More Flirting Games (The Flirting Series - Young Adult) by Stella Wilkinson Read Free Book Online

secret?”
    “Definitely.”
Rose nodded. She had no desire for her family to hear about this. Not just how
embarrassing that she was kissing a boy, but the reaction if they knew it was
Leo Flanagan.
    ***
    Jack went
up to his room after the family games session on Christmas day and switched on
his phone. He looked again at the reply he had received from Sophie a couple of
days ago.

“Who is this?”
    He smiled
again at her boldness. He was pretty sure she knew perfectly well that the text
message complimenting her on her new haircut had been from him. She had
suggested he text her sometime and ten minutes later, he had. He still didn’t
know why he did it. But now she was just punishing him for taking months to
text her by pretending she didn’t know it was from him. But she was trying to
play a master. He could see straight through it.
    That is, he
was fairly sure she knew. Or maybe he wasn’t sure at all. Perhaps she
had a lot of boys sending her messages? There was no doubt she was a pretty
girl. And it was true he had never given her his number so maybe she genuinely
didn’t know who it was from?
    Just in
case she did know and was trying to play it cool he had waited a couple of
days, reviewing her reply. His instinct had been to text her straight back,
with an outraged: “It’s Jack!” but he held himself in check. That was
surely exactly what she had hoped would happen. Girls could be manipulative and
if she were trying for a reaction she wouldn’t get it. At least not straight
away; she had waited two days before replying. Two could play those games.
    He checked
the time. It was after midnight, so strictly speaking he had let three days go
by.
    Maybe it
was time to respond. If she then waited another two days to answer then he
would know for sure she was just trying to appear aloof and it was all an act.
Somehow he hoped she wouldn’t. He’d had a few glasses of red wine with dinner.
It had been laid on for the adults and as he was nineteen in a few weeks he
counted as an adult now. The wine was still in his system, making him feel like
he wanted to keep going, but everyone else had been ready for bed. If he’d
still been at University he and his mates would have gone looking for a party,
but at Compass Court he heard only deathly silence.
    He had
briefly considered knocking on Anne-Marie’s door and seeing if she wanted to
take up their kiss where it had left off on Christmas Eve under the mistletoe,
but he didn’t know which was her room and was bound to wake up the wrong person
if he went blundering around the girls dormitories. In truth, Anne-Marie wasn’t
his type anyway. She had just been the only girl there worth kissing.
    He wanted
to text Sophie back. Sophie was certainly his type to look at; she’d be anyone’s type , he thought. But
he had been put off by her keenness. He liked her when she was fun and flirty,
he hated needy and easy.
    Though to
give her credit she had never once called him after their night together. She
could easily have gotten his number from Rose. But she hadn’t, she wasn’t
needy. She didn’t even seem to have mentioned it to Rose. Also she definitely
wasn’t easy, maybe she had been with him, but he knew for a fact that it had
only been him. While that was very flattering it was also concerning.
    He tapped
his phone, he didn’t want to hurt her, he wasn’t looking to get involved and he
didn’t want to lead her on.
    Though she
couldn’t be that keen on him after all, if it had taken her two days to reply.
He scrolled through his contacts until he came to her name.
    What should
he put? Nothing flirty. Just a nice message to let her know for definite that
the last text had been from him.
    He typed
and deleted a few times then settled on:

It’s Jack. How was your
Christmas?
    There, nice
and bland. He hit send and chucked his phone on the bedside table. Turned out
the light and prepared to go to sleep.
    Beep beep.
    He sat up
and grabbed his phone in the