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Daisy Jiménez is a lot of things—smart, charitable, thoughtful, and (according to Mac, maddeningly enough) imaginary. But she’s not a saint. It isn’t her fault that she can’t walk away from eavesdropping on other peoples’ conversations.
This conversation is currently one she’s eavesdropping on from around a corner. Lexi and Jamie have Mac sandwiched between his locker. No one else is lingering in this hallway. It’s Friday after three, so the rest of the student body has already dispersed.
“You were just standing around pining,” Lexi is saying with obvious delight. “I could’ve had a trio of Megan Thee Stallion clones walk by you in Plumeria swimwear and you still wouldn’t have budged.”
“Don’t try denying it, dude,” Jamie adds.
Mac slams his locker closed. “I wasn’t standing around tracking her entire route from across the auditorium because I was pining. I was telepathically trying to break her leg.”
Jamie and Lexi exchange a smirk.
“I’m serious!” Mac says, flinging his hand up. “Mac Morris doesn’t pine. He’s the one people pine for. The pinee, if you will.”
“And I guess Mac Morris doesn’t have a bulleted twelve-step plan to seduce a nerd in his notes app, either, right?” Lexi says, tossing her glossy hair over her shoulder.
From her angle, Daisy can’t make out the expression on Mac’s face, but she doesn’t think it’s particularly affable.
“Does he really?” Jamie asks Lexi. “Screenshot and send it to me.”
“Already done. Annotated and printed as well for hardcopy proof. Gonna need your opinion on step six, though. I feel like it’s a little too wishy-washy.”
Jamie gives a thoughtful nod.
“You—“ Mac points to both of them—“are banned from accessing my notes.”
“You can’t do that,” Lexi says testily. “I know your current iCloud password and all future versions of that password. I can access anything from your phone.”
Jamie lets out an impressed whistle, but Mac only scoffs.
He starts to walk backwards. “You two need to lay off. Jamie, I’m not above breaking our friendship contract to tell the entire school how you break out into hives after eating focaccia or crostini.”
Jamie gasps, and Lexi puts a hand to her heart. “That’s cold, Mac.”
Mac gives a one-shouldered shrug.
“Empty threats won’t help you,” Lexi hollers as she and Jamie head in the other direction. “You’re never beating those whipped allegations.”
Daisy can’t take this. Their conversation is making her head spin, especially because she keeps clinging onto the word nerd. Mac is allegedly pining after a nerd? Mac, whose sole taste in women is topflight models and long-legged blondes with trust funds that rival his own? In her normally rational brain, it doesn’t compute.
His backward walk around the corner sends him colliding directly into Daisy. Every thought in her brain immediately dissolves as they both hit the hard linoleum floor.
“Daisy?”
She blows strands of her hair from out of her face to see him gaping down at her, his blue eyes only inches away from hers. Their limbs have become awkwardly tangled, and their fronts are pressed together so closely that she can feel the hard thump of his heartbeat. Why is his heartbeat so loud? Or is it her own heart that’s beating this hard? She can’t tell the difference.
“Hey, buddy,” she says, but her voice comes out a lot more short-winded than she anticipated. She wants to smack herself.
She blinks hard. She knows she should push him off, but the warm press of his lean, tall body on top of hers is releasing something entirely chemical in her brain. The last time Mac and her were this close was when he spun her around in his arms and dipped her, his hand grazing the exposed skin of her back as the scent of his expensive cologne curled around her.
In that moment, she had accepted it as one of his quick-thinking schemes to save face in front of Barry. But it’s been a week since then, and however much she tries not to think about that moment, the feel of his hands and the closeness of his face loop in the back of her head every time she tries to fall asleep.
It’s irritating, to say the least. She’s just had her heart demolished by some entitled mole from Valley. She’s got honour class grades to maintain. She has a million other things that need her attention. Yet somehow, her mind insists on pulling up the exact swoop of Mac’s golden hair or his lopsided smirk or the way his voice sounds when it’s low and barely above a whisper next to her ear.
