Page 34 of Falling

He makes a noise in the back of his throat, nodding at me in the mirror. “You do see how this is a problem, right?”

“Why? Because you’re incapable of keeping your dick in your pants?” I can feel it pressing into me, but I’m smart enough to ignore it. He just rolls his eyes. “Just feel what my body is doing when I go down. You’re leaning too far forward, and your back isn’t set in the right position.”

I lower myself down, holding position for a few seconds before coming back up. I watch him watch me as I repeat the motion again before moving away. I watch him do it himself until he’s got the hang of it.

“Wasn’t so hard, was it, big guy?” I tease, dropping back onto the floor.

“It wasn’t the squat that was hard, Wren.”

I just shake my head and continue doing my sit-ups until he eventually joins me. We work out in silence, and I’ve never found anything more peaceful.

That is until he slides his phone over to me and I stare at it. “I found some questions on BuzzFeed,” he explains, “I think we should know the answers to these if we’re going to pretend to be a couple.”

I click his phone, and it opens immediately. “You should put a password on here, you know?”

He shrugs. “I’ve got nothing to hide. The questions are in my Notes app.”

I scroll and open the app. I skim through the first one that pops up. They’re all relationship-based or weird icebreakers to get to know another person.

“Did you spend the entire night typing up these questions? It says you made this at three in the morning,” I say, laughing.

“I couldn’t sleep, and I copied and pasted them.”

“You’re full of surprises, aren't you?” I murmur, shaking my head until I land on a question. I smile, looking back at him. “What was the first thing you thought about me when we met?”

Miles runs a hand through his hair. “All I could think about was how hot you were.”

“You’ve got to take this seriously or you wasted your night doing this for no reason,” I argue, poking him with my foot.

“Iamtaking this seriously.” I poke him again. “Fine. I just wanted to keep you talking to me. Keep you interested. I could tell you didn’t really want to be there, so I had to think of things to say to keep you talking to me. I just wanted you to like me, and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.”

His honesty catches me off guard.

I know I’m not the most fun to hang out with at parties, but there’s something about the fact that Miles went out of his way to make sure I had a good time and to talk to me that makes me feel… better.

I smile. “Well, thanks for being honest.”

He nudges his foot into mine. “What about you?”

“My first thought was: God, I really hope he doesn’t die right now because that would suck. And then I thought you were pretty annoying, and then youbeggedme to go on that date, but you’re more tolerable now.”

“Just tolerable, huh?” My lips roll between my teeth, and I try not to smile. He doesn’t need to know how much having him in my life has actually made me happy. I don’t give him an answer, and he pulls his phone out of my hand. “Did you have any phases growing up?”

I shove my face into my hands. “Way too many to count.”

“Tell me. I want to know what my little Wrenny girl was like.” He pulls at my hands, and I close my eyes, shaking my head with embarrassment.

“Well, my first phase was making everyone call me Wren instead of my first name,” I admit. A crease forms between his eyebrows.

“See, I knew something was off about you.”

“My first name is Amelia, and my middle name is Wren. Amelia Wren Hackerly. I hated the way Amelia sounded too formal, and it’s what my mom shouts at me when I’m on the ice. My mom didn’t take my dad’s last name when they got married, so Wren Hackerly always sounded better to me. When I started school, I just told everyone that my name was Wren, and it stuck.”

He blinks at me. “Okay,that’s a shocker.”

“It’s really not that big of a deal,” I say, flicking my hair out of my face. “I went through my One Direction phase, a lot later than I’d like to admit. I once went through a British phase, where I forced everyone in my house to speak with a British accent for a week. I forced my family to eat my terrible creations that I thought were gourmet meals after watching MasterChef, but they were really just random condiments that I found in the refrigerator. I was just a general nightmare. I thought that I didn’t have friends in middle school other than Scarlett, Kennedy, and Gigi because I was skating all the time, but it’s because I was a little weirdo.”

“I think I might be falling for you,” he blurts out.

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