All Shades of Passion
“Joking is allowed. Joking is your cover. You tease, he teases back. That’s how you open space for flirting without feeling naked.”
I hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Okay, different approach,” she said. “He says, ‘Hey, can you help me with something?’ You say, ‘If it’s math, yes. If it’s murder, I need at least 24 hours’ notice."
I laughed in spite of myself. “That’s stupid.”
“But funny,” she said. “You’re funny. You just never let him see it in texts.”
I picked at the seam of my shorts. “What if he doesn’t reply the way you think? What if he just says, ‘It’s not murder, it’s code’ and we go back to normal?”
Sikat na Kabanata