Page 61 of Force a Date

LIV: If I’m not at work on Monday, you’ll know why.

HUDSON: You’re a pain in my ass.

LIV: Sounds awful.

HUDSON: I’ll be there in ten minutes.

eighteen

. . .

LIV

Hudson is pissed and I’m not entirely sure why.

Ice cream should cheer everyone up and he’s sitting across from me at the picnic table glaring at me like I just knocked his out of his hand.

He doesn’t have any.

“You’d be happier if you went and got yourself some soft-serve, Hudson.”

“I’d be happier if you didn’t text me and make me your personal Uber,” he grumbles back, but he really didn’t have to come.

Do you mean like the guilt trip you didn’t need to give him either?

I sigh and watch the passing cars on the road. I knew this was going to happen. I just thought nobody was immune to ice cream.

I guess I was wrong.

“You are the only one who has lived through my mother’s tortuous ways,” I reply. “No one else would understand the SOS signal I was trying to put out there when I said I needed to leave.”

“You need friends.”

“Girls are overrated.” I return my focus back to him and bat my eyelashes to get him to lighten up. “Besides, how much fun is this?”

“I could be getting fucked up at the bar right now, which is where I was headed.”

Shit.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Guilt takes over my appetite because I didn’t know he had plans as I rise from the metal bench. “God, you have no problem speaking your mind any other time, why didn’t you just tell me?”

I toss my strawberry-covered ice cream cone in the nearby garage bin and wipe my fingers with the napkin.

“What are you doing?”

I ignore him and get rid of my napkin. “C’mon, just drop me off and you can go out.”

“I bought you that ice cream.” My eyes saunter back over to him still sitting there, completely out of place because the picnic table is red and too small for the god of muscle over here.

“Did you want me to pay you back?”

Hudson’s glower deepens when he uses his palms and pushes himself up to stand. “You’re a pain in my entire ass.” He mutters that part and, to some girls, that might hurt.

Me, on the other hand, I’m so used to him being an asshole that it’s second nature.

He turns and strides toward his bike when I say, “I can go with you. I have my ID and everything.”

I didn’t bring Rory to Norah’s wedding because it makes me uncomfortable and I didn’t want her to feel a certain sort of way when Norah didn’t ask her to be the flower girl.

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