Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

with their eyes, their hands, their gestures…all in a possible
attempt to keep me out of the loop.
Who was looking at who? Someone was looking at me?
“His attention has been on her for longer than seven
seconds,” Noah, another of Rika’s friends commented, “and
longer than seven seconds is not good.”
Who and who?
But Claudia cursed in a whisper. “Oh, shit.”
Rika shifted on my left, and the next thing I knew someone
sat down on my right, their knees blocking me in, like they
were straddling the bench and facing me.
“What are you listening to?” a deep voice asked.
I had a moment to process whose voice it was before the
earbud was plucked out of my ear.
Damon. They’d been talking about him. He’d been staring
at me in the lunchroom. The scent of tobacco and cloves
wafted off him, and I searched for ways to get rid of him.
He was bold. A lot bolder than I remembered, and I wasn’t
used to it.
He was quiet for a minute, and I guessed he was probably
checking out my playlist. The oldies I listened to when I
needed something fun, light-hearted, and peppy to get me out
of a mood. The same mood he put me in this morning.
The earbud dropped back in my lap, and his voice was low
but sure. “It won’t be like that with us.”
Like that?
Like what?
And then I realized what song had been playing. “Then He
Kissed Me” by The Crystals.
He and I weren’t going to be like that couple in the song?
I tightened my jaw. Yeah, no shit. There was no ‘us’.
“Leave her alone, Damon.”