“Oh I wouldn’t judge you if you were,†she said but the smile on her face revealed otherwise, “but how would I know? I don’t know anything about you, you could be a total tea and biscuits sort of bloke and I’d never guess it,†she added, flipping the page of the magazine to the next page. But she did sort of secretly hope that he was not that kind of guy because she’d never let him live it down if he had the hobbies of a grandma. It was way too early and probably a bad idea but the girl did have her own guesses about the sort of person she thought he was, or better yet, the sort of person she wanted him to turn out to be. Too cool for everyone else on the outside, sweet and looking for love on the inside, the embodiment of the Gryffindor teenager’s favorite literary trope. He had his sweet moments, like these, and even if he was sort of still being a jerk most of the time his insults were growing on her. She might have been a little infatuated, just a tiny bit.
“It’s not!†she insisted, making a face of suspicion and wondering if maybe she had the wrong answer. It was times like this, when they disagreed, that she wondered if he’d like her better if she were edgier or more like, well, Allison and Fiora. But it was a thought she didn’t like to think about for too long because then it opened the more important question of how she felt about Isaac. And Magnolia still wanted to pretend that she felt nothing. “Well I mean like you know, I wouldn’t want to see them,†she tried again, feeling a little stupid for thinking she had to rearrange her words to get a better response from him. She was an opinionated girl; she never felt the need to do this around her best friends so why around this boy she (supposedly) didn’t care about at all?
“Sorry Isaac, I meant you’re feverish, you’re not my type at all,†she said as seriously as she could, though of course it was the sort of thing she’d said to a boy that was exactly her type and Isaac checked all of the boxes. This interest in him only furthered when he asked her to read something from the magazine. Magnolia looked at him for a moment but had an extremely hard time telling him no when he looked equal parts vulnerable and attractive at the same time. “Alright,†she said finally, leaning back against the pillow as well as she propped her knees up to rest the magazine against them. “Oh, what about this one? Rupert Hartwood on Love, Relationships, and the Power of Music,†she offered, but before he had a chance to choose, she started to read.