Page 12 of Falling

“You see this?” She points at her face. “This is me pretending to be happy about it.”

“Jesus. What are you doing with your face?”

She frowns. “Smiling.”

“Maybe try it with less teeth. That was terrifying. You look like a Cheshire cat.”

“You sure know how to compliment a girl, don’t you, Miles?”

“If you wanted me to compliment you, I would have told you how fucking hot you look, but that didn’t seem appropriate. So you know what I said instead?”

She rolls her eyes as I stare at her, waiting for her to play my little game. “You said I looked good.”

“Exactly, because that’s thepolitething to say. Now, comehere,” I say, tugging on her bag that’s slung over her shoulder to pull her into me. I press two fingers on each side of her mouth, trying to pretend the skin-to-skin contact isn’t driving me insane. She looks up at me a little wide-eyed, but I fix the frown on her face into something less terrifying. “There you go! That's a real smile.”

She keeps her lips pressed in the weird shape I put them in as she mumbles, “This is really uncomfortable.”

“You’re right. Go back to scowling at me. I like that better,” I say, nodding. She laughs, pushing me in the shoulder. And then she does it. She really smiles at me. And a fucking dimple pops out. Adimple.Kill me now.

She shakes her head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re gorgeous.” I don’t even have time to register the surprise on her face, and I usher us out of her apartment before she can say anything. “The library awaits, princess. Let’s get going.”

From the wayWren gawked at me when I said we were going to the library, I thought she was going to scratch my eyes out. I don’t know if this is the best place to take a girl for a date, but considering what she studies in college and the complete lack of bookstores in our town, I thought this would be a good idea. Drake’s Library is the biggest one we have, and I’m sure it’s every bookworm's dream.

I don’t think I’ve seen Wren look happier. Or Ithinkshe’s happy. Every time she passes a book she’s read, she makes a weird angry grumbling sound like she hates it before she picks it up, shows it to me, and then tells me the entire plot from start to finish. She doesn’t leave a single detail out, and I couldn’t find anything more attractive.

“Sorry, I feel like I’m being really annoying, and this isn’texactly what a date is supposed to be like,” she sighs, walking beside me after placing another book down. We’ve been in the romance section since we got here, and I doubt anywhere else in this place would interest her.

“Don’t worry about it. I like hearing you talk,” I say, bumping my shoulder into hers. She just scoffs. “So, do you come here often?”

She laughs quietly, her whole body shaking with laughter. “To the library?”

I give her a sidelong glance. “Yeah. Why is that funny?”

“I’m an English and Creative Writing major, that’s all. I thought you knew that,” she explains. I swear my brain stopped working the second I met her.

“Right. Yeah. Sorry. I did know that. I’m just?—”

“Nervous?” she finishes, raising her eyebrows at me. I swallow, nodding. “You don’t have to be. I don’t bite.” I’m so fucking captivated by her that I don’t even make a joke. She continues talking, and her voice is like literal music to my ears. “But yeah, I do come here quite often. My dad used to take my sister and me here every weekend after our parents got divorced. I think my dad was just unsure what to do with us, so we spent most of our days together just walking around here, and we’d take out books that we liked. We’d come straight after school sometimes just for story time. We would have just preferred hanging out with him, but it was more fun than going to dance classes or going to the rink with our mom.”

“Are you guys close?” I ask.

I watch the way her whole face lights up when she says, “I’d say so. He’s a real goof sometimes, but it’s a nice balance with how strict my mom can be.” I hum in response. “What about you? Are you close with your parents?”

I try my best not to seem uncomfortable with her question. My shirt suddenly feels like it’s suffocating me, but I just shrug it off. “Not as much as we used to be, but it’s cool.”

Recently finding out that my mom has been cheating on my dad for years is anythingbutcool. The fact that they’re still together, pretending to be in love with each other, is even less cool. They’ve even convinced my sister and me that it’s totally okay and that we don’t have to worry about them getting a divorce anytime soon, but I’d honestly rather them just get it over with. It’s hard to watch. I’ve been avoiding them for months and I really don’t know when I’ll be able to face them again. Not only did I lose my best friend in March, but I lost my parents too.

“I’m sorry,” Wren says. “That must suck.”

I sniffle. “It’s fine, honestly. We’ve never really been some big, let’s all talk about our feelings, kind of family anyway. It’s cool this way.”

“I get that,” she says. It’s like refreshing. She doesn’t immediately go into fixing mode and try to figure out what’s wrong with me. She just lets it go because I said I didn’t want to talk about it. “How about this? I pick you a book, and you can pick me one. Whoever finishes it first gets a prize.”

“I never knew you could win prizes for finishing first,” I tease.

“Are you projecting because your last girlfriend didn’t give you a medal and congratulate you for jizzing in your pants while she was still dry?”

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