Page 20 of Quarantine Crush
“Do you guys remember that show, Victorious?” I ask.
All three friends wear identical masks of confusion.
“Um, sure. It was the tits. Are you sad because you didn’t wind up married to Avan Jogia? Because I gotta admit I’m a little salty about that myself,” Hadley jokes.
“Definitely,” I say with a wobbly laugh. “That’s not what I’m talking about though. Knox and I just found out that we’re going to be stuck together because of this damn lockdown. Thanks for giving me a heads-up about the Shelter-in-Place Order, by the way, heifers,” I growl as I wrestle my favorite black lace bustier into place.
“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Nina says. “You guys are going to the lake house today anyway, right?”
I shake my head as I search for my favorite cold shoulder sweater. “No. Our families want us to stay here because his gram is with them, and we’ve been traipsing around New York for the last two days, not to mention Knox’s international trip to get here. Lord knows what kind of germs we’ve exposed ourselves to.”
“So, what are you going to do?” Nina asks.
“We’re staying here at my place for at least fourteen days.” I bite back the groan that rises.
“So, that’s a good thing, right?” Taylor says, hopefully. “You have a couple more weeks where it’s just the two of you.”
“No. It’s not a good thing because the last two days have been nothing short of hell. He was so freaked out by my kiss that I had to pretend that it was a joke,” I hiss before pulling on my sweater.
“Oh, honey,” Nina says.
“That’s not even the worst part. Both of us have been acting like complete psychos around each other since then, so I decided to offer him an olive branch. I apologized and asked him to pretend like it never happened so we could make it through this damn quarantine.”
“So, what happened?” Hadley asks. “Did he say no? Because so help me...I will sneak over there in the dead of the night and kick him right in his gospel pipe. Quarantine or not.”
I snort around the hair tie I’m holding between my teeth. “No,” I say, once I’ve wrangled my long hair into a messy bun. “It’s not him. It’s me. We agreed to pretend it never happened and try to act normal around each other.”
Nina frowns, using the camera to reapply her bright, red lipstick. “So then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that as I was leaving the room, he called me theTori to his Andre.”
“Ouch,” Taylor says, scooping up her puppy, Henry, and snuggling him. “That’s brutal.”
“Right?” I ask. “I know that shouldn’t have been the thing to break me, but you guys get why it did. Tori and Andre were never together on the show, but man, did I ship them hard.”
“Hell, everyone did,” Hadley says, her brown eyes sad. “There’s entire Wiki pages dedicated to them and their relationship that never was. Everyone was rooting for them.”
“I should have known I was a Tori,” I say with a sigh.
A knock sounds on my bedroom door.
“Emy, you okay in there?” Knox’s muffled voice calls.
“Shit,” I mutter. “Almost done! Be right out,” I call back.
I turn my attention back to my screen. “Gotta go. Love you, bitches.”
I end the call, slipping out of the closet and checking my face in the vanity. My eyes are a little red, and my makeup is smeared, so I grab a wipe and clean myself up as quickly as possible. I swipe on a fresh coat of mascara and some lip gloss then head out. If I’m going to be friend-zoned for the rest of my life, I plan to look damn good doing it.
7
Knox
Since we’re stocking up for two weeks, we decide to skip the bodega around the corner from Emy’s apartment in favor of a bigger box store. On the Uber ride over, Emy and I are both immersed in our phones, and I can feel a pit growing in my stomach as I finally scroll through the news I’ve missed since arriving. This shit is bad. I’d known it was a growing problem, thanks to the travel precautions I noted on my flight here. Somehow, in a few days’ time, it’s gone from a possible outbreak to a global fucking pandemic.
And I didn’t even notice.
I’d been too busy navigating the awkwardness between Emy and me.
