Page 83 of A Scandal in Homeroom
Wagging my finger, I told him, “No, no, no. Someone once told me to always leave them wanting more.”
“Well, that person was a bloody idiot,” he muttered.
Laughing, I nearly skipped the rest of the way home, I felt so free and safe.
And normal. Utterly normal. I wasn’t a whore, or tease or anything else.
I was just Locke’s girlfriend.
19
The Cafeteria
Monday
Locke
“So it’s official? You two are a thing?”
Ed was asking the question. We were seated in what, I was told, was Fitz’s area. Fitz was in line getting his lunch, having already eaten, in seconds, whatever had been packed for him. The girls had yet to arrive, and I was staring down the barrel of a fairly pathetic hamburger.
“Athing?” I repeated.
“You know. A couple,” Ed said, as if I was thick in the skull.
“Is that something someone has to make official? Is there paperwork to fill out? A general assembly announcement that has to be made?”
“Asshole,” he muttered.
“Sorry,” I said, and I actually meant it. “This is my first…I’ve never had a…”
“Girlfriend,” Ed supplied. “We call themgirlfriendshere in the States.”
“Yes. Well, anyway, Irene would be my first.”
“You picked a hellava doozy for the first.”
“Unlike your first?”
Instantly, Ed’s face changed. “You don’t know a fucking thing about it.”
I tilted my head in concession. I didn’t know about him and Bee. Or what had happened, really. Only the rumors that were in constant circulation around him. They’d had sex. She’d become obsessive. There had been a suicide attempt.
But I did know something. “Why can’t you just break up with her? When you know you really want to be with—”
“Hey, guys,” Beth announced, coming up behind me. Irene and Janie flanked her.
She set her tray down and sat next to Ed while Irene made the journey around the table so she could sit next to me. As my girlfriend.
It was utterly gross how much I enjoyed that.
“I’m not going to become pathetic,” I muttered to her.
“What?”
“I’m not going to be some pathetic sop who insists you sit next to him at the lunch table.”
“So, you don’t want me to sit next to you?”
