𝙷𝚎𝚢, 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚢𝚎𝚝.

𝙸𝚝'𝚜 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚒𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍, 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚏𝚎𝚎𝚕 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝 𝚘𝚞𝚝

𝙾𝚛 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝚍𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚘𝚗.

𝙹𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚛𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚋𝚎𝚜𝚝, 𝚝𝚛𝚢 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚗.

𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚟𝚎𝚜

𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞'𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢.

𝙸𝚝 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚜 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎.

𝙻𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚕𝚎 𝚐𝚒𝚛𝚕, 𝚢𝚘𝚞'𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚒𝚍𝚍𝚕𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚎.

𝙴𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚋𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚎.

𝙴𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚋𝚎 𝚊𝚕𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝, 𝚊𝚕𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝.

Come Monday she kept her eyes out for both Eddie and Argyle as she made her way through the halls.

She was walking with Steve, Jason, Rebecca, and Charlotte from the team. They were all talking about the game but Lennon was far too stressed about it to have shared anything fun she planned for the day to come. She stayed relevantly quiet the entire morning, keeping to her books and wondering if Rebecca, Greta, and Lauren had time to practice with her during their free period that day.

She managed to convince them all to join her after lunch, which she avoided altogether. She went into the bathroom on her own and wrote about all the things on her mind that would cause her consciousness to be anything but clear.

It's funny because she was too anxious to eat but the first thing she wrote about wasn't the game. It was about how stupid she was for avoiding Eddie.

I'm in the bathroom right now, hiding from a boy. How premature can I get? There are so many more important things going on right now and I choose to avoid the boy

She wrote about her anxieties about the game in two weeks. She wrote about the deal she made with Argyle. She wrote about what she did with Eddie over the weekend. She wrote about Billy. She wrote about her brother. She wrote about Steve. She wrote about everything she could think of and by the end of the period, her head was empty.

She would be repeating herself if she continued and once the bell rang, causing a rush of adrenaline to course through her veins, she was gone. She then practiced until the girls needed to be elsewhere and Lennon ran off. She didn't have any classes after lunch and so she went home.

She knew she could have stayed and looked for Eddie. The heavens knew she wanted to but she freaked herself out. She cared about this man so much that she was willing to ask a stranger for a favor to get him a silly present for the holidays; a holiday she didn't even know if he celebrated.

She was so recklessly falling for him but she hardly knew him...

She didn't have time to get to know him either because what she needed to focus on was getting through finals and the winter game.

So, she avoided him. She managed to avoid the cafeteria for the entire week, taking to the stalls to write.

Even though she cut out one time out of the day that she could rely on seeing Eddie, he still managed to find her in the halls.

Sometimes it was in between classes, sometimes it was before the first bell, sometimes he was being swept past by the freshmen he corralled. No matter what instance, his eyes always found her pressed against a locker or walking beside someone she had no interest in engaging in conversation with.

He had to admit, she was a good liar.

From the outside, he could have sworn she was happy. She was smiling and laughing and from the outside, she looked like she fit right in. Her hair was perfectly straight with only a few loose curls to interrupt the flow near the back and edges of her head. Her makeup was always perfectly opaque and he could sometimes catch her laugh through the auditorial traffic of the halls that sounded heavenly but fake to his cynical ears.

But he knew her better than Steve, Heather, even Nancy, and Jonathan. He knew parts of her that nobody else knew even existed. He knew she didn't care about the publicity the game would bring the school. He knew she didn't care about the boys on the team. He knew she was more concerned with doing her part than showing her body off to the team. He knew she was more concerned with finals than her plans for the weekend. He knew she was avoiding him but he didn't know why.

By Thursday, Eddie was determined to crack her.

He had a thousand ways of approaching her but he respected her more than he needed his fun so he made sure not to draw suspicion this time.

She had a class with Gareth, which was why he knew where to go during fourth period. He skipped out on Statistics and Probability and practically skipped through the halls as he snuck into Mr. Friedman's physics class.

