The next day, I was prepared with a plan I'd formulated the night before.

As expected, the moment the bell for lunch rang, Nolan all but flew out of the classroom.

Ashley joined me as I waited for her at my desk and we walked out.

"Sorry, Ash. I'll join you guys for lunch later, okay?" I said as we stepped out of the classroom together.

Her eyebrows furrowed. "Where are you going?"

"The library. I'm going to corner Nolan like we discussed the other day," I said, aware that the grin spreading on my face possibly bordered on disturbing, but I didn't care.

She blinked at me. "Uh ... okay. Want us to come with you?"

"No, it's okay," I said, smiling gratefully at her for the offer. "I can handle it."

There was a chance Nolan might clam up if there were other people around, and I didn't want to risk that happening.

"Alright, see you," she said.

With that settled, I dashed off in the direction of the library, dodging any teachers I passed by who yelled at me for running in the hallways.

I must have thrown the doors open with more noise than I thought, because the librarian behind immediately whipped her head around to glare at me.

"Sorry," I mouthed at her.

Shaking her head at me, she turned back to the book she had been reading.

True to my prediction, Nolan was there, sleeping at one of the tables near the back. I made a beeline for him. His face was buried in one arm, while the other arm was resting on the pages of an opened book before him.

How dare he look so cozy while I was kept up all night trying to figure out what he was talking about?

I shook his arm the way I did when I was trying to wake him in English class.

He grunted softly and tried, rather unsuccessfully, to shrug off my hand.

"Wake up," I whispered. "I need to talk to you."

I didn't want to risk being thrown out by the librarian, so I shook him again without saying anything.

He shifted his head so that he was lying on his cheek instead of his face, and I couldn't help but smile at how peaceful he looked when he was asleep. Then I shook my head to clear these distracting thoughts. I had to focus.

"Wake up," I whisper-snapped into his ear.

Nolan mumbled a string of gibberish as he finally started stirring. I continued to shake his arm even harder than I already was. His head rose after a few seconds, and his eyebrows were knitted together.

"What—" he began in an incensed tone, which changed when his gaze fell on me. "Oh."

"Yeah, oh," I whispered, crossing my arms and glaring at him. "Come outside with me. I need to talk to you."

"No, you don't," he said, lowering his head again.

"Okay, fine. You need to talk to me," I amended, shaking him again.

"Would you stop shaking me!" he snapped, to which there was a loud tsk from the librarian.

We both looked up to see her glower at us.

I shot her an apologetic smile, but she wasn't having it. Instead, she got up from her chair and started making her way around the counter.

Yikes, was she about to throw us out? Or, at the very least, give us a stern warning?

"Let's go already," I said to Nolan, who nodded and jumped to his feet.

He actually looked a little wary of the librarian who was striding down the rows of tables right towards us. We practically ran out of the library, and when I glanced back after the glass doors swung shut behind us, she appeared slightly appeased. At least she didn't look so murderous anymore.

"You look like you're terrified of her," I said.

I probably should've jumped into the important topic at hand, but I couldn't resist. I had never once seen Nolan look so afraid of a staff member.

"She has ... issues about noise in the library," he muttered, shoving his hands into the large pocket at the front of his pullover hoodie.

"Did she lay into you about it before?" I said, surprised. "I can't imagine you talking in the library."

Or at all.

The fact that Nolan really only talked to me was something I'd always been dimly aware of, but it never failed to seem like a foreign concept. I felt oddly special that, out of the hundreds of students in our grade, I was the only one he voluntarily spoke to.

"I said 'noise', not 'talking'. I dropped a hardback book once," he said. "She warned me once, but then I accidentally bumped into someone else's table and caused the books on it to fall to the floor. She kicked me out after that. I had to roam the school for the rest of lunch looking for a hiding spot."

"I can't believe there's someone who can actually evoke fear in you," I said, grinning. "I thought for sure you'd be stubborn and stay in your seat even after she tried to give you the boot. You don't even care when Mr. Jameson yells at you!"

"It's different. Mr. Jameson is just fierce," he said. "She's more of a deranged kind of terrifying. You never know what she might do if you crossed her."

He wasn't wrong. She did look a tad too livid for the minor infraction we had committed.

"Okay, so let's talk about your text last night," I said, now that my curiosity had been satisfied. "What did you mean by that?"

"I should go," he said, turning on his heel to leave.

"What you should do," I snapped, grabbing onto his wrist in a tight grip, "is explain to me what you meant. While you're at it, please also explain why you've been avoiding me this whole time."

"I haven't—"

"I don't want to hear any lame excuses about you needing sleep or whatever," I said harshly. "It clearly hasn't stopped you before."

Nolan slowly turned his head around. "I just don't think it's a good idea—"

Sensing that he was about to begin with another excuse instead of an explanation, I interrupted, "First, who is my supposed boyfriend? Is this some stupid rumor you heard? But it doesn't even make sense because I thought you didn't talk to others in the first place. Where do you even get your gossip from?"

We stood and stared at each other for a long silence.

"What?" he finally said.

"What do you mean, what?" I said.

"You don't have a boyfriend?"

"Um, no," I said, narrowing my eyes at him. "Did I not make that clear enough? I do not have a boyfriend, and I don't appreciate people talking about me behind my back."

Strangely enough, the tension left his shoulders and he turned his body to fully face me.