If her Abuela were here, Daisy would be given a thorough smack on the head for having such thoughts about a preppy white boy like Mac. Hell, if even Aisha were here, she’d be giving Daisy a hard time.
But...why is Mac looking down at her like that? The initial surprise from their collision has melted away from his face, replaced by something relaxed and even a little playful.
Daisy’s stomach clenches. Annoying Mac, she can deal with. Self-centered and prank-oriented Mac, she can deal with. But a playful Mac? That’s a whole other story.
“Daisyyyy,” he drawls, head tilting. “You come here often?”
She gives him a blank look. “The linoleum floor?”
“Okay, let’s rewind. You were lurking, weren’t you?”
“I—what? I wasn’t lurking! You just slammed into me while I was turning the corner.”
“Uh-huh.” The curve of his mouth tips up even higher. “You’re a bad liar.”
Her eyes narrow up at him. A lock of his hair has fallen out of the gel hold he always has it in and curls over his forehead. It’s kind of endearing.
No, not endearing, she scolds herself.
“I’ll admit,” he continues, “this is a strange ploy to get yourself into my arms, but I admire the tact.”
Daisy doesn’t even bother responding to that. She attempts to push herself off the floor, since he has apparently decided to stretch himself on top of her like a lounging cat and doesn’t seem intent on getting off anytime soon. But her rush to scramble away only makes her forehead bump against his— hard.
Mac rears back with a grunt, face pinching in pain.
She follows his movement almost involuntarily, fingers already spreading out over his forehead before she can stop herself.
“Are you okay?” She asks, worried. “My doctor says I have a skull that’s super strong. Even more than my ankles, I think. One time, I accidentally knocked my retainers off the nightstand with my head so hard they flew out the window.”
He’s leaning back on both his hands now, his gaze lifted to appraise the press of her hand against his forehead. His skin beneath her fingers is alarmingly warm. Her own skin tingles with heat as she realizes how close she and Mac are—again. But this time, they aren’t lying on the ground anymore. She’s hovering slightly above him, thigh pressed against his thigh.
The playful look on his face has fallen off. He looks, suddenly, unsure. And a little dazed.
“Uh, Mac?” Daisy tries again. “Your skin feels like it’s on fire. I think you might bruise a little.” She leans even closer, her long hair falling between Mac’s face like a curtain as she assesses the top of his face with laser-like focus. With the thought of accidentally concussing the son of the (former) governor of California at the forefront of her mind, it’s easier to tamp down any thoughts of Mac’s pretty eyes.
This is just Mac, she reminds herself. The blond fool who asked you to lie down in a parking spot for him on your first day at Bayside.
So why does this feel so intimate? And why can she make out the way his Adam’s apple bobs as her fingers continue to rub at his forehead?
“Okay, Mac, seriously. Say something.”
“Um...” he's still watching her with a dazed look. ”Ouch?”
Well. That’s good enough.
He clears his throat. “I’m good. Not hurt. You can...you can stop.” One of his hands comes up to clasp Daisy’s wrist, angling her away from his forehead, but he doesn’t let go. She wonders if he can feel the hummingbird flutter of her pulse.
She opens her mouth to speak. Nothing comes out. They stare at each other, caught between an inexplicable pull.
“Are you blushing?” She finally asks, taking in the pink tinge in his cheeks. Odd.
“No!” he snaps. “Stop hallucinating, Daisy. It’s bad for the environment.”
She rolls her eyes and doesn’t bother asking how those two are even correlated. Mac is smarter than he’s willing to let the rest of his friends know, with a strategic brain that even Daisy can begrudgingly admire, but he’s still Mac. The other day, he turned to her in class and asked, in all seriousness, which country Germany was in.
Daisy doesn’t think she’s ever met anyone as infuriating as Mac Morris.
❀ ❀ ❀
Since the moment she met him, Mac has annoyed Daisy. He is relentless and self-absorbed and has an ego so massive it could easily cover the entirety of Texas.
Yet these days, he confuses her more than anything.
