It's Monday, the last period of the day, and I'm sitting in the Biology class while my phone is vibrating loudly at intervals in my pencil case.

This feels like déjà vu, and glancing at Ethan seated at the open door and seeing him mash his lips together, giving me an annoyed look for ignoring the messages while waving his phone at me, confirms the repeat of history.

I groan inwardly, knowing where this is going to end if I don't look at his messages soon, so I grab my phone and hastily open the messaging application.

Seriously, I'm dating an obnoxious toddler!

"Please take a quick look."

"I just need an idea."

"Just a little bit."

"Kicks, don't make me come over there!"

This last message causes me to roll my eyes and snort softly. He did, of course, use shorthand again, requiring a lot of imagination to decipher and make sense of his texts.

"No," I tell him, typing my message in full words to avoid any misunderstandings. "I'm not violating my best friend's privacy."

"You're always violating each other's privacy," comes the fast-hand reply. "You wear each other's clothes."

"You take baths together with your legs up against the wall while eating leftovers!"

"Doesn't she show you most of their messages anyway?"

She used to show me Simon's messages when they just started dating, and we'd ooh and aah about them, sharing her new-love bliss, but she now only shares them with me if he sends her a funny joke or something important; she needs me to see.

And yes, sitting side-by-side in the tub with our backs against the one side and our legs up the other side, eating leftover Chicken à la King while talking about life and boys and everything in between is very relaxing... or at least it used to be... Now, I'm a little freaked out. How does he know that we do that? Delia must've told him. If not, I'm going to have to kill him!

He is grinning at me, cocking his eyebrows and, scrunching up my face, I make a big show of dropping my phone into my school bag, making it very clear that I'm done talking to him.

Mr Rawlings handed out some old test papers for us to work through as revisions of the work we've covered so far before stepping outside the classroom to enjoy the afternoon sun while standing near the door. After an entire day of lessons and dealing with students, many teachers take it a bit easier during their last periods of the day before their after-school activities and have them up to their eyebrows in doing their duty again.

I'm obediently working through one of these old test papers when Lara turns around and drops a folded piece of paper bearing my name on my desk, accompanied by a withering look. "Seriously, school is almost out. Can't you and lover boy just do without each other for a few minutes?"

Ethan sent me a written note, and not along just any route; no, he had to use one that would pass it to me through Little Miss Diligent, knowing how annoying I find her self-appointed law-enforcer ways. If the message came from any other boy, she definitely would've caused a scene, perhaps even got the teacher involved (as if passing notes is a mortal sin). At the very least, she would've read it aloud or done something to really embarrass us. Fortunately, she's a little in awe of the god of I-Don't-Give-A-Damn, so a short speech and a scathing look will have to suffice... and please note that it is only directed at me.

"Thank you for all the hard work you're always doing to keep us weak, lusty mortals in line, Lara. I feel chastised and humbled now. Good job," I say sweetly, and I can see on her face that she's not sure whether I really mean what I'm saying or not. Yes, she's arrogant enough to imagine that I could actually mean it. The ripple of soft sniggers and titters my words cause to run through the class is not making a dent in her delusions.

"Keep it down in there," Mr Rawlings grumbles, popping his head around the door jamb long enough to tell us before he's gone again, back to soaking up rays.

I bite my lip, regretting my sarcastic remark and glare at Ethan, the cause of my irritated outburst, chuckling in his seat at the door. Clenching my teeth, I open his note.

"JUST A PEEK!" all caps in crooked letters, falling around in disorganised lines. It looks like a ransom note. Feels like one too. I glare at him again (I'm doing a lot of glaring lately) and shake my head, watching in growing horror when he tears another piece of paper from his notebook and writes me another note.

I put my hands up in front of my chest, palms out in surrender, begging him to stop when he is about to send it on its way to me, using half the students in our class again. I narrow my eyes at his cocky grin and take my phone from my bag.

"Dell," I whisper. "May I please have your phone for a second?"

"Sure," she says, not even looking up from the test she's working on and feels around for her phone, handing it to me, when her fingers locate it.

I'm the world's biggest traitor!

Feeling horrible about taking advantage of her trust like this, I unlock her phone, open the messaging app and gingerly scroll through today's messages between her and Simon. I'm feeling a lot better, catching snatches of innocuous conversations while I scroll, looking for the best examples. I position a choice section on the screen and snap a picture of it with my phone before I return Dell's phone to her in the same state in which I received it.

"Thanks."

"Sure."

Grinning to myself, I send the pic to Ethan and watch him open the message, giggling softly when his frown deepens as he reads it. He finally looks up and turns to give me a pained look. Yes, he is going to love using those messages as reference material and as examples upon which to build his career as the best boyfriend ever.

Simon: "Good morning, Babes. Did you dream of me?"

Delia: "Always." Followed by about one million emojis consisting of hearts and kisses.

Delia (sometime later): "How was the test?"

Simon: "Not too bad. I'll probably pass."

Delia: "You're being modest again; my Simon aces everything he does."

I never knew Dell could be that corny and that she loved emojis so much. I find it a little disturbing as she's really not the mushy, romantic type at all! Well, she didn't use to be until Simon came along.

Simon: "I'll meet you at your gate later when you're ready to go to town," and he seems to be a huge emoji fan as well.

Delia: "I cannot wait to hang out with you."

Sharing those with Ethan didn't feel like too big a violation, especially since the two of them shared a womb for the first nine months of their existence and now share just about everything else all the time. I'm sure that if he just asked her, she would happily let him read her messages. They are very close. She would let me read them too; I just really don't want to.

