Chapter 40: Late Night
"What the hell was that? Are you on fire?"
Olica burst back into the kitchen, the laundry basket dropped somewhere behind her. She looked from me to the stove and back again, her eyes wide. "Did you cut your finger off?"
"No," I managed to squeak out, my voice sounding like it belonged to a hamster. I couldn’t even form a real sentence, so I just shoved my phone at her. "Look. Just look."
She took the phone, her expression shifting from panicked to confused. She looked at the screen, and her eyebrows shot up into her hairline.
"Holy crap," she breathed, leaning closer to the phone. "That’s really him? That’s Kofi? The nerd?"
"Yeah," I said, my voice still a whisper.
My brain was still trying to reboot. It was Kofi. But it was like someone had taken the quiet, floppy-haired guy I knew and swapped him with the protagonist from some popular webtoon. The one who’s secretly a badass. His jawline... where did he get that jawline? And the way the hair was cut short on the sides just made his eyes look... more intense.
And he sent it to me. He got a haircut that made him look like a completely different, ridiculously hot person, and the first thing he did was send a picture to me.
My face was on fire. I knew I was bright red.
"’just friends’ my ass," Olica said, handing the phone back to me and giving me a grin that was way too smug. "You are so into him."
"Shut up! I am not," I said, the words coming out way too fast. I snatched my phone back, holding it to my chest like it was a state secret. "He’s just... he looks nice, that’s all. It’s a good haircut."