He confuses her because one moment, he’ll be goofing off with her, revealing his next grand plan to humiliate Toddman, and then the next, he’s telling her—very seriously—to hop on to the next flight to Belarus because he’s just gotten word of a newly developed disorder where he’s allergic to her smiling. At him.
“It was a joke, limbo queen!” He taps his pen against the back of her chair. “Don’t take it the wrong way.”
Daisy doesn’t turn around, pencil digging hard into her paper as she writes down notes. The teacher continues to drone on at the front.
“You,” she grits out, “just told me you were allergic to me smiling at you. How else am I supposed to take it?”
Her stomach growls, and she hopes it’s not loud enough for anyone to take notice. She forgot to eat breakfast today, which has left her more than a little irritated and tired.
Instead of responding, Mac just picks up a lock of her long hair and winds it around his finger, twirling it and releasing it before starting the whole process again. Daisy still doesn’t turn around, cheeks warm. She hates how much she likes it whenever he plays with her hair. It’s always when he’s sitting behind her in their shared classes. It’s hard for her to tell whether he’s doing it to annoy her or if he’s even aware that he’s doing it.
“Daisyyy,” Mac says, voice quiet now.
“What?”
“I like your smile. A lot.”
She whips her head around, her pencil nearly flying out of her grasp.
Mac’s gaze doesn’t leave her face. “It’s distracting, is what I meant to say. Not allergy-inducing.”
And here it is again: the confusion. It’s maddening. Daisy can’t tell if this is some elaborate joke or some scheme of Mac’s or if he really is being earnest.
So she turns back around and ignores him. She fiddles with her pencil and thinks back to the day they won the spirit competition, where they’d both exchanged shy smiles after he told her he liked what she’d said in Gil’s ear. There’d been a softness to his gaze then, just like there’d been right now while complimenting her.
She’s never wanted to go inside Mac’s mind and see what his thoughts are like—really, she would rather swim in battery acid than put herself through whatever insanity runs through his head—until now. She desperately wants to know what he’s thinking. About her.
No, she tells herself. Focus. School and student council should be my focus. Not Mac.
That’s easier said than done.
When the bell finally signals the time for lunch, Mac’s long legs easily catch up with her stride and follow her to The Max.
“You hungry?” He asks her as they slide into their regular booth. The rest of their friends aren’t here yet, so it’s just the two of them.
Daisy’s stomach pinches in hunger, but she shakes her head. The food here is ridiculously expensive. She’s already blown off a lot of money on milkshakes. She’s got a granola bar somewhere in her bag—she’ll chew on it while she pores over her textbooks to study for the test she has next class.
“Don’t think I didn’t hear your stomach growling in class,” Mac says sagely.
Before Daisy can protest, he’s already getting up to order at the milkshake counter.
She takes out her textbooks and watches as he expertly maneuvers around the booths with a jumbo sized strawberry milkshake in his hand. He makes a pit stop to order some burgers and a basket of fries before joining her back at the booth and setting everything in front of her.
“Mac—“ she starts to say, but he makes a tsking sound.
“Nope. Already paid for the milkshake and the food. You’re going to finish everything before I steal your textbooks and draw penises all over the diagrams in Sharpie.”
And because the thought of her textbooks being ruined with Sharpie phalluses is sacrilegious to Daisy, she immediately accepts the milkshake and takes a long sip of the frothy beverage.
“Thanks,” she says, feeling her muscles starting to relax. She tries not to think too hard about how Mac knows exactly which flavour of milkshake she prefers without her ever telling him.
“Yeah, whatever,” he replies, but there’s the barest flicker of a grin on his lips.
Under the table, their feet accidentally graze. Their eyes lock. But whatever moment they’re having disperses as soon as the rest of their friends file in and slide into the booth, chattering over one another.
“Do you really have a list in your notes on how to seduce some nerd?” Daisy whispers to Mac as she eyes Jamie and Lexi from her periphery. They’re too busy locked in a debate with Devante and Aisha to notice.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mac says quickly as he spins one of her textbooks around to face him.
