Tightrope

As it turned out, Jace Hartley was a romantic. 

I had mentally created a list of attributes for him over the years. Asshole, liar, cruel, rude, trickster. And over the last few months, the list had expanded; sweet, kind, generous, funny, beautiful. I never thought I'd be adding romantic, never though I would be the one to associate such a word to him. 

But after a lazy afternoon spent kissing, laughing, arguing and futilely trying to get rid of Knight—who thought it was his prerogative to stand around making faces and jokes at our expense—Jace bent down to whisper in my ear. "Elle, will you let me take you on a date?"

His voice was gentle and his smile was hopeful, and I knew in that moment that this boy held the power to break my heart.

I looked up at him with a small smile, considering. A date. With Jace Hartley. We really had done the whole romance thing backwards. He'd been in love with me before we were even friends, and I'd let him kiss me before we'd ever been on a date. We were a mess. But when I saw the way he was looking at me, tentative and sweet, as if he thought I would say no, or laugh and proclaim that it was all a joke, I winked at him.

"I'll think about it," I said, grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling him in for another kiss as Knight gagged on the couch in the corner. I turned to face him. "You can leave," I told Knight. "I would really like it, actually."

"I see," said Knight with a sigh. "You two want to have sex, and so you ditch your poor friend Knight. It's okay, I know where your priorities lie."

"Oh, I'm sorry Knight, would like us to invite you to join?" I said sweetly.

"No," muttered Knight sullenly. "But while I'm here, you could be a little more inclusive."

Jace raised an eyebrow. "So, you're saying you do want to be included? Because I like you just fine, I just don't know how I feel about—"

"Oh, yuck," said Knight. He pointed at me. "You were more fun when you were being dumb."

"I wasn't that bad," I muttered.

"Really? He looked at you like he was an eager-to-please golden retriever." Knight shrugged. "Half our friends thought you knew, because it was so obvious. But kept telling them you only had like half a brain cel—"

"You can shut up now."

"I mean, it wasn't even a secret!" Knight continued. "It was, like, the most obvious thing in the world. It honestly started to get to the point where I thought I'd have to take you to see a doctor; like, were you blind? Were you deaf? Just regular insane?"

"Does he ever stop?" Jace asked passively.

"No," I said, regretfully.

Knight gasped. "Oh, so this is how it's going to be, huh? No need to make fun of Jace anymore, so you're taking it out on me. And you—" he looked accusingly at Jace "—are just going to join in to impress your girlfriend, and once again, poor Cole Knight is left alone."

"It really seems like you want to join in," said Jace with a small smirk.

"Oh, my god. I hate you both. What am I supposed to do now?"

I pretended to look around. "I think I have that giant horse dil—"

Knight cut me off and raised a hand. "No. You are both the worst. To think, I was so scared of Lena breaking your heart, Jace, I was ready to take a stand and give you custody of me."

"You can't assign custody of yourself," I muttered. "That's not what custody is."

"I was going to make him adopt me," Knight said.