"I don't listen to gossip," he said. "But isn't that guy you study with your boyfriend?"

Cody? What did he have to do with anything?

"I'm sorry, what?"

My mind suddenly took me back to when Nolan first started behaving strangely this week. It was right after our project meeting. Right, I had a brief conversation with Cody when it turned out I had double booked myself.

I felt my jaw drop as the realization slammed into me, almost knocking the breath out of my lungs. Did that conversation somehow mislead Nolan into thinking I was somehow in a relationship with him? Why was everyone getting weird misconceptions about me and Cody? Even Ashley had been guessing at Cody as my non-existent crush the other day at the mall.

"That guy, the one on Monday," he prompted, reminding me that he was still waiting for my answer. "I don't remember his name."

"His name is Cody," I said, "and he's not my boyfriend. He's just a friend! How did you even come to conclusion that we were dating?"

The look on his face was unreadable.

"I thought ... You seemed really close to him," he said.

I made myself pick up my dropped jaw. "I'm nowhere near as close to him as I am to you, trust me."

"But you said that you spend a lot of time with him."

"Yes ... but not alone." I shot him a flat stare. "Ashley is always with us, and they're mostly study sessions. They're not dates!"

"Ashley?"

"My best friend. I'm sure you've seen her with me at least a few times," I said.

"The girl who has blonde hair, right?"

Well, that was surprising. I wasn't expecting him to have registered her in his memory at all.

"Yup," I said, nodding. "So, are we good now? Now that we've established that I don't have a boyfriend?"

Looking away, Nolan ran his fingers through his black hair. "Yeah ... Sorry for avoiding you."

"See?" I exclaimed, jabbing a finger in his direction. "You finally admitted it! You were avoiding me!"

He shrugged. "It's not like you didn't know that."

"Why were you even avoiding me? Just because you thought that Cody was my boyfriend?" I said, still unable to wrap my brain around that particular piece of non-logic.

"No," he said, scowling at me. "It just ... didn't seem appropriate for you to hang out with me in the middle of the night when you're already dating someone."

"But you could've just asked me," I said, rolling my eyes.

He leaned against the wall we were standing next to.

"I ... Sorry for jumping to conclusions," he said, still not looking at me.

The relief that flooded me when I realized that I'd finally sorted things out with him was almost overwhelming. If his ridiculous behavior had continued any longer, I might have just stomped into class one morning and yelled at him in front of everyone.

"The next time you get some weird idea in your head, just ask me first, okay?" I said, suddenly feeling drained.

After a short pause, he answered, "Yeah."

I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall beside him.

"Are you okay?"

Somehow, I could feel his presence overwhelmingly close to me even with my eyes closed. I reluctantly opened them. Nolan was hovering over me, studying my face.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"You look really tired," he said. "Didn't you sleep last night?"

"Thanks to a certain someone," I said, wanting to roll my eyes, "I went to bed at almost two but didn't really sleep well."

Due to my exhaustion, I substituted the eyeroll for a slow blink instead.

Guilt was written all over his face as he stepped back a little. "There's still half an hour left to the end of lunch period. Do you want to take a nap?"

I wondered if I should return to the dining hall. Ashley would probably understand if I told her I had to sleep, right...? There was no way I could nap properly in such a noisy place.

"Where?" I rubbed at my eye. "I don't think I want to go back to the library—the librarian looked really mad."

"If you don't mind, we can sit on the staircase. We can go up a few flights," he said. "I'll wake you up when lunch is over."

"Won't you fall asleep too?"

He shook his head as he checked his phone. "I'll keep an eye on the time. Do you need me to carry you?"

"No!" I said, feeling a rush of horror and embarrassment all mixed together. "We're in school, and it's just a staircase!"

"I was just offering since you look so tired," he said.

"Save those offers for life-threatening situations, please," I said, as I followed him up the stairs.

"Nobody really comes up here during lunch, so we should be fine."

"You've explored a lot of the school grounds for the ideal napping place, huh?" I said.

"Well, yeah," he said. "I can't always go to the library. Sometimes the librarian throws hissy fits if I nap there too many days in a row. I can either read books on those days or get out."

I fished my phone out from my bag and sent Ashley a text letting her know where I was.

At the second landing that we reached, he gestured to the bottom steps of the staircase. "We can sit here."

I sat down first, next to the wall. He sat next to me. Sighing, I leaned the side of my head against the wall. It was so hard and cold, but it had to do.

"Hey, Nolan," I said, feeling my eyes slide shut.

"Yeah?"

"I get to see Blue again now, right?"

"Yeah. Whenever you want," he said.

"Tonight," I said. "It's a Friday."

"Okay. Good night."

As I hummed in response, I felt my consciousness finally begin to slip away.

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AN: i wasn't gonna drag this jealousy thing out, it's more of an indicator of nolan's feelings atm ;) i'm trying Thursday/Friday for now! second update will either be on Thursday or Friday! tentatively. let's see if i can manage it LOL. anyways, thank you, every single one of you reading this right now! :) your comments and votes motivate me so much, and i love you all! (◍•ᴗ•◍)♡ ✧*。

dedicated to AnushkaBhowmik4 because tysm for all your support, you sweet sweet person! (●'ᴗ'σ)σணღ* i always love reading every single one of your reactions ahaha they make my day!!