“Hey!” Daisy protests. “I need to study.”
“Looks boring. You’re better off studying my pretty face instead.”
“And inflate your ego even more? I’ll pass.”
Their feet graze under the table again, and Daisy feels her face going warm as Mac gives her a cheeky grin. Okay, then. Whatever moment they were having hasn’t passed after all.
She kicks out at his toes. He retaliates by hooking his foot around her ankle, which almost makes her choke on her milkshake. With a glare, she lets her other foot kick out at his own ankle. He bites his bottom lip to keep a laugh from falling out.
“Are you just going to stop me from studying by playing footsie?" She whispers fiercely.
"Yup.”
"Then I won't remember anything."
"It's a prettyyy tried and true training method."
“Oh really?”
“I distract the hell out of you.” Mac tucks the book away from sight. “You learn how to push through a test under any conditions.”
“Is this some kind of weird revenge for me supposedly “distracting” you with my smile?” Daisy says, unable to keep her lips from turning up into a grin. What is wrong with her?
Mac rolls his eyes ceiling-ward. “Do not let that get to your head.”
“How could I? I’m not the one here with the inflated ego, remember?”
Mac just grabs a handful of fries and pops them into Daisy’s open mouth, making her cheeks puff out like a chipmunk. She chews indignantly, trying to swallow it all down before she waves her jumbo milkshake at him threateningly.
“Come here so I can shove this entire thing down your throat,” she says, laughing as she leans over the table.
“Kinky,” Mac says, eyes gleaming. He ducks out of Daisy’s reach, but she catches him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him close, managing to squeeze out some milkshake all over his nose.
“Oh, I’m getting you back for that,” Mac warns, but it’s hard to take him seriously with frothy cream dripping from his face. He looks adorable. Daisy kind of wants to lick the strawberry beverage off the tip of his nose.
“What are you idiots doing?” Lexi bellows from the other end of the booth.
Daisy and Mac both freeze. Daisy blinks hard. She’d completely forgotten the existence of anyone else in The Max except for Mac. She looks around and realizes that all their friends have stopped talking and are looking over at the two of them with varying degrees of amusement on their faces.
She glances back at Mac. He raises a brow at her.
“Uh,” she says brilliantly. “Nothing. Just studying.”
Yet as the table slowly starts back up with conversation again, so does the game of footsie between her and Mac.
She doesn’t get any studying done.
❀ ❀ ❀
“You got me another gift?” Daisy asks, holding up the silvery piece of jewelry to the light in astonishment. It’s a pretty necklace with an embellished ‘D’ dangling on it. She doesn’t even have to google it to know it cost more than her entire wardrobe and room furniture combined.
“It’s not a gift,” Mac replies defensively. He tips back in his chair, ignoring the librarian’s glare from a few feet away. “And I got Aisha something too.”
Aisha pops her head out from behind one of the bookcases. “No you didn’t. You picked up a dirty rubber band off the floor, told me to put it on my wrist and pretend it was a Cartier bangle, then left.”
“Don’t be ungrateful,” Mac says loftily.
Daisy is still staring at the jewelry in her hand as Aisha walks away to sit at another table with Chloe. The necklace is pretty and simple, but it’s not the only thing Mac’s given her this week. She now has an iPhone with his own phone plan on it and his contact being the only one saved to it under the name ‘hotstuff’.
“Mac, if this is some kind of prank...” Daisy starts, but he shakes his head, making her trail off.
“If you don’t like it I guess I could just toss it in Toddman’s trash bin. You probably don’t want another necklace anyway.” He gets up and comes around the table. “Or I can get something flashier. I custom designed the small daisies on the ‘D’ but if you really think it’s that awful i’m sure I have a screwdriver in my back pocket to pick them out—“
“Mac,” Daisy interrupts, looking up at him through her lashes. “I love it. So much. Especially the custom made daisies. Thank you.”
