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The first sign that something was not quite normal should have been Jameson using her actual door to get into her room instead of a secret passageway. “It’s me. Hi,” he said when she answered.
“Hi?” Avery opened her door further to allow him in. “It’s only eight o’clock. Pretty early for a Jameson Hawthorne visit,” she teased.
He grabbed her hand and spun her close to him, his favorite move to get her flustered. “I’m so in love that I might stop breathing,” he murmured.
“Never heard you be so poetic before,” Avery teased, before closing the small distance between them, kissing him softly.
Jameson responded to her kiss before breaking away to say, “Too in love to think straight,” before going back for another kiss.
Okay. Something was definitely up. He wasn’t talking like Jameson. Allowing herself just a few more moments of enjoying his lips, she pulled away. “Okay, Jameson. What’s going on?”
Jameson shrugged, and while the smirk on his face was entirely him, his words still weren’t. “I’m only me when I’m with you.”
“That’s true,” Avery agreed, “which is how I know that you’re not being you right now. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re playing some kind of game… or testing me.” She squinted at him. “Is this some kind of riddle I’m meant to solve?”
“Your eyes look like coming home.”
“You’re talking in Taylor Swift lyrics!” Avery suddenly exclaimed. “That’s from ‘Everything has Changed.’”Jameson smirked and pulled out his phone and hit some kind of button. “I should have known the second you opened with ‘it’s me, hi.’ I’m a failure of a Swiftie.”
Jameson showed her the timer he’d just stopped. “Three minutes and forty-six seconds. Xander owes me money. Give me one second.” He dialed a number into his phone. “Three minutes and forty-six seconds. I guessed four minutes, so you owe me two hundred dollars.”
Avery heard something that sounded like “Put me on speaker,” and when Jameson obliged, Xander addressed her. “I had so much faith in you, Avery! I was sure you’d guess in two minutes or less! Or are you a fake Swiftie?”
“I would never be a fake Swiftie,” Avery vowed. “What Jameson didn’t tell you is he kept speaking in her most romantic lines and then using them as excuses to distract me with kissing.”
“That’s cheating!” Xander exclaimed.
“All’s fair in love and war,” Jameson said with his signature cocky grin. “Especially with two hundred dollars on the line. The rules didn’t ban kissing, if I recall correctly—you only banned me from using the titles of Taylor Swift songs.”
“Hm. You won, not so fair and square, but I’ll give you the money anyway.” Xander hung up to go pout.
Avery turned back to Jameson. “You know, it’s funny how many Taylor Swift lyrics you were able to pull out of nowhere that weren’t from just her most classic hit singles,” she said coyly. She looked him in the eyes challengingly as she approached him. “Jameson Hawthorne. Are you a Swiftie?”
Jameson averted his eyes. “Irrelevant discussion.”
“You are!” She squealed. “I knew you were perfect for me.” She smirked. “You could even say you belong with me.”
“Stop talking,” Jameson murmured, pulling her in for a kiss to justify his flushing cheeks. Avery let herself stay there, moving her lips against his, pulling him closer… now that he was acting like himself, she had no reason not to indulge herself in this moment.
“You should think about the consequence,” she whispered against his lips, “of you touching my hand in a darkened room.”
“‘Gorgeous,’” he answered, kissing her again. “I’m a mess, but I’m the mess you wanted.”
“‘Dancing with our Hands Tied,’” she responded. She ran her fingers through his hair, pulling him closer as they kissed once again. “You’re so magnetic, it’s almost obnoxious.”
“‘Suburban Legends,’” Jameson replied, and when he kissed her again, they didn’t come back up again, either for air or to test each other on out-of-context Taylor Swift lyrics. They were each other’s oxygen.
But in the morning, Avery would definitely be grilling Jameson on why he’d hidden the fact that he was a secret Swiftie.