People were flooding inside, allowing Eddie to ride the wave of people without being recognized by the teacher who was far too distracted by his handwriting on the chalkboard to notice which students were his and which weren't.

Lennon had her hand busy with a pen but Gareth noticed him immediately.

"Gare-Bear!" Eddie tilted his head and smirked mischievously, running to the back row of tables and angelically placing his hands on the edge of the desk.

Despite the soft chatter in the room that would be dismissed once the bell rang, Lennon stopped fidgeting with her drawing and widened her eyes in fear. She immediately looked up at the empty chair behind the desk in front of her and listened keenly.

She didn't dare turn toward the voice that sounded all too familiar but it was like it was the only voice she could hear in a room full of a dozen conversations.

"What the hell are you-"

"I missed you..."

"You saw me this morning." Gareth leered in disbelief.

"Shut up."

Then the voices got quiet and muffled but Lennon instantly knew who they belonged to.

Her eyes crept toward the pair off to the right of the room but she didn't dare look over her shoulder. She couldn't give Eddie the satisfaction. She couldn't let him know she recognized him so instantly.

She tried to listen to their hushed voices, grabbing for more information on what they were talking about without being seen eavesdropping. However, the harder she listened, the more she lost touch with reality. The harder she listened, the blurrier the rest of the world got.

She was listening so intently, trying to hear his voice again, doing everything but turn and look to see him that she didn't even notice the girl she sat next to was standing idly by the door. She didn't even acknowledge that she wasn't making her way toward Lennon at all before the bell rang and caused the skin around Lennon's skull to flare up with goosebumps so painful she ground her jaw.

When the clattering of bodies falling into chairs and lowered voices desperately trying to finish conversations followed the bell, Lennon cleared her throat and hid her shaking hands underneath the desk. As soon as her eyes went up to Mr. Friedman in the front of the room, thinking if she focused her attention on him that the man in the back of the room would seize to exist, there he was.

Once he was caught in her line of sight, there was no shaking him off.

She watched him grab the empty chair in front of her and briskly carried the chair to the desk she was sitting at. He didn't stop until he was sitting directly beside her, sandwiched in between with Gareth on the other side. That's when she realized the short blond was sitting beside her and not the quiet girl she saw walking with Barbra on occasion.

Mr. Friedman began talking about the lesson for the day and didn't turn to see who was in his room until he was halfway through a thought and making his way towards the door to close it.

"Today's review is on quantum and classical mechanics so for those of you who have actually studied, the rest of the year should be relevantly easy for you. As for those who widdle shiv's out of my pencils... Keith..."

Mr. Friedman turned and leered at the boy who was sitting closest to the door and earned himself a round of giggles from different corners of the room. However, Lennon was not one of them that laughed. She was far too terrorized by the fact Eddie Munson was sitting next to her in a class he didn't have on his schedule.

"I think you will find it far harder than it needs to be," Mr. Friedman continued, closing the door and walking up to the chalkboard again but with his backside against it rather than toward his classroom. "Atomic and subatomic phenomena- Eddie," Mr. Friedman groaned and Lennon could physically see the man's shoulders slump when he noticed the shaggy-headed metal head sitting in between her and Gareth. "What are you doing?"

"I'm waiting for a lecture on quantum mechanics," Eddie stifled a giggle, jibbing at the teacher he knew only passed him the year before last so he wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.

"Get to class," he craned his head toward the door but all Eddie did was smile in response.

"I am."

"Your class," he shook his head in disapproval. "I had you for two years straight, Eddie. I don't want you for a third," Mr. Friedman spoke solemnly but there was a sense of humor in his words that made them seem less offensive.

"Ouch," Eddie whined, slamming his hand against his heart, something Lennon was picking up to be something he did often when someone offended him; playfully or not, he still acted ailed. "You know you miss me," he leaned forward, causing a whiff of stale cologne to invade Lennon's sense of smell.

"You can distract anyone you want outside this classroom, Eddie, but I can't have you sitting with your friends if all you're gonna do is deflect-"

"I'm not a deflecting! Look!" he pulled an imaginary zipper over his lips and lifted his hands in surrender.