He rubs a hand at the nape of his neck and ducks his head, but she catches the small blush on his cheeks, and something warm and heady fills up her insides at the sight. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen suave, flirty Mac ever look so flustered.
“Here, wait.” He crouches down and takes the necklace away from her fingers. His hand drags her long hair away from her neck and gathers it over her other shoulder. His knuckles graze her collarbones as he does so, and she inhales sharply at the contact.
She tilts her head down to give him better access. With a flick of his fingers, he has the jewelry clasped around her neck, just above the gold necklace she wears everyday.
“Looks good,” he says, voice low as he tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.
The gesture sets Daisy’s cheeks aflame. She looks down at him, and the way his face is lifted towards her is so close that she’d only have to lean a little more for their noses to brush.
“You really didn’t have to get me this or the phone, Mac,” she says softly. “I mean it.”
“I know. But, uh, you helped me get a B in two of my classes. And you made me those really impressive colour-coded study notes yesterday. Just wanted to show my appreciation.” His lips quirk. “Also, I’m going to need you to like every single one of my Instagram posts and spam each of them with comments about how sexy my jawline is now that you have a phone from this century. No excuses.”
Daisy laughs, shoving at his shoulder. “Don’t you already have a whole fan club to do that for you?”
“Yeah but—“ he grazes his knuckles over her collarbone again “—I want you.”
She stills at the words. So does he.
“I want you to be the one spamming my posts with declarations of my sexiness,” he amends quickly. He retracts his hand.
“Oh, right. Sure.” Daisy’s not certain if she’s successful at keeping the disappointment out of her voice.
He clears his throat, inching back a little. “Yeah, so. I’m just going to—“
“Yeah.” She nods emphatically. “You should get going.”
But he doesn’t leave, and she doesn’t move away from him.
So she scoots closer, sandwiches his face between her hands, and gives him a small peck on the cheek.
“Thanks again for the gift,” she whispers against his skin.
He rubs his cheek against the palm of her hand like a cat waiting for a head rub and mumbles, “It’s not a gift .”
Daisy just grins.
❀ ❀ ❀
hotstuff: hey buddy
daisy: Mac, I’m not helping you
put weed in the school air vents.
I already told you this.
And stop texting me while I’m in class.
hotstuff: yeah yeah i know. ur a total snore and don’t like to have fun
hotstuff: but this isnt about that
hotstuff: im actually just texting u to give a heads up about releasing two lobster tanks in the girls’ first floor bathroom.
hotstuff: there’s probably also maybe one lobster stuffed in your locker
hotstuff: i named him mr. krabs
hotstuff: government name: Eugene Harold Krabs
daisy: WHAT!!!
daisy: I’m going to kiss you!!
hostuff: 👀
daisy: KISS! I’M GOING TO KISS YOU
daisy: WTH??
hotstuff: wow 😏 i knew u couldn’t resist my charm for this long
daisy: MAC!!!!!!! I’M GOING TO KISS YOU WITH MY TEXTBOOK!
daisy: I’LL KISS THE SHIT OUT OF YOU WITH MY BARE HANDS
daisy: WHY does every violent word I type autocorrect to kiss????
hotstuff: really, daisy, this is a bit overkill. U already have me blushing 🙈
It takes Daisy a bit too long to realize Mac’s the culprit behind all of this. She rolls her eyes. She has no idea when he found the time to swipe her phone and replace all the words for ‘kill’ and ‘murder’ and ‘strangle’, but when she sees him next, he’s going to get an earful from her. Especially if she finds out there are more words he’s changed.
hotstuff: i’m sensing u want me to be ur rebound after Gil
hotstuff: i’m 2 hot and cool to be a rebound
hotstuff: buuuut i’m feeling Xtremely noble
so i GUESS i can volunteer as tribute 🙄
hotstuff: but know that i’ll do it without enthusiasm
daisy: i’m throwing this phone
in the trash bin now
hotstuff: i’ll just buy u another one
daisy: YOU ARE SO SEXY
hotstuff:😛
daisy: UGH. I MEANT YOU ARE SO
I N S U F F E R A B L E
hotstuff: u wanna kiss me so bad
daisy: Maybe YOU want to kiss me so bad
with the amount of effort you put into
all these text replacements.
