"All right. We're on a sex strike."

Randy, God bless him, just sort of blinked at me, confused.

I reached into the top drawer and pulled out a sponge and a dishrag. "Okay," I said, handing the rag to him. "The girls are tired of the rivalry. It's been going on for too long, and you guys don't even have a reason to fight."

"Like hell," Randy argued. "We have a ton of reasons to hate those — "

"Randy, can you even tell me how the fight started in the first place?" I asked.

He opened his mouth to answer, then paused, lips still gaping. "Uh…" He swallowed, and I passed him a plate I'd just cleaned so he could dry it while he thought. "It started… It started because…"

"If it takes you this long to remember," I said, dunking another marinara-covered plate into the foamy, bubbly water, "then the fight isn't really worth it."

"Okay, so what does this have to do with all you girls being weird?"

"I told you," I said. "We want the rivalry to end. So we've decided that none of the boys on the teams are getting any action until the fighting ends. A sex strike."

Randy stopped drying the dish I'd just handed him. "You're shitting me."

"No."

"Like… just no sex?"

"Shhh." I tensed and looked over my shoulder to make sure Dad and Logan were still safely in the living room, TV blasting. "Not just sex. It could be anything."

"Like fooling around, hand jobs, BJs. All of it?"

I cringed and glanced over my shoulder again.

"Yes," I hissed through gritted teeth. "All of it. Keep your voice down. If Dad hears us…"

"Right, sorry. So this will last until the teams stop fighting?"

I nodded and handed him another clean plate. He took it, but he didn't start to dry it immediately. Instead, he just shook his head back and forth, lips tight like he was holding back a laugh.

"What?" I asked.

"Sorry, but do you really expect something that stupid to work?"

"It's not stupid," I said. "What's stupid is your little rivalry with the soccer team. It happens every fall, and it's getting worse. People are getting hurt — you got hurt. My plan to end it is genius. If there's one thing we can withhold that'll make you do anything, it's sexual favors."

"It'll never work," Randy said, finally drying the plate he'd been holding for the past thirteen seconds and placing it on top of the growing stack of clean dishes. "The girls will never last."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because we're not going to stop fighting with the soccer team, and I know you girls can't last forever. Hell, I bet if I tried hard enough, you wouldn't be able to resist me right now." He gave me an exaggerated version of a seductive smile, batting his eyes and everything, as he leaned over to kiss me.

I shrugged him off, annoyed. "Don't you want the rivalry to end?"

"Not really."

"You know, Randy…" I hesitated, then said, "When we got back together, you promised you'd grow up and behave like an adult."

He stiffened. "Well, Lissa, we both made some promises we didn't keep, huh?"

One second.

Two seconds.

I couldn't believe he'd just said that. Couldn't believe he'd brought it up. We turned to face each other, my jaw dropped and his set firm. He'd been teasing before, but he was mad now, and so was I.

Three seconds.

Four seconds.

My fists clenched at my sides as, with every second, the tension grew between us. The air thickened and I forced myself to steady my breathing. This was the closest we'd come to a fight in a long time — and less than a minute ago, it wasn't even a fight.

The worst part was that, logically, we should have been on the same side. He should have wanted this to end as much as I

did. Or maybe he didn't see himself as the victim at all. Maybe he enjoyed the chaos.

The idea made my head spin.

Five seconds.

Six seconds.

I was beginning to think we'd never move again when my brother's voice penetrated the silence.

"Yo, Lissa! Randy!"

I turned my head, pulling my gaze away from Randy's, just as Logan appeared in the doorway. For a second, his eyes darted between us, and I knew he could tell something was up. Logan wasn't as dense as Randy. Or as compassionate as my father. Instead of asking about it, though, he just shook his head, as if shaking the knowledge of all tension out of his mind.

"Dad wants ice cream," he said, running his hand over his short black hair. "I'm heading out to get some. You want any?"

I glanced at Randy. He was still watching me, but the look on his face was unreadable.

"We do," I told Logan. "Strawberry with sprinkles for me. And make sure Dad's is low-fat, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Logan said. "What about you, Randy?"

