He’s pretty grouchy for someone who just set a school record.

I’m about to call him out for being a jerk, but James does it for me.

“Watch your mouth, Archer,” James says almost lazily as he nabs the sweatshirt from my hands.

Dylan rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t back away from us.

I think he’s waiting to see how I’m going to react to the tension between them. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.

Like a coward, I keep my mouth shut and let James lean on me so he can step into his sweats. He leaves his arm possessively around my shoulders when he’s finished and speaks to me directly.

“My parents want to take us out to dinner after the meet,” James says.

“I was wondering why they didn’t show,” I admit. “I looked for them in the stands.”

“They had to work late tonight and wanted to make it up with Mexican food.”

It’s a typical move by James’s parents, trying to butter him up when they’re feeling guilty. Although James has admitted to me at least one dozen times that he doesn't mind it when it’s just me in the stands, they don’t know that.

“I do love guacamole,” Dylan says, earning a glare from James. “But Reed and I have plans.”

James looks at me in disbelief, even more so when I confirm it.

“AP English stuff,” I say before I turn to Dylan. “I’ll meet you at the car, okay? It’s the—”

“I know which one it is.”

James grips my shoulder like he doesn’t want to let me go.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell him as I remove his hand and head toward the parking lot. “Tell your parents I said hello.”

“Harper,” James calls as I’m walking away. “Be careful, okay?”

Dylan laughs. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Lawson. We’re doing an English assignment, not fooling around in her backseat.”

James shoves him before he storms off.

I immediately pull out my phone to text Dylan.

Was that really necessary?

The text is unreturned, of course. He’s probably in the showers or getting cool down instructions from one of his coaches.

I wish I had my usual from Marie to help warm me up, but I decide to expend the gas from my car to heat up the interior while I replay my conversation with Brandon over in my head.

I can’t help but wonder if he had some ulterior motive for joining the yearbook staff—and for sitting next to me today—but all the reasons I come up with are embarrassingly self indulgent.

Dylan knocks on my window, pulling me from my psychoanalyzing.

“Yes, Reed, it was necessary,” he says after he slides into the passenger’s seat. “You two making googly eyes at each other is exhausting.”

I can’t help but chuckle. “Did you just say ‘googly eyes’ out loud?”

He glares at me.

“I don’t think it had anything to do with me, really,” I tell him.

“It had everything to do with you,” Dylan insists, voice low.

I freeze.

A horrible new rationalization surfaces in my mind.

This whole thing is a setup. It’s some scheme to get close to me. To mess with my mind and do some mind trick to get me to turn against James or divulge sensitive information in order to screw him over.

I mean, within a day of this agreement, I readily offered up James’s dream college. What if Dylan’s father has a friend in admissions over there? It’s not a stretch by any means because of his position on the school board. Surely he has a big network in academia.

“Dylan, I need you to be completely honest with me,” I say slowly. “Are you specifically asking for my help just to annoy James? Is this some sort of mind game or way to get one over on him? I mean, there are so many other students in our class with less of a conflict and more patience, but you specifically sought me out. Why?”

He sinks back in the seat, as if it’s his only comfort at this moment, and sighs. “You’re such a contradiction, Reed, and it’s stressing me out.”

I balk. “What? Me? Stressing you out? That’s ridiculous.”

“How can someone with so much brains and determination be this shattered all the time?” Dylan asks, verbally throwing his arms up into the air. “It has to be exhausting to walk around with your heart open and your ego ready to get wounded.”

I chew on my bottom lip. As much as I want to keep up the fortress of not letting him get to me, this truth does.

“It is pretty exhausting,” I admit.

My own honesty is surprising and a little involuntary.

Dylan actually looks a little impressed at my candor, but the words settle between us unanswered.

I clear my throat and pivot the conversation away from me. “Do you have the packet from the short story unit?”

He digs in his bag and hands it over almost immediately.

I flip through it. “This is half finished, Dylan...and half-assed.”

He shrugs in response, which irritates me to my core.

“Is it a reading comprehension issue or a laziness one?” I ask. “Are you purposely trying not to do this?”

“I told you I wouldn’t make you do the work,” he says.

I sigh. “Okay, let’s start with the first question on the T.S. Eliot poem.”

To get into damage repair mode, I pull back my hair, eliciting a gasp from Dylan.

“What?” I look in the rearview mirror to make sure I didn’t draw on my face with my pen or do something that warranted that reaction.

“Reed, are those earrings regulation?”

He’s mocking me.

Of course.

I roll my eyes. “Does your father make you recite the dress code every night before dinner or something?”

“Only on Tuesdays,” he deadpans before he admits the truth. “I’ve heard enough girls complaining about it to know that those are not permitted. Harper Reed breaking the rules. Wow. Never thought I’d see the day.”

I slip them from my ears and drop them in the center console. “Happy now?” I ask.

“Not particularly,” Dylan says.

“Not my problem,” I tell him.

We spend the next half hour going through every question in the packet.

Once we get in a groove, it’s easy, almost too easy. Dylan argues with me over the answers, claiming that multiple choice questions are too deceiving. We banter back and forth about the most direct answers to the short answer sections.

“If we stick to this schedule of doing one or two of the makeup assignments a day on top of the regular assignments, you should be caught up right around spring break. Have you already read the first five chapters of Brave New World for this week?”

“Sure,” he says, but it’s clear that he stopped listening to me a while ago.

I smack his arm, and he refocuses on me.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Mostly.”

For someone who asked for my help, he seems generally unmotivated to actually accept it.

“What is your deal, Archer?” I ask him. “I’ve got all of this stuff and stress piled up on my plate, trying to plan for a future, and I’m dragging you along with this as best I can, but you seem unbothered by everything that doesn’t involve simply doing the bare minimum.”