Daisy’s fingers hit send before her brain can comprehend what she’s doing. Even so, she bites back a smile when she sees Mac’s three text dots pop up, then disappear, then pop up again, as if he’s furiously trying to type out a retort but can’t seem to find one.
He is so stupid and confusing and annoying and weird but he’s so good at making her smile even when she doesn’t want to. She wants to hate him so bad for that.
But she doesn’t.
❀ ❀ ❀
“I can’t believe you’re going to make me miss class for a joyride downtown!” Daisy shrieks. The rolled down windows of Mac’s shiny new car drag in a cool breeze, making her hair flutter wildly over her face.
“Relax, buddy. We still have ten whole minutes ‘till first bell.” From his place behind the steering wheel, Mac shoots her a mischievous grin.
“Eyes on the road!” Daisy commands. “You just got your license—you need to be careful.”
“Relaaax. You’re cruising in a car with Mac Morris. I know of at least ten people who would cut their arms off for a chance like this.”
She wants so badly to be annoyed, to snap at him or say something sarcastic, but if she’s being honest, she can’t help but feel a little thrilled at this impromptu getaway.
They’re driving under California’s clear blue sky, palm trees swaying on either side of them as the sound of early morning traffic buzzes around. The crisp scent of new car and leather permeates the air. From the car’s stereo, an upbeat playlist begins.
Mac turns on the music louder, then pulls out a pair of reflective aviators at a red light and slides them onto his face. Daisy barely has time to protest before he brandishes an identical pair and sticks them onto her own face.
A surprised laugh falls out of her. “It’s not even that sunny!”
“Yeah, but we look cool as shit. Everyone who looks at us will fall over from our coolness. Mostly because of me, but still.”
Adjusting the sunglasses, Daisy soaks in the view from her window with a newly tinted outlook. It feels nice, driving in a fancy car with Mac in matching sunglasses, warm sunshine and pop music cascading over them. It makes her feel relaxed and happy and even a little bit glamorous.
“Let’s get frozen yogurt,” Mac pipes up.
“We have to head back to school!”
“In ten years, will you really be thinking about how you missed a few minutes of homeroom?”
“Yes, especially if it ends up on my permanent record or something. It could affect the entire trajectory of my life.”
“It won’t.”
“Well now I’m reassured,” Daisy says sarcastically.
“It won’t,” emphasizes Mac with a cheeky grin, “because I’ll use my unlimited charm and resources to wipe away any record of your tardiness at the office. Bertha, the attendance lady, loves me. She once gave me a blob-fish sticker. She totally wants me, I know it.”
Daisy turns to him, hands clasped. “You would do that for me?”
Mac’s cheeks immediately turn fire engine-red. “I’d do it for Usain Bolt too if he were in my car complaining about his attendance record.”
She sighs.
❀ ❀ ❀
“You’re a bad influence on me,” Daisy says as they walk out of the Fro-Yo shop. She follows suit as Mac flicks off his aviators and stuffs them into the pocket of his jeans.
“I am, aren’t I? I’m so bad.” He smirks. “Like yesterday, I was roasting my fancy artisanal marshmallows with a lighter, and my mom said that I could only eat four but I actually ate five. In front of her. While they were on fire.”
“That is pretty bad,” Daisy responds with a straight face.
She takes a bite of her frozen yogurt—strawberry flavoured, of course—and barely suppresses a happy sigh. She hasn’t had frozen yogurt in ages, especially the high quality kind. Her pride had made her argue with Mac about paying for her own cup, but he’d threatened to abandon her in the parking lot and drive off if she didn’t let him pay.
She doesn’t know what to do with this thoughtful version of Mac. He can be so infuriating and flippant, but also incredibly considerate. It doesn’t match up with the image she had of him the first day she met him at Bayside.
