I watched her leave, then my eyes slowly trailed back to Taylor, who came marching up to me. I looked around nervously for anyone else in the hallway, but as far as we knew, we were alone.
She aimed her gaze squarely at me. “One. Simple. Request,” she barked. “Don’t talk to Morgan. Was that so fucking hard?! Jesus fucking Christ, you’re so exhausting,” she gushed angrily, practically every word accompanied by some sort of vague angry gesture.
“Wha- what’s…” I started.
“For fuck’s sake, you never even liked Morgan,” she continued, pacing up and down the hallway. “You don’t even like drama. So why, like, start up all this bullshit?!”
“I never said I don’t like Morgan!” I fired back, now getting invested.
“Yes you did!” she argued. “You said it plain as day. It’s why I asked you to not talk to her in the first place!”
“Taylor, you’re the one that insisted I don’t even like her. You asked me if I don’t, implying the answer was yes, and I never answered.”
“Implyi- wha? Quinn, speak fucking English. This isn’t debate club.”
“I never said I didn’t like Morgan. You made it up.”
Taylor mock-laughed. “So what, you always liked her? This was all a ploy to get at my friend? Is that what you’re fucking saying, Quinn?!”
“Taylor, what’s all this about?” I asked exasperatedly. “Does this have something to do with you and me? Is that why you two were fighting?”
Taylor shook her head at me in anger. “You don’t even get it, huh?”
“I swear I never seemed to get anything since I started tutoring you.”
“I just — like, why would you talk to her? I made it clear that it would be a bad idea.”
“But it was only a bad idea because you got mad when we did!” I protested, then something hit me. “Taylor… are you jealous?”
“No,” she asserted confidently. “It’s not about that. I have a boyfriend.”
Well, at least now she was acknowledging his existence around me. That was progress. “Then what’s it about?” I asked.
Taylor stared at me a bit, anger still in her eyes but visibly cooled down. I hated to admit it, but she still looked cute as fuck when she pouted like that. “We’re studying tonight,” she told me flatly.
“Are we?” I asked. “What if-”
“You’re free tonight, Quinn. Don’t play games,” she told me in this low voice. It was like a new voice for her. “You told me yourself you don’t do other things, and I, like, know you don’t have a date tonight.”
Ouch. That one stung. I said nothing, staring at her.
“We’re hanging out tonight, Quinn. My place. Bring your data management book. Say yes.”
I said nothing for a bit, trying to stare her down. She met my gaze evenly, and took a single step towards me.
“Yes,” I conceded embarrassingly immediately. She was scary.
Without smiling or anything, she nodded and left, not saying another word. I was left there, alone in the hallway, remembering my promise to Milo maybe a full minute after she left. I brought my phone up to my hands and opened a text message to Milo, and… stared at the screen. What the hell was I going to tell him? I was no closer to the truth.
It wasn’t like I had much face to lose with him if he found out I met them and learned nothing, and I doubt he would have believed me if I told him I found them and ended up more confused. I put my phone back in my pocket, and wandered off towards my next class.
***
I would have thought Taylor would lose her smoulder by the time the end of the day came, but if anything, it was more apparent. She gave this half-smile to me when we first got settled in the basement, but apart from that, she had a darkened expression the whole time. And, most scarily, she was intensely focused on studying.
“What’s the holdup?” she barked as I flipped through the pages. “Did I finish percentages or didn’t I?”
“You did, you did, I’m just trying to figure out which unit came next,” I replied diplomatically. This was new for me, but I wanted to defuse the situation as best as I could. She clearly had a rough day and the last thing she needed was for me to be impatient with her, I guess.
When I had found the page, she was angrily texting someone on her phone. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered to herself. “Fuck off and die.”
“Friend of yours?” I inquired dryly.
“Some fucking boys are so inconsiderate,” she replied bitterly. “Y’know, my dad’s a black belt. Karate. I could, like, stick him on people.”
I shrugged. “That is the white dad stereotype,” I replied. I hunched over and mimed holding a shotgun. “If yew ever come near mah daughter…” I continued in a terrible Southern accent.
That was the closest I came to seeing a genuine smile from Taylor the whole night. She composed herself. “Anyway, like, some guys are just…”
“Is it Joel?”
“No, but he’s being a jerk too,” she commented. “What’s the next unit?”
“You seem to have a lot of things going on,” I pressed her. “Would you like to talk ab-”
“What’s the next unit, Quinn?”
I sighed, looking at her for long enough for her to return my gaze before answering her. She looked at me for a brief moment before, amazingly, looking down at the floor. That was good enough for me and my eyes returned to the book, ready to resume studying.
We kept it up for the next hour or so, taking only a short break along the way. Taylor was clearly preoccupied on her phone, so much so that she kept asking “when I thought we’d be done,” but at least in the last twenty minutes or so, seemed focused on the task at hand, so much so that we beat my projected finish time by at least fifteen minutes.
Taylor closed her book, smiling for the first time that night; a satisfied smirk. “I’m, like, gonna ace this,” she mumbled to herself.
“Here’s hoping,” I replied. “So, are we going to address today?”
“Huh?”
“What you said to me in the hallway. Your not-jealousy over Morgan and me.”
Her expression soured. “Boy, you can’t just, like, let that go, huh? She must mean a lot to you. When were you going to tell me you went on a date with her of all people?”
“I…” I sighed. “I probably should have told you when it first happened, but even by then you forbade us from talking. We met outside school by chance, and we found out about her crush by chance too. Kind of.”
“Quinn, you moron…” Taylor commented, shaking her head. “It wasn’t by chance. It wasn’t, like, an accident.”
“Well, even if it wasn’t, so what? We should be allowed to talk. We shouldn’t be forbidden from doing it.”
“It makes everything complicated, Quinn. You said you hated drama, so I was trying to help you.”
“Wait, you were trying to help me by forbidding me from talking to someone that was developing feelings for me, all because some drama could develop? Drama that you caused?” I asked, anger flaring in my eyes.
The same anger flared in hers, accompanied by the beginning of something welling up in her eyes. “Quinn…” she began in a quieter voice than usual. “…am I not allowed to dislike things?”
“Huh?” The question took me aback.
“Am I, like, allowed to see things coming, feel… feel threatened, and just use what I have to try to keep things okay?”
“So what, you thought if I liked Morgan, we wouldn’t be able to keep studying? Or keep ‘studying?'” I used my hands for air-quotes with the last word, displaying a joking smile.