Chapter Text
“Foster.”
Sophie pretends not to hear the half hiss, half whisper.
“Foooster.”
She clenches her hand around her teal highlighter.
“Fooosteeer.”
She whips towards the desk behind her.
“What, Keefe?!”
“Miss Foster,” Lady Galvin reprimands from the front of the classroom, back still turned to solve the formulas on the blackboard, “kindly cease confabulating, your grades do not allow for distractions.”
Sophie shoots Keefe the deadliest death glare. Or, maybe, the ‘deadliest death glare’ award should go to the way Biana scowls at Sophie from the desk behind Keefe. Keefe grins, unbashed and unapologetic, then passes Sophie a corner of paper torn from his notebook.
Stubborness and curiosity wage a war inside of her for a total of one hundred and eighty-three seconds before she reads the words scribbled in brown pencil.
Study together for the exam?
So we can NOT pass together? Nope! I’m studying with Dex.
Keefe pouts when Sophie passes the note back.
It’s hard not to give into his every demand when he unleashes the full capacity of his charm on her, but, somehow, she resists. Lady Galvin made it abundantly clear after midterms that when it came to finals her other teachers would not be able to sway her not to fail her just because she otherwise had a perfect G.P.A., and, despite her allergy to all things alchemy, honestly, Sophie wouldn’t want her to, she wants to earn her grade. Which means she absolutely can not study together with Keefe.
Best case scenario: they’d get nothing done. Worst case scenario: he’d spent the whole time teasing her about Fitz, a.k.a. his best friend, her crush, and ridiculously, embarrassingly, unequivocally unattainable. And Biana’s senior brother.
Her mood sours.
She feels a tap on her shoulder that isn’t an ordinary tap, it’s followed by three more right underneath then two more one next to the bottom one and one next to the top one, an imaginary ‘K’. He knows exactly where she’s the most ticklish. She giggles as quietly as possibile. He knows exactly also when she needs a pick-me-up.
Sophie and Keefe have been friends since her first day at Foxfire, two years ago, now, when she was the weird new girl who had been adopted and he was, well, he was Keefe. She had been wondering the halls of the labyrinthine high school campus in search of her next class and he had been wondering those very same halls ditching that very same class. He had led her to their history classroom in the midst of legendary tales and cheesy jokes, as if they had known each other their whole lives, and, as he had helped her relax, for the first time, finally, she had felt like she were somewhere she belonged.
She sighs, tears a corner off of her own notebook.
You can have ONE try-out studying session.
Keefe celebrates with his arms raised high over his head as he reads the new note and behind him Biana’s scowl deepens like she’s plotting Sophie’s demise.
It’s only the bell that saves her.
“We’re gonna study together, right?” Dex, her adoptive cousin and absolute best friend, asks as the whole class spills out into the hallway.
“Sorry, Dexinator,” Keefe singsongs, not sounding the slightiest bit sorry as he pushes his way in between them and wraps an arm around Sophie’s shoulders. “I called dibs.”
Dex frowns. “But you’re also failing.”
“Two wrongs make a right.”
“I’m fairly certain they just make an even bigger wrong,” Sophie squirms out of Keefe’s grip, her face traffic light red under the other students’ gossipy stares.
“Two minuses make a plus?”
Dex nods.
“Don’t encourage him!”
“But he’s right!”
“Don’t tell him!”
Keefe clicks his tongue. “I already knew it. I’m always right, Foster.”
“What he actually means by that is that he’s always willing to cause any mess to get his way.”
The crisp voice behind them is teasing, and though it reaches Sophie like a breath of fresh air embraced in laughter her heart stops. So do her feet. And Dex’s. Keefe takes several more steps before he spins around.
“Not always,” he mumbles.
Fitz catches up to them, all movie star smiles and twinkling teal eyes, and Sophie decides breathing again is worth it as long as she gets to look at him looking at her like that.
“Never thought I’d see this day!”
“What day?” Dex asks.
Fitz waves his hands in Keefe’s general direction. “Lord Hunkyhair being humble.”
The snorting slash laughing noise that comes out of Sophie’s both mouth and nose races to the top of her most embarrassing moments. She contemplates biting back her retort, but the boys’ attention is already on her and staying silent would just be even more embarrassing.
“I need to hear the story behind that nickname.”
Fitz smiles again, amusement curling his lips higher than before, and leans into Sophie’s personal space. “No story. Just a fact. An ode to Keefe’s awesome hair,” he stage-whispers, and Sophie does feel like she’s been teleported onto a stage, into some sort of romantic play of which, unconveniently, she’s forgotten all of her lines.
Keefe bumps Fitz on the shoulder, effectively pushing him back.
“No dissing the hair!”
Fitz holds his hands up innocently, but winks at Sophie when Keefe is not watching.
She’s tempted to pinch herself to figure out whether she’s actually awake or still dreaming.