It doesn’t help that things have shifted between them significantly since the spirit competition, which was two months ago. Every time their hands brush or their feet graze under the table, they get flustered. Sometimes, Mac will sling his arm around Daisy, and she’ll spend a whole two minutes having an internal crisis. Other times, Daisy will lean in a little too close to Mac, and he’ll forget to finish the rest of his sentence.
Her fingers tighten over her plastic spoon as she mulls over the past few months. She‘s barely thought about Gil. Apart from today with Mac, he’s the only boy she’s ever hung out with outside of school. With Gil, everything was pretty much straightforward. Robotic, even. There was no spontaneity or unpredictability with him, not like it is with Mac.
Gil was cute, but he was also fake. Everything he and Daisy had was fake.
“Something wrong?” Mac asks, taking note of her expression.
She shakes her head. “No. It’s just...this is the first time I’ve hung out with a boy outside of a school-sanctioned event since Gil.”
“Do you...still have feelings for him?”
“What? No! I can’t stand him.”
“No, yeah, I definitely knew that.”
Daisy finally looks up at him. “Why do you ask?”
He lets out a huff. “Why are you asking about me asking?”
“Oh, never mind!” She walks off towards the passenger side of his car.
“Wait, you sound mad. Are you mad? Does the yogurt taste radioactive? There’s been complaints about that here.”
Ignoring him, Daisy stabs her spoon into her melting dessert. She doesn’t know why she’s mad. She’s not even sure if what she’s feeling is anger . It’s more like annoyance, and a little bit of insecurity.
Because she knows, without needing to reach all that deep inside her, that she has feelings for Mac. Feelings much bigger than the ones she’d harboured for Gil. And it’s a terrifying realization to have in the parking lot of a Fro-Yo shop that may or may not be producing radioactive frozen yogurt.
It’s also terrifying because she’s not sure if she can trust her instincts or her feelings about Mac. Gil had been her first boyfriend—first everything, really—and she’d been so naive with him. What is wrong with her, naively having feelings for another boy again? Mac and her are polar opposites with completely different ambitions.
“Daisy,” Mac says as he comes closer, a furrow appearing between his brows. “I’m confused.”
If not for the dessert in her hands, she would’ve flung them in the air. “You’re confused? I’m confused!”
Mac blinks down at her.
Frustrated, Daisy looks up at the sky. “You buy me expensive things, but tell me they’re not gifts. You insist on paying for all my food. You say sweet things to me, and then run away or pretend you never said them by changing the subject. Sometimes you act like I’m contagious, and other times you follow me around insisting we spend every second of the day together. You give mixed signals! You make me confused about not only your feelings, but mine too. It’s driving me a little nuts.”
His blue eyes widen, and then dart around in panic. Daisy wants to yank her words back at the expression on his face. She feels mortified. Why did she have to go and say all of that?
“Daisy...” he starts, but she shakes her head.
“No,” she says. “You don’t have to respond to that. That was a weird outburst.” She tries to laugh it off, but it doesn’t come out right.
Without taking his eyes off of her, Mac throws his empty yogurt cup and spoon at the trashcan a few feet away from them. He completely misses the shot. But Daisy doesn’t tell him about his lack of hand-eye coordination, because she’s suddenly feeling like she’s drowning in that intense gaze of his.
“Daisy,” he says, voice low as he settles his hands on her waist. She squeaks as he pulls her closer, walking her backward until she’s pressed up against the side of his shiny car.
“You think I’m making you go nuts? I think about you all the time. It drives me crazy.” He dips his face close to Daisy’s, his nose nearly touching hers.
“It does?”
He nods.
She stares at him, unable to think properly. Finally, voice quiet, she says, “Then why...?”
His eyes search hers, and for a moment they’re both completely still. All Daisy can do is stay pressed against the car and will herself not to burst into flames.
“Because. I’m scared that you won’t like me back in that way, or that you won’t think I’m good enough for you because I don’t know what photosynthery is or what ordinal numbers are—“
Daisy’s pretty sure he means photosynthesis, but she doesn’t correct him.
