Feeling what way? How has he been feeling?
My heart pounded in my chest, full of eagerness and wonder. Whatever he was talking about with her, wasn’t good. I knew that much. His voice was, for lack of a better word, monotonous.
He sounded like our old U.S. History teacher in high school—the man was, like, 75 years old; I literally had no idea how he was still teaching us back then.
Mr… Mr. Peters was his name. He was no taller than I was right now (5’4”), and he wore the blandest looking cardigans over his checkered dress shirts every day. His glasses sat perched on the end of his nose and he always carried a briefcase with him.
Do you want to know what was in his briefcase? A crossword puzzle.
That was it.
That’s all Mr. Peters carried in his overly expensive briefcase.
“What are you doing?”
“Aagh!” I yelled, jumping so high I could have beaten the Olympic high-jump standing record.
“Goodness!” I yelled again, placing my hand over my heart and feeling its rapid beat against my ribcage. “You scared me!”
Dawson’s dark brow rose upward while his mouth twitched.
“What were you doing?”
He knows.
I stuttered. “Nothing. Just thinking about Mr. Peters.”
“Thinking about Mr. Peters? The history teacher?”
“Yep!” My voice was in full-on cheerleader mode: high-pitched and ridiculously annoying.
Dawson laughed but eyed me with utter cynicism. I didn’t give him a chance to ask me what I was doing again, and I technically hadn’t lied to him. I truly was thinking about Mr. Peters!
Skipping downstairs, suddenly feeling super awkward that I was in a house that I wasn’t really comfortable in, I paused at the entry way to the living room.
I turned around slowly, watching Dawson walk down the stairs as graceful as an angel, his breathing not labored at all, unlike mine.
“So, how much did you hear?”
I sucked in my bottom lip as he descended the final stair.
“Just bits and pieces. I didn’t mean to pry.” Yes, I did.
My ears quickly felt hot and I almost reached up to cover them, but instead I clasped my hands behind my back.
“You’re lying,” he grinned.
“How can you tell?” I pried.
He smiled wider, showing his heart-stopping smile. “Your nose does this little twitch thing when you lie. Well, it did back when you were younger and trying to hide something from me,” he paused, flicking his eyes from my nose to my eyes. “And it just twitched.”
My hand flew up and I grabbed my small nose.
“Whatever,” I mumbled.
He laughed. “You’re cute, Ivy.”
My heart hiccupped and at the same time a rush of heat covered my body. Thank goodness I was semi-tan, or else he would have seen just how much those words had affected me.