Page 32 of Crazy for this Girl

I step back from him and gesture with my hand to the space between us. “Alright, Mr. Perfect, you try it.”

He enters the area but doesn’t pry his focus off me. Instead, he just stands closer and towers over me because he can. “You need a partner.”

“I am not shaking my butt around you, Cal Harper. You’d be the last person I’d—”

“Why?” he butts in like I’m being irrational. “I’m the only one that’s going to be honest with you.”

Hard pass, all day, every day.

“Are you out of your mind?” But we all know the answer to that question. “I wouldn’t even do that with Hannah.”

He heaves a disbelieving brow. “I highly doubt that.”

He’s right. She wouldn’t judge me for my awful dance moves and I wouldn’t really care either way.

However, Cal is a whole different entity and scenario.

I’m going to feel stupid and trip over moves that I can’t get right when he’s not in the room in the first place.

“Fine,” he sighs as if I’m being the biggest pain in the butt, not him, and pivots. Then he practically drops his butt in my hands and begins shaking it, knocking into my stomach and almost sending me tumbling backward.

A burst of laughter rumbles from my throat as he continues spazzing out like he’s getting tased. His own chortling fills the room, mixing with mine, before he stops and turns back around to face me.

“See?” He extends his arms proudly. “Shakin’ it like a salt shaker.”

“Please don’t ever do that again,” I plead when, really, the boy can do whatever he wants, and I’d be fine with it. Except maybe turning into a priest where half our conversations would be out of the question.

“You liked it.”

I tap at my temple. “I think you’ve been knocked in the head too many times when getting tackled.”

“A few times.” Our eyes lock together and it steals my breath away.

He’s so beautiful.

He always becomes more beautiful each summer he comes back. How he’s my friend is beyond me because I’m so plain and weird, and he’s funny and handsome. I’ve seen way too often how looks can cause people to change. How their egos explode and they leave everyone behind. I’d be devastated if he transformed into one of those people.

“I’ve missed you,” he mutters, shoving his hands into his jeans, and my heart flutters happily in my chest. “It’s been boring without you.”

“How so?”

“Just…people aren’t like you. Girls aren’t like you. They’re too worried about going to the mall and the next guy they’re gonna date.”

“How do you know I don’t go to the mall?”

“Because you did a biology project with a guy and gave a shit about the project. You probably wrote the report because you felt bad that you gave him the short end of the stick depriving him of vitamins, didn’t you?”

Yes.

I bite the inside of my cheek and Cal’s mouth curves into a victorious smile. He can read me like the back of his hand and I’ve permitted him this power.

“Oh, Laynee…” he muses, decimating some distance between us. “I seriously wouldn’t change anything about you except your ability to dance.”

I shake my head, trying my hardest to stop the grin that wants to form on my face. “Why? Would we have dance parties and strobe lights?”

“If that’s what you wanted to do. However, I don’t really dance.”

“You just did.”

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