And that’s when it clicks. Shara still thinks she gets whatever she wants whenever she decides she wants it. She thinks, because she got a makeover and stopped denying her crush, Chloe’s going to fall into her lap. As if Chloe is going to be like everyone else Shara’s ever met and make it easy.
She still has something on Shara: herself. She can make Shara chase her. She can be smart about it—let her think she might have a chance and then give her the first bottom-of-the-heart rejection of her entire charmed life. Chloe’s spent four years trying to keep one thing out of Shara’s hands. Now she can be that.
Really, Shara’s original plan to break Chloe’s heart wasn’t a bad one. Shame to let it go to waste.
She gives Shara a small, tight smile and slides into her seat.
* * *
Chloe’s plan for the rest of finals week is simple: One, make herself available to Shara. Two, do things that she knows Shara will be into based on past behavior. Nothing that would count as actual pursuit, but like, horny little traps. Three, lay it on so thick that Shara has to try something. Four, rejection, gratification, glory.
Shara pretty much does step one for her. The next few days, she seems to have suddenly developed a habit of being everywhere Chloe is. Chloe goes to ask her calc teacher a question, and Shara is waiting outside the classroom. Chloe unlocks her car, and Shara is two parking spaces over, pretending to be interested in Ace’s tire pressure. Chloe hovers at the edge of the courtyard, watching her friends share a carton of Sonic tots and wondering if Ash ever finished their portfolio, and suddenly Shara is perched on the nearest flowerbox with her color-coded binder of study guides.
Chloe can only imagine Shara’s strategy is similar. She’s making herself available to Chloe, under the mistaken impression that Chloe hasn’t yet fainted into her arms simply due to lack of opportunity.
She can use this.
When she stops at her locker for an emergency coffee, there Shara is, leaning against the next locker, trying to open a granola bar.
The choppy pink hair does look unfairly good on her. Against her defined features and her long lashes, it makes her look like a comic book character.
“How do you think you did on the calc exam?” Shara asks.
“Oh, you know,” Chloe says. She swallows a mouthful, then holds Shara’s gaze as she innocently swipes the side of her thumb across her bottom lip, the way she would if she were a girl in one of Georgia’s Regency novels. Shara’s fingers go stiff around the wrapper. “Pretty well. Implicit derivatives are actually pretty easy once you get the hang of them.”
“No,” Shara disagrees, staring at her mouth, “they’re not.”
“Hm. Maybe it’s just me, then,” Chloe says. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“The exam,” Chloe says. “How do you think you did?”
“Oh. Fine.”
“Better than me?” Chloe asks.
One corner of Shara’s mouth tucks in. “Maybe.”
“Wanna make a bet?” Chloe says.
“What would I win?”
“You tell me,” Chloe says. “I’m sure you could come up with something of mine that you want.”
Shara finally succeeds in ripping her granola bar open.
“Yeah,” Shara says in an explosion of granola crumbs, “probably.”
And then she storms off.
That’s new. Not the running away part—that’s Shara’s thing—but the indignant way she looked at Chloe before she did it, like Chloe had betrayed her, somehow. Like Chloe’s done a crime to her, and the crime is “not taking her top off.”
“Oh,” she realizes out loud, “that’s fun.”
The next day, Chloe is punching in the number for a Three Musketeers and Shara’s reflection materializes next to hers in the vending machine glass.
“Are you growing your bangs out?” Shara asks. “They look different.”
Chloe sucks in a breath and turns to face her, relaxing her mouth into a soft smirk.
“I’ve been thinking about it, actually,” Chloe says. “I kind of want to grow it all out so I can put it up if I need to. You know how you need to put your hair up sometimes?”
“Uh-huh,” Shara says.
“Do you think I’d look good with long hair?” Chloe asks.
“I—” Shara begins. Her lip curls, and Chloe tamps down a laugh. “Sure. If you want.”
Shara huffs and leaves again.
That afternoon, in front of the mirrors in the girls’ bathroom, Chloe leans over the sink to fix the tip of her eyeliner wing while Shara perches on the next one.