Devin was straightening out his sleeping bag when Trechial stomped into the room with an air of annoyance. He could care less about her attitude that he was there because all he cared about was her safety.

She walked past him, and a cocoa butter trailed behind her. Her favorite nightshirt had grown snug around her since the last time he'd seen her in it, and the purple pajama pants hugged her thighs and butt.

Maybe this was a bad idea, he thought. But they weren't kids anymore now he was very aware of her as a girl.

He cleared his throat and continued to smooth out the sleeping bag, watching her out of his peripherals. She climbed in bed, throwing the covers on her, and turned her back to him.

He sighed, his own irritation growing with her moodiness. "Can I have a pillow?" He lay on his back, propping his head up beneath his arm.

He waited for her to answer. Nothing.

"Are you that mad that I am here, Mini?"

"Why are you here?"

"You know why I'm here."

"You have a girlfriend you should be with instead, Devin. I'll be fine. Charlie will probably stay out with his sister tonight."

He turned on his side, resting his head in his palm. "What does Candice have to do with me protecting you?"

"You––" she started, but he got up to sit next to her on the edge of the bed.

A sense to be near her overcame him, swallowed him up, suffocated him.

She stared at the wall, her pretty face slouching with genuine annoyance. He chewed on his bottom lip, racking his brain for answers as to what he may have done to make her angry.

She inhaled. "I'm dating Jared."

Her words cut right through him and all he could think to say was: "Why?"

She peered over her shoulder at him, her eyes dark with fury. "What do you mean why? Am I not good enough to date anyone? Am I not pretty enough, Devin Liao?"

"What? That's not what I meant, and you know it."

Trechial sat up. "Am I not allowed to be happy? Or are only you allowed to bask in the glow of a pretty girlfriend with happiness and glee?"

She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Happiness and what?" He leaned away from her. "What are you talking about? And whoever said you weren't pretty? You're the most beautiful girl that I know. I don't know what's going on, Mini, but we are not on the same page at all."

Devin angled back in to study her face. Whatever her mood swing was about, she was coming off of it. Her features relaxed, but her body was still tense. She turned to him, her ponytail hanging down to her side.

"I'm sorry." She spoke softly with a hint of remorse, and he remained quiet in hopes that she would look at him, but she didn't.

"I was jealous, and I took it out on you," she said. "I thought I had moved past that."

His eyes stretched wide, unable to meet hers. "Why?"

She lingered on his lips in observation of them, of how they moved when he spoke and curved when he grinned. Looking past him, she sighed. "I never experienced such––such intense jealousy like I did tonight."

"Why were you jealous? My awesome dance moves?"

There was that grin again as he thought back to his amazing two-step he practically did every time Candice forced him onto the dance floor.

Trechial finally looked into his eyes. She buried her face in the crease of her elbow so that only her brown eyes showed.

"I wanted to kiss you tonight. For a millisecond, I wished I was her."

His cheeks tinted a deep shade of pink, and in an instant, he looked away, tried to stand up but couldn't, tried to breathe but only choked.

"I don't think your dickhead boyfriend would have liked that very much."

"He's not a D-head." She refused to swear. "I get that the two of you are enemies, but Jared is nice to me. He likes me for me."

He studied her, scrutinizing every memory he had of her that night. Devin liked her for her, too. The difference was that he couldn't act upon his feelings for her because of that stupid imaginary line. That line that she placed between them because they were just friends.

Destined to be just friends.

Trechial had no clue as to why Devin and Jared fought. Jared was not the guy Trechial thought he was. As a matter of fact, Jared's number one tactic he used to bait Devin into fighting in the past was calling Trechial out her name. Everyone who knew Devin knew the quickest way to get to him was through Trechial.

Devin likes those dark jungle bitches that swing from high trees like Trechial" Jared had said that one day, sneering while his goofy friends laughed in the background. He seethed with infuriating carnage. Devin threw the first punch that day, starting the first of many fights between them.

