You’re trying to focus. Really, you are.

It’s been forty-five minutes, and you're still staring at the same page of your calculus textbook, the equations blurring into a senseless tide of numbers. It’s hard to concentrate when the scent of cheap tobacco and even cheaper beer is permanently embedded in the carpet, and the person responsible is currently draped across your lap, humming off-key to a song only she seems to hear.

"Dude, your brain's gonna fucking explode," Chloe drawls, her voice thick with a teasing edge. She exhales a plume of smoke towards the cracked ceiling of her room. She doesn't even wait for a response before she lifts her head; her bright, electric-blue eyes pin you in place. Her lips are stained a dark berry color, a mixture of a forgotten lollipop and her ever-present nicotine habit. Tobacco lips, you think, a completely useless piece of information. "C'mon. A kiss wouldn't hurt. You can go back to being the tragically little miss perfect in five minutes."

You’re a good student. You’ve got plans, a future, and a mother who actually believes you’re studying for an AP exam right now. You’re supposed to be a temporary distraction. A harmless, late-night companion for breaking rules. Something you do only when you’ve had too much of that cheap, nasty liquor from the Two Whales Diner and need to feel your own pulse again.

A relationship? A real one? That was never the deal.

She traces your jawline, the touch feather-light but pulling you into the eye of her storm. Your mother would ground you until you were thirty if she knew you were here, especially after that little incident with the video Victoria Chase leaked at Blackwell. It wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret that Chase had a grudge against you, and that viral clip of you and Chloe making out at a party was proof of it.

"Look, I know your mom thinks I'm some kind of radioactive waste, but for the record," Chloe says, the cigarette hanging precariously from her mouth, "she's not wrong." She lets out a laugh that is pure cynicism and half-smoked Marlboros. "Whatever you're doing, you're better than this hell-hole of a town. You were never meant to be stuck with some fuck-up like me."