Page 27 of Hold Me Today

Words fly to my tongue and stay in silence. Like an idiot, I repeat, “Yeah,” becauseclearlythat’s a valid addition to our conversation right about now. Very riveting commentary. Honestly, how I don’t win any conversational awards is beyond me.

