Chapter 22 #2
“You’ll pull it off.”
He gives me another look. “You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.” I point at him with the last of my sandwich. “You got me a date, didn’t you? That’s pulling off the impossible.”
“Ha.” He grins, the eyebrow piercing glinting when his brow lifts. “So it is a date.”
“I walked into that.”
“Little bit.” He pushes off the counter and drops onto a furniture box, making himself at home.
“Go on then. Give me the fashion show. I’ll eat the rest of the sandwiches while I judge, so you don’t have to spiral if you should bring them to the date or not.
Wouldn’t want you to look like a deranged picnic person. ”
“You’re going to be terrible at this.”
“Probably,” he agrees, already reaching for another one. “Go.”
I gather everything from the living room and disappear into the bedroom, trying on the first thing I grab, which is a long maroon sweater and black stockings.
When I come back out, Nevan is mid-bite. He looks at me, then looks back at his sandwich. “Nope.”
“You didn’t even think about it.”
“Didn’t need to. You wore that Saturday.” He takes another bite, completely unruffled.
I look down at myself, then back at him—the flannel, the worn jeans, the lack of any attempt whatsoever. “Says you. When did you last vary your outfit?”
“I’m an outfit repeater. Same food orderer, music relistener, and movie rewatcher.” He shrugs. “I know what I like.” He twirls a finger in the general direction of my bedroom. “But you need something more special. Not everyday stuff.”
“Fine,” I mutter, retreating.
I pull out the only thing I brought that could be considered fancy.
A dark, flowy dress that hits mid-calf. I don’t even like it.
It drowns me, all that fabric, and the color washes me out.
But Spencer liked it. Said it was elegant.
I’d packed it for the Vance Hotel Halloween party I was supposed to attend with him, Aubrey, and Sienna.
Oh well.
I pull it on anyway and go back out.
Nevan is looking at his phone with a gold chain I haven’t noticed before caught between his lips while he scrolls. He glances up when he hears me. His face does something complicated that he doesn’t quite manage to hide in time.
“Would you ask me on a second date if I wore this?” I do a half-hearted spin.
He tilts his head, studying me. “After prom night? Sure.”
Rude.
“That’s it. I’m staying home.” I turn for the bedroom.
“Lemon.” He catches my wrist. “Hey.”
I stop. And I don’t know why, maybe it’s the gentleness of it or the accumulated weight of the morning, but my eyes blur when I turn back.
He searches my face. “Don’t be hurt. You don’t even like it yourself.”
Which is not the point, but also entirely the point.
“It’s fine.”
“Lemon.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Rule one,” he says simply. “We don’t lie to each other.”
I stare at him, ignoring the small, stupid flutter my stomach does at the word we. “We have rules now?”
“Everything needs rules.” He says it as if it’s obvious. “So. You don’t like it.”
“I don’t,” I admit.
“Why do you have it then?”
“My ex liked it.” I pick at the fabric. “Said it was elegant. Appropriate.”
Nevan looks at me, and his expression says everything his mouth doesn’t—those are not good reasons to own a dress—and something about that look, about being seen that clearly makes my throat tighten in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
“I thought I was going to marry him,” I admit. “And now I have to go back to what’s-your-favorite-color conversations, and I just… It’s too much. It’s too early. Why am I even doing this?”
Nevan’s thumb is moving in one slow stroke over my wrist above my scraped palm.
“Because you’re allowed to have fun. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that right now…” He pauses. “What was he like? The ex.”
“Spencer was… he wasn’t big on affection, not in public, not really in private either.
He was nice to me, though, just never… excited about me, I guess?
We were together for a while, but he always wanted me smaller.
Not just physically, though I’m pretty sure he thought that too.
” I pick at a loose thread on the dress.
“I kept folding myself down to fit whatever shape he needed, and it was never good enough anyway.”
Nevan’s jaw tightens. “Sounds like a dick.”
“Yeah. I don’t want him back, that’s for sure. Jasper put a mental hex on him.”
That startles a laugh out of Nevan, and the tension in the room breaks. “Good. He deserves whatever Jasper’s got.”
“That’s rule two,” I say without thinking.
“What is?”
“We back each other’s hexes. No questions asked.”
That one feels important.
“Okay. Rule two.” He squeezes my wrist before letting go. “Now go find clothes that don’t belong at a prom, yeah?”
“Okay.”
A few minutes later, I come back out in a cream blouse tucked into high-waisted pants, fake glasses perched on my nose.
Nevan has somehow started assembling the furniture from the box in my absence—white pieces of wood and hardware that maybe belong to a dresser spread around him on the floor, instructions set to one side and apparently being ignored. He looks up when he hears me, screwdriver in hand, and grins.
“Sexy librarian. Bold choice.”
“It’s sophisticated.”
“Meh.” He points the screwdriver at my face. “What happens when he wants to kiss you? Two pairs of glasses. You’ll bonk noses and ruin it.”
“He’s not going to kiss me.”
“He absolutely is.” He sets the screwdriver down, makes a scandalous kissy face, and fires off a string of aggressively wet muah, muah, muah sounds in my direction.
“Oh my God,” I recoil. “Okay. Mystery solved. That’s why Sydney revoked your kissing privileges.”
“Wow.” He clutches his chest. “Cruel. I was vulnerable just now.”
“You were moist just now.”
He snorts, then goes back to wrestling with the dresser. “Hypothetically,” he says, not looking at me. “If someone were about to attempt a second first kiss. Purely theoretical. What would be the optimal strategy?”
“Rule one,” I say immediately.
“What?”
“No hiding behind fake hypotheticals. We agreed. Radical honesty or emotional death.”
He sighs as though I’ve personally ruined his life, then glances up at me, mouth crooked. “Fine. If I were about to attempt a second first kiss, what would be the optimal strategy?”
I consider this very seriously. “Grab her face. Tell her you physically cannot survive one more second without kissing her. Then go for it.”
The screwdriver stills in his hand.
“Wow,” he says after a moment. “That’s… unhinged.”
“It’s romantic.”
“It’s how you get maced.”
“Only if she doesn’t like you.”
“I don’t know,” he mutters. “I feel like even women who do would mace me.”
Heat creeps up my neck. “I read a lot of romance novels, okay?”