His Heart Stayed Flat for Me, Raced for Her, I Stayed for Neither Chapter 01
At the first class reunion after graduation, someone suggested playing the “Heart Rate Challenge.”
If a boy and a girl’s heart rates both went above 150 while looking into each other’s eyes, they’d have to enter a two-month trial relationship as a couple.
The first pair drawn was me and my childhood neighbor.
I was so nervous I couldn’t even look at him. My heart rate spiked to 160 right away.
Caleb Whitmore’s heart rate held steady at 80 the whole time, his gaze as calm as if he was looking at a stranger.
When the countdown ended, the whole room burst into laughter.
“No way? You’ve grown up together for over ten years, and Caleb feels nothing for you?”
“Girl, throwing yourself at him like that is just embarrassing.”
I didn’t say anything.
None of them knew that Caleb and I had been together for three years.
I’d been planning to use this chance to make our relationship public.
But he just had to set a boundary between us.
In the second round, Caleb was paired with Olivia Hartwell, the class president.
Everyone knew they were sworn rivals. They clashed every time they met.
Everyone was ready for the drama to unfold.
But the second their eyes met, Olivia’s heart rate hit 180, and Caleb’s hit 182.
The room erupted.
The two of them glared at each other, furious, and demanded a retest.
But in the end, their classmates laughed and pushed them together, practically forcing them to agree to be a couple for two months.
My phone buzzed.
A text from Caleb: [Baby, let’s break up for now, just for two months. We’ll get back together once we get to college. I absolutely cannot lose to Olivia!]
I froze for a second, then texted back: [Okay.]
I’d been agonizing over whether to tell him about studying abroad all summer. I didn’t know how to bring it up.
But I didn’t need to anymore.
—
Inside the private room, the noise was almost loud enough to raise the roof.
Caleb and Olivia were pushed to the center.
The guys were yelling like crazy, “Kiss! Kiss!”
I put my phone down and looked up.
The two who were usually at each other’s throats were both bright red.
Caleb put an arm around Olivia’s shoulder, his voice warning. “That’s enough, you guys! We haven’t even been together for a day.”
Olivia, her face flushed, tried to defend herself. “It’s just a contract thing. We’re done in two months.”
That only made the teasing more intense.
Someone laughed and called out, “Hey, Caleb, now that you and Olivia are together, what about Emily? Just now, her heart rate hit 160. That was the highest aside from you two.”
“Yeah, right. She couldn’t even look at you.”
All eyes suddenly turned to me.
But Caleb barely glanced my way, and his voice was completely flat. “She’s just a friend. Not my type.”
With that casual “just a friend,” he wiped away more than ten years of history between us.
And of course, I became the target of their mockery again.
“That’s hilarious. So what if they grew up together? She’s plain, her grades are average. Why would Caleb ever be into her?”
“Some average girl actually thinks she deserves our school heartthrob. Talk about delusional.”
…
I had heard those words for three years.
I could never hide how I felt. The whole school knew I liked Caleb.
But Caleb was great at hiding things.
At school, he always kept three feet of distance between us.
When people teased us, his expression never wavered.
But once we left campus, he would hold my hand and walk me home, or pin me against a wall in some alley and kiss me.
Every time I got hurt, he would pull me into his arms and whisper sweet nothings until I felt better.
“Emily Carson likes Caleb Whitmore” was a joke to everyone else.
But “Caleb Whitmore is Emily Carson’s boyfriend” was a secret only I knew.
Surrounded by the laughter, I started drinking, glass after glass, without stopping.
My phone buzzed again.
Another text from Caleb: [You don’t drink much. Don’t have so many. Listen to me.]
I looked up at him.
He was standing in front of Olivia, taking drink after drink for her, his body angled protectively in front of hers.
No one knew Caleb better than I did.
The way he felt about Olivia? He hadn’t been hiding it for a long time.