People were all looking at Eddie and because of who he sat beside, they were all staring at Lennon who was using all the self-control she had not to turn and look at the mischievous brunet beside her.

Mr. Friedman sighed and stared at Eddie in contemplation. The longer he stared in silence the wider Eddie's smile got. Watching the teacher determine how to progress caused Lennon to turn and see the look of pure amusement on Eddie's face as he was convincing him to let him stay.

"If I hear a word out of your mouth I'm sending you straight to the office," Mr. Friedman spoke quickly.

Eddie, playfully not risking his seat in class, stuck up his thumb and smiled sarcastically so as not to use his voice.

Mr. Friedman rolled his eyes and sighed, turning toward the chalkboard and underlining the terms he was discussing before Eddie interrupted him.

However, it didn't matter that class was in session or that students were now looking ahead rather than at the older man sitting in between his best friend and the girl he couldn't get off his mind, Lennon couldn't stop staring in question.

Under such close, brightly-lit inspection, she could make out the individual hairs on his head and how they blended in a vivid mess of browns, reds, and golds. She could see the soft pores on his straight-bridged nose and the crease that ran from the corner of his nose to the curl of his lip even after his smile began to soften.

Pale freckles were kissing his nose and cheekbones, obviously aged from years of staying inside. There were faint marks on his bottom lip from where his teeth must have been locked recently. His eyes were moving in intervals, slowly making their way to hers until she was forced to look away.

She was picking at her cuticles under the desk to distract herself but it didn't matter. No amount of teaching from the front of the room or fidgeting could take her mind off the fact she was sitting beside the one person she was practically forbidden from being close to.

She tried to listen to Mr. Firedman prepare his class for the final but she couldn't even hear anything. Her head was too full of noise to hear anything he had to say. Her eyes kept faltering to the paper she was doodling on and from there, they would slowly find their way to the leather-covered elbows pressed to the desk she shared.

She looked up from her bouncing leg and trembling hands and found Eddie staring down at the drawing she did of an album cover that particularly interested Lennon the last time she was over at his house. She hadn't realized that was where she was drawing it from memory but when her eyes followed Eddie's the memory scared her and to have Eddie study it right under her nose was far too embarrassing to comprehend.

She swallowed uncomfortably and quickly took the paper and crumpled it in her palm without a second glance. The sound alerted Mr. Friedman and that's when he stopped reviewing and called out to them.

"Eddie."

Lennon and Eddie both looked up at the front of the room. One with wide, nervous eyes like a deer caught in headlines, and another with attentive, half-lidded ones that projected his leisure.

"What'd I say?" he warned in a tone only a teacher who had been teaching for several years could have collected from reprimanding so many students in their lifetime.

"I haven't done anything," Eddie defended theatrically, lifting his hands and widening his eyes with surprise.

"Leave Miss Seagrave alone. Staring is still distracting," he informed Eddie as if he didn't already know that.

"I'm just trying to indulge in as much extracurricular as I can get during my free period, Mr. Friedman," Eddie spoke slowly and sarcastically. "You're wasting precious minutes accusing me of being a distraction. Please, continue," he furrowed his brows and locked his fingers together over the top of the desk.

The teacher didn't appreciate his tone but he was right. He only had an hour with these students and several modules to review so he didn't bother to continue talking to Eddie.

As his attention was directed towards moving on to the next concept, Eddie hummed humorously and turned to Gareth.

Lennon's eyes went to them but she could only see Gareth's eyes watching Eddie's as if they could communicate telepathically. Gareth smiled and moved for something in the backpack resting on the floor. He pulled out a piece of paper and looked up at Mr. Friedman to make sure he wasn't suspiciously leering at the three of them before scribbling something down on the notebook paper.

Lennon watched as Gareth folded the top of the paper on top of his writing, only enough to cover the ink before sliding it over to Eddie. Curiously, Lennon was watching the exchange until Eddie's eyes flicked to hers and pushed them back to the teacher in the front of the room.

