Between these lunchtime visits, Music Appreciation, and the occasional conversation after English—always ostensibly so he could ask a question about an assignment or something until his friends left the classroom—it was getting easier to adjust to the idea of going at his pace. I didn’t have the energy to resist his endless olive branches. Even if they resembled olive twigs more than branches, sometimes. Plus, it felt so much better to let him melt me than to fight to stay frozen.
Despite our fragile truce, though, a part of me wanted to at least clarify if we were supposed to be totally platonic now, to address the elephant—and ringmaster—and whole freaking circus—in the room, but I was too self-conscious to bring it up without an opening. Like, what if he said I imagined everything at t