"Um…" Slowly, he turned to look at my brother. "Chocolate. With chocolate syrup."

Logan laughed. "Now that's my kind of ice cream. All right. I'll be back." He swiped the keys off the counter and walked out of the kitchen.

"Look, Randy," I whispered when Logan was gone, "the

girls are on a sex strike. It's going to be this way until the rivalry is over."

"It'll never happen," Randy told me.

I didn't reply. Instead, I turned and walked into the living room, where Randy wouldn't dare return to this conversation in front of my father, and sat down to watch some crappy sports show and wait for my ice cream.

Chapter twelve

"So you've been reading Aristophanes, huh?"

I jumped, and the book I was trying to shelve slipped from my hand and thudded to the floor. My empty fingers groped for the stability of the wooden shelves as the ladder wobbled beneath me, my feet scurrying to regain their balance.

"Whoa," Cash said.

His hands were on my hips then, steadying me. My T-shirt had ridden up slightly as I'd stretched my arms to the highest shelves, so his fingers made direct contact with the exposed skin just above the waistband of my jeans. A small burst of fire pulsed through me, starting at the places where he was touching me and spreading to the rest of my body.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to scare you. You okay?"

"Fine."

His hands were still on me.

I wondered why he didn't let me go. I was fine now; he could have pulled his hands back. But he didn't. And I wanted him to keep touching me. I knew I shouldn't — if my own boyfriend's touch made me stiffen, Cash's should revolt me — but my body hummed in stark disagreement with my brain.

His hands stayed on my hips as I climbed down the ladder, guiding me to safety on the floor in front of him. Once my sneakers hit the thin brown carpet, he let me go, his fists moving instantly into his pockets.

"You okay?" he repeated, as if I hadn't answered.

"Fine," I said again. "God, are you taking a class in sneaking up on people or what?"

Cash shrugged a shoulder. "Natural talent, I guess."

"A natural talent that is going to get me killed one day. Can you please not do that? I could have fallen off the ladder and broken my neck. Or at the very least my leg or my ankle or something. Or my wrist, and then shelving books would have been hard, and Jenna would have yelled at me — and at you for making me fall, and…" I trailed off. I should have just shut up after "Fine."

"I'll work on it," Cash said with a sheepish smile.

"Right. Good."

"So," he said. "Aristophanes?"

"What?"

"I was trying to ask if you'd been reading Aristophanes," he repeated. "You know, the Greek playwright? One of the forerunners of satire?"

"I've never heard of him," I admitted, a little ashamed. "Who is he? What has he written?"

"Oh, uh, well," Cash said, his cheeks turning just a touch red. "His most famous play is probably The Clouds. They don't really teach him in high school, though — too racy. I guess the

fact that I know who he is really proves what a dork I am, huh?" He laughed, scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the floor.

Great. He was a hottie, a good kisser, and a literature buff. God really must have had a sense of humor, because if I had to name my biggest turn-on, it was literature. And he had just recommended a book that I didn't know, that wasn't taught in school. If I were single, there would be no better pick-up line.

Suddenly, I found myself thinking back to Atonement — you know, the scene in the book where the two main characters have sex in the library? Even though Chloe said doing it against bookshelves would be really uncomfortable (and she'd probably know), it was still a fantasy of mine. Like, what's more romantic than a quiet place full of books?

But I shouldn't have been thinking about my library fantasies.

Especially while I was staring at Cash.

In the middle of a library.

"So," I said, clearing my throat and trying to sound cool and detached. Instead, what came out was pretty flirtatious. What was it about this guy that always made me do that? "It's funny. You can't do geometry but you read Greek plays?"

Cash's blush deepened. "Yeah… I know it's a little lame. But you're sure you've never read anything by Aristophanes? Not even one play?"

"It's not lame," I said quickly. Too quickly. "I love the Greeks. I've read Antigone and Medea and Oedipus and — "

"Wow," Cash teased. "No wonder you seem so tense sometimes; all you read are tragedies. Do you have something against smiling?"

"No, I just… always end up reading the tragedies, I guess."