She adverted her gaze and was unable to see what they were writing but the paper was passed between them four times before it was slowly slid over her open composition book full of notes for the class.

Lennon turned in question but Eddie wasn't even looking when he blocked her view with the piece of paper. He was acting as if he had no control of his body and his attention was on Mr. Friedman the entire time but Lennon knew better. He knew what he was doing.

She looked up to see Mr. Friedman's attention on a drawing he made of the mechanics he was talking about and she took the time to open the paper to reveal Eddie's messy scrawl.

Anthrax fan?

It was an odd note considering she didn't know what he was talking about. She stared at the words in question for a few minutes before realizing what Anthrax was and that it must have been the cover she was drawing from before.

No.

She scribbled her response quickly and did as Eddie and Gareth did and folded the paper over her response before sliding it back to Eddie.

She didn't look, but she could feel a shift beside her and she could feel his body heat distribution change as he moved in his seat.

Well, you seem to like it at the Hideout and they must have meant something to you if you're drawing their album covers.

The Hideout... It felt like a lifetime ago. But she remembered it so clearly. She could still smell the beer and the sharp smell of unripe alcohol from that night. However, what stood out to her was the performance Eddie put on that night.

She had to admit, she never felt more electrified in her life that the moment she could hear and feel the reverberations of Eddie's guitar mixed with the drums and bass and vocals they all added to the song.

She sighed and thought about a response. There were quite literally a hundred things she wanted to tell him and write back but she couldn't. Instead, she read over his words again and again in her head until she folded the paper and pushed it to the edge of the desk above her notebook.

Eddie knew she didn't write anything back.

That was fair. He hadn't asked a question and therefore he supposed there was nothing to be answered. However, there were other ways of getting her to talk.

You're avoiding me.

She stared at the new note and felt her belly tighten with nerves.

He wasn't wrong but how she was supposed to admit it? She took another minute just staring at the note, then staring at Mr. Friedman's chalkboard, then back down at the note in contemplation.

You're ignoring me...

Once she read over the words in her head, she immediately took the paper and slid it in between two pages of her notebook. It sounded like she was reaching. It sounded playful and she wasn't supposed to fall for Eddie's traps. Instead, she wrote in her notebook.

Eddie noticed it whether she liked it or not and he also noticed how she kept her knuckles folded over the edges of the left side of the notebook to keep him from seeing the paper. She centered the right side of the paper between him and her but she didn't let go of the left side in case Eddie tried looking for the note she hid between the pages.

I'm busy. I'm not avoiding you.

His eyes immediately ran toward her face to see if she had any emotional response to add to her comment but she was good at hiding. She was good at pretending.

Okay. Sit with us at lunch after class.

Lennon could feel her chest constrict when she read his response.

I have practice.

You've had practice all week.

I'm busy. The game is in two weeks.

You still need to eat.

It was tender. He wrote it with care. Slow, calculated flicks of the pen let her know he wrote it with sincere care and the pushing was driving her nuts. Having to keep pushing him away was getting harder and harder to do.

Maybe another time.

She wrote quickly and the bell rang just as she finished so she ripped the page out and left it on the desk before hurrying out the door.

She shoved everything into her locker and started toward the gym for yet another session with the girls to distract her from the thoughts about Eddie. But it was like it didn't matter how hard she fought.

The harder she fought, the more she pushed, and the more the thoughts pestered her. He became a fungus on her mind, swelling and growing every time she tried not to think about him. The whole point of practicing with the girls was to ease her nervous thoughts about the game but she was more concerned with getting rid of the thoughts about Eddie now. Avoiding him, trying to forget about how nice it felt to be so close to him that day he came over... It became a juggling act.

She fought for the things she needed but fighting for so long was bound to break her at some point. Soon enough, she wouldn't be able to keep it up and her actions would begin to contradict the things she needed to do.

She couldn't avoid him forever.

She didn't want to...