So, it was easy to see why he was blindsided when Trechial and Jared started hanging out. On the surface, he thought it was only Trechial tutoring Jared's illiterate brain, but then he started seeing them together around school, eating lunch, and joking around in the halls. To make sure his imagination wasn't conjuring up fictitious sceneries, he followed Trechial to her classes for a couple of days, and there Jared was, smiling as if he had never uttered a single word about her.

Devin lowered his head and threaded a hand through his hair. Betrayal blanketed their friendship. It had for months, now. First Leandro and now Jared. Did she get off on hurting him? Betraying him? Was this her way of showing gratitude to him for having her back all those times?

Distrust split the air between them. His lungs were restricted under the weight of her words: I wanted to kiss you tonight. The more he thought about things of the past, the more upset he got. Here he was, wanting her to not be mad at him, yet he was growing more upset with her. To be fair, Devin didn't tell her why he and Jared got into those fights, and now he never would. Could it be her way of getting back at him for dating a girl she hated? Why was the air between them constantly polluted with drama?

"Did it have to be Jared?" His eyes wandered back to hers.

She rested her chin on her elbow, giving him a clear view of her ashamed face, loose strands of her ponytail framing her in a perfect picture he would never forget.

"I did not date Jared to get back at you, Devin. Though I did think for a minute if this was how it would seem to you."

"It's how it seems to me, Trechial."

"Devin." She paused. "I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you."

All the questions he held a few seconds ago vanished as though they had never been there. Whether Jared was sincere or not with his intentions, he would trust the girl in front of him whose shrewd gaze drew him in.

Yes, he was dating Candice.

Yes, he liked Candice.

Candice was funny, strong, quick-witted, and pretty. She was not the person she came off as to others––a witch. She was gentle and kind behind closed doors, and that's all that mattered to Devin.

But she wasn't the girl sitting in front of him. The girl who pulled off a side ponytail with waterfall strands cascading in different directions with perfection. The girl who kept him guessing while remaining the same. The girl whose voice lured him into a trance with a single note.

And yet, they were close and still far away at the same time.

He could see his chest pumping up and down. She said she would never hurt him intentionally, but unintentional hurt was even worse sometimes. It was harder to address, harder to heal.

He would never date Maylee because he could not date Trechial. He would never see Maylee as a potential girlfriend because he liked Trechial. It simply went against the friendship code.

"If he hurts you, I'll break his jaw."

She giggled, creating a buzz of new energy in his gut.

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Devin's mind wandered back to earlier thoughts of her.

He had checked out Trechial's body in passing. In school, when she walked past in a tight pair of Jordache's, the sway of her hips hypnotized him whether he was in front of Candice or not.

He always looked. Always.

Her chest was more than a handful, though he didn't stare, knowing she was subconscious about her breasts. They––she––was perfect to him. He appreciated her.

His eyes drifted to where her shirt had raised above her belly button, exposing her coffee-brown skin. A yearning stirred within him, his pulse quickened, and the buzz in his gut dug deeper through him. He drew his lip between his teeth.

He wanted to caress her skin with the back of his knuckles. Warm? Soft? Smooth? Was her skin as soft as her lips? He would've bet his life on it. Her cocoa butter scent unraveled his senses like threads on a yarn ball. He found himself marinating in his lust, and he was blind to it, blind to the fact that he had a girlfriend. Would Trechial get angry if he sniffed the side of her neck? He closed his sweaty palm against his kneecaps.

Trechial's screeching scream pierced through his cloud of desire and shattered his eardrum before she kicked him hard. He crashed to the floor, almost landing on his aroused member.

"What the hell, Trechial?"

"Dude, you're pitching a freaking tent right now." She threw the blanket over her head.

He looked down to see that he had grown hard in his underwear during his thoughts about Trechial's lips. He covered it with his hands and scrambled toward the sleeping bag, shielding his lower half.

"Trechial, oh, my God. I'm so sorry. I––"

She stayed under the covers, saying over and over, "Ew, ew, ew, ew. Oh, my gosh."

"I'm so sorry. It's not like that."