“—and that you still think I’m a monster. I’m afraid because everything I feel about you runs much deeper than anything I’ve ever felt for any other girl. “
He closes his eyes tight, looking so vulnerable and hopeless that Daisy’s heart twinges. She presses a gentle thumb to the corner of his mouth.
After another breath, he says, “you’re smart and pretty and unbelievably compassionate and sure, you’re not all that fun—don’t look at me like that—but I feel like I still have the best time whenever I’m around you. I feel like a better version with you. Like...Mac 2.0 with glossier hair.”
A small laugh spills out of Daisy. “Does this mean you like me?”
“Yes, Daisy, I like you! A lot! For someone so smart, you’re not being so smart.”
She beams. “I like you too. I don’t think you’re a monster. And I like that you try to study and keep your grades afloat when you’re not pulling ridiculous schemes. It means you’re trying.” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “And I also like how you make me laugh harder than anyone ever has.”
He grins back at her. Her heart is buzzing. It’s making her whole body vibrate, a dizzy hum of joyjoyjoyjoyjoyjoy.
There’s a part of her that keeps telling her to push away. It keeps telling her that he’s Mac, and she’s Daisy, and they’re like oil and water and can never realistically work. But a much bigger part of her just wants to feel the press of his smiling mouth against her own.
He smirks, studying the pout of her lips. “Oooh you wanna kiss me so bad.”
“Oh, will you just–”
And with that, his lips are on hers, warm and surprisingly gentle.
They are small kisses at first, almost tentative. But then Mac and Daisy are both tilting their heads, and suddenly the kisses turn into something hungry and urgent. He tastes like the sweetness of his frozen yogurt.
She yanks his body closer to hers. She digs her fingernails into his stupid head of platinum hair and he digs his fingers harder against her hips. Pushing her back flush against his car, he opens his mouth a little, sliding her bottom lip between his and eliciting a small sound from her throat.
She feels dizzy and warm and full of so much want, it’s like she’s going to burst at any moment.
They finally pull apart, with Mac giving her one more lingering kiss against the corner of her mouth before he tugs her away from the car and rests his jaw on her shoulder.
“You know,” he says against her skin, “I had a whole different lovey-dovey thing planned out for today instead of this. It wasn’t really supposed to end at a parking lot.”
“Wait, really?”
“I even told Jamie about it. The plan was to serenade you with ‘Boyfriend’ by Big Time Rush and ended with me quoting this really romantic line from Spongebob where—“
“You told Jamie about this?”
“Against my will! He’s very insistent when he wants to be.” Mac’s phone buzzes in his pocket. “That’s probably him right now.”
With her lips still tingling, Daisy watches as Mac lifts his head off her shoulder to pull his phone out. He rolls his eyes at the screen. “What is it?”
He turns the screen towards her. It’s a picture of a bunch of hands gripping wrists, forming a solid circle. It takes Daisy a second to realize that this isn’t a stock photo and that the hands belong to all their friends. “Jamie’s been sending me supportive messages all morning,” he explains. He glares at the screen. “This one says, ‘We’ve got you, brother.’”
Daisy tries not to laugh, but fails completely. “So all of our friends know about this plan of yours?”
“Lexi probably got it out of Jamie and blabbed it to everyone. The extension on her contract about keeping all my romance-related secrets ended two hours ago.”
Daisy raises her brows, but doesn’t comment on that. She’s still thinking about how Mac had planned—in his own strange, endearing way—to confess to her. The thought makes a goofy smile spread across her face.
“What?” He says, looking at her with his own bashful smile.
“Nothing. That twelve-step plan on seducing a nerd in your notes is about me, isn’t it?”
”I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She wraps her arms around his neck and flutters her lashes at him. “Can I see it?”
“Never.”
“That’s okay, I’ll just get it from Lexi.”
“Don’t you dare. I have your social security number memorized and I have pals indebted to me from the secret service. I can do so many—“
Daisy kisses him, effectively shutting him up.