Keefe has always been careful not to overlap his friendship with Fitz with theirs. They all spend time together in small doses, every July on Keefe’s birthday and during major school and town events, but Fitz tends to keep to his own group of friends, consisting of football players and cheerleaders. None of them is bad, per se, save for Stina Heks, who Sophie is convinced transferred directly from hell rather than Exillium, the high school Foxfire has an unnecessary rivarly with, and Biana, who hates her on some unknown principle, but they don’t know each other, don’t interact this randomly. She’s pretty sure this is the longest Fitz has ever spoken to her, or Dex, and Dex is neighbors with the Vackers.
Her confusion must show because Keefe nudges her shoulder against shoulder to get her attention and when their eyes meet his are a mixture of questioning and worried. She smiles at him to reassure him, taking and squeezing his wrist.
“Did I miss the group meeting memo?”
Biana comes up behind them in a perfect sneak attack.
“We just didn’t send it you,” Dex quips.
Sophie would have marvelled at his bravery sniping at someone who could make their entire high school experience hell with a snap of her fingers, but Biana pays him no mind, eyes downcast, and it takes Sophie a minute to realize she’s looking at where she and Keefe are touching.
She starts to draw her hand back but as soon as her fingers are free Keefe laces them with his.
Biana looks away.
The awkwardness is so heavy Sophie starts sweating.
“So,” Fitz clears his throat, and his attempt to dissuade the tension would have been sweet if he hadn’t nodded straight between her and Keefe, “I suppose you’ll also be coming to the team’s party this weekend, then?”
She frowns, about to deny, but she’s not the one who answers.
“Yep.”
“Yes!”
Keefe and Dex simultaneously reply, the first nonchalantly, the second eagerly. Sophie strangles Keefe’s hand in respose.
“Ouch, Foster!”
Fitz laughs. “All right, I’ll leave you two to sort it out.”
Biana follows her brother down the hallway without a word or a glance to anyone and Dex makes himself scarce just as quickly donning an apologetic look.
Sophie drags Keefe to an empty corner at the end of one of the neat rows of lockers before tugging hard to disentangle their fingers.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That!” Sophie points an arm to the spot they had been occupying with the others not a minute ago. “You made it seem like—like—”
“Like what, Foster?”
She blushes and he smirks. Or he smirks and she blushes. Sophie is never quite sure which one comes first.
She huffs and crosses her arms over her chest.
“I’m not coming to the team’s party.”
“Why not? It’ll be fun!”
“You always hate them.”
“Because you’re never there! With you, it’ll be fun,” he shrugs, but she can tell he means it.
“Then you could have just asked me and Dex to come with you.”
“I’ve asked you plenty of times.”
It’s true. Keefe is the football team’s self-proclaimed mascot and begs Sophie to attend the team’s parties with him every year. But to know Fitz is unattainable is one thing, to witness it full force is another. She doesn’t like the reminder of how many prettier girls like him, know him, talk to him, when she can barely look at him without tripping over herself. Although this last interaction hasn’t been so bad.
Sophie sighs, goes to rub at her creeping headache and in the process tugs out an itchy eyelash. She’s bound to be all out, eventually, if she keeps up the nervous habit.
“I don’t like that kind of parties.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just—” Keefe tears a hand through his hair, starts pacing in circles as his lips form different words in silence, when he settles on something he appears defeated, “I just wanted to get Biana off my back. I thought her crush on me would disappear on its own, if not engaged, apparently not.”
“Biana has a crush on you?”
“Could you sound any more surprised?”
Sophie would have expected Keefe to be joking about it, instead he sounds genuinely hurt, looks like a blur as he keeps pacing. Before she can decide whether she should apologize, he stops and stares at her with an unreadable expression.
“I shouldn’t have done that in front of Fitz.”
This time, there’s no smirk whatsoever, but she still blushes.
“It’s okay,” she relents, chewing on her bottom lip. “If anything, him believing I was with you made him talk to me like a normal person.”
“Yeah. That’s good, old Fitzy! He presumes every girl is madly in love with him so it’s just easier to ignore them all to avoid the drama.”
Again, he says it differently than she would have expected him to, low on the mocking, high on the bitterness.
“You can presume just as much,” Sophie tries to lighten the mood, lightly knocking his shoulder with a fist. Keefe shrugs off her touch. “I mean it. I mean, Biana! She’s gorgeous.”
He glances down and shuffles his feet. “But I don’t like her.”
“Right. Well, if her liking you makes you uncomfortable, I’ll help.”
His head snaps back up. “Foster—”
“Plus,” she fidgets, tugging out other two eyelashes, “this might be the secret to getting to know Fitz without pressure.”
“‘This’ being...” Keefe grimaces, in a way more appropriate for physical pain than an awkward conversation, and points to her, first, to himself, after.
Sophie nods. Keefe’s fingers circle her wrist to gently guide her hand away from her face.
“No more folliclelous murder.”
“That’s not a word.”
“Neither is Foster-Keefe, yet here we are.”
“Technically, ‘Foster-Keefe’ are two words.”
“Not when used to address us as a couple.”
Smirk. Blush. A fundamental law of the universe restored.
“Bring on the fake dating!”
Their fingers lace together again to seal the deal.