who's making you smile like that?"
Cara schooled her face into what she hoped was a nonchalant expression. "Just some guy I met."
Shereallyhoped that sounded believable.
"Won't Jalen be upset?" Adam asked.
Cara shrugged and searched for words, but any response she might have planned died when a notification dinged on the Scrabble game. She looked down and almost snorted.
He played the word SEX.
She wasn't sure what she was more gleeful about—that he seemed comfortable being inappropriate with her or the egregious misuse of the letter X.
She chanced a glance at Antonio, but he was staring out the window, perfectly composed, not giving a single shred of evidence that he was the one on the other end of her conversation.
He wasn't as good as her at Scrabble, but he wasmuchbetter at sneaking around.
Was that a red flag?
She shook off the thought. "I'm not sure about Jalen right now," she replied to Adam, and noticed a slight flicker from Antonio's direction.
"Oh," Chelsea said, sitting up. "Adam said you looked like you were having fun on your date."
She nodded. "It was okay, but I don't know if he'sthe one," she said as she assessed the game board and thought about her next move.
"What does your heart tell you?" Chelsea asked.
Max opened one eye. "What does your head tell you?"
Before Cara could roll her eyes at him, Natalie snorted. "What does your vagina tell you?"
Max winced and closed his eyes as the rest of them snickered.
Cara smiled and shrugged. These were good questions. What was her heart and head and vagina telling her?
She knew her heart wasn't in it at all. That one was easy. Her head was still on the fence. But her vagina? It knew exactly what it wanted. And he was sitting across from her on that bus, pretending not to care about the conversation.
She smiled as her brain connected the dots between the letters and game board and played U, A, and L on the end of his SEX to score off him.
"Maybe the guy you're talking to is a better fit," Adam said. "You won't stop smiling."
She tried to wipe the smile off her face, but it became impossible when Antonio had added I, T, and Y to their word.
"Yeah," she said, feeling bold, but still not bold enough to look at Antonio. "He probably is."
She gave it a second before looking around the bus to see if anyone was looking at her. When the coast was clear, she glanced in Antonio's direction. And found him staring at her.
She wished she knew what he thought of the conversation.