The message that I know will really do Ethan's head in is the last one in the cropped image (I spared him the stream of lovey-dovey gifs Simon got in reply to it). It is also the most recent message from Simon.

"The sun streaming through the window is painting halos around people's heads, reminding me of your golden hair and your angelic smile. I miss you like crazy!" Well, I always thought Simon had a bit of a poet in him... not necessarily a good one, but still... that made my heart flutter a little bit.

Didn't I see them cuddling at the door of our first class after the break? Just how badly can he possibly miss her already?

My very unpoetic, un-Simon-like boyfriend, who cannot miss me because he spent break time using me as a pillow and was as annoying as ever during the Math and English classes that followed, is finally leaving me in peace. He is just glaring at the screen of his phone now, looking like he's going to be sick.

I'm almost done with the test paper, happy that I've finally gotten Ethan off my back when my phone vibrates with another stream of messages. Nooooo! He never sends one message broken into paragraphs; he sends a string of them, each thought and sentence on its own.

"Strange noises are streaming through the open door."

"It might be some kind of bird."

"It could also just be Mr R farting."

"It makes me think that this is bullshit!"

"We need new mentors."

"Those two are too f#cking boring!"

"I'm stealing Lurch's phone."

Oh, hell no!

I do not want to receive fragments of conversations from that pervert's phone, and I give Ethan a horrified look to make it clear how I feel about that plan.

"He is not a mentor; he is a dementor!" I write, receiving a confused grin in answer when he turns to look at me again.

I'm relieved when the bell rings, announcing the end of the school day, and we pack our bags and leave the classroom.

The sun is as hot on our way home as it had been on our way to school, but at least I'm not carrying a load of heavy books again. Ethan is. It feels a little unfair that he is carrying my heavy school bag along with his own, but when I tried to take it from him, he reminded me that a deal is a deal.

He is right; I did go to a lot of trouble preparing his gourmet sandwiches for lunch, even if I mostly used meat and salads left over from Sunday. Aunt Gemma always divides the leftovers and sends a lot of them home with me and Daddy.

For some inexplicable reason, I really enjoyed making those sandwiches for Ethan, thinking about what he'd like and which ingredients would complement each other the best. I refuse to analyse the reasons behind that weird sense of contentment I'd been experiencing the whole time I was making his lunch.

I let go of his hand when we reach our gate, but to my surprise, Ethan doesn't give me my bag and follow his sister into their yard. Delia is virtually skipping to their house, in a great hurry to get ready for her outing with Simon and in contrast, her brother is calmly walking with me, carrying my bag right into our kitchen, when I unlock the door.

"We should follow them," he says, putting my bag on a chair at the kitchen table and dropping his own on the floor before he opens the refrigerator to grab the lemonade I made last night.

"What?′ I frown, taking two glasses from a cabinet and placing them on the table. I hope I am misunderstanding him.

"We could follow Lurch and Tonia around instead, but I get the impression that you wouldn't be keen on doing that." His impression is astonishingly accurate!

"Ethan, we're not stalking your sister! It's bad enough that I scanned her messages!"

"Why not?" Is he for real? "They're our mentors; they need to set us some good examples to follow."

"Oh," I smirk. "I didn't know they signed up for that."

"You want to make a spreadsheet for them too?" he grins, his eyes sparkling with mirth.

I press my lips together and give him a narrow-eyed look, taking the glass of lemonade he hands me. It's not fair to tease me about that! I still feel rather bad about subjecting him to that fun activity.

"You act as though you've never dated anyone before. You've had many, many, many girlfriends."

"Yes, and look how that turned out," he shrugs and downs his own lemonade while I watch the working muscles in his jaw and neck, suddenly feeling a little bit overly warm for some reason. "Isn't Simon the perfect, most amazing boy, God's most ideal gift to women ever born?" he mumbles, lowering the empty glass to fill it again.

"Are you jealous?" I tease, and Ethan sets the lemonade down hard enough to cause a couple of drops to escape from the flask's lip.

"Obviously!" he snaps, glaring at me. "I've been called the opposite of that... many times... by you!"

True, I have called him many things that could be seen as the other side of that particular coin.

"If it makes you feel any better, I've never called Simon any of those cringy things you just mentioned. Those were Delia's words."

Ethan's lips twist into a slight smile; maybe it does make him feel a little better, but I mostly think that he couldn't care less.

"Come on, it will be fun," he says, raising his refilled glass to his lips. "We'll just follow them a little bit. If things become weird, we'll leave."

"Dude," I laugh. "Things have been weird since Friday!"

Ethan chugs the contents of his second glass and steps up to me, standing way too close to me now, forcing me to have to look up to meet his eyes. "Maybe," he grins. "But it's been fun, hasn't it?"

It has, but there's no way I'm telling him that; instead, I just blink up at him, watching the light reflected in mesmerizing sparkles and shades in his bright irises. I gasp when he takes my ponytail in his hand, suddenly giving it a sharp tug, causing me to tilt my head back further in surprise.

His lips are soft and cool against mine, sweet and tangy from the lemonade he'd drunk. To his credit, the kiss lasts only the prescribed three seconds, just long enough for him to demonstrate how well he can skirt the rules and still render me virtually catatonic with bliss while doing so. I'm struggling to form coherent thoughts when he lets me go and scoops up his schoolbag, loading it onto his shoulder.

"I'll call you when it's time to go," he smiles, and after a rather puzzling gaze, keeping me standing breathless, unable to break out of the spell he'd placed me under, he leaves the kitchen.

"No way!" I finally croak my last attempt at an objection, but he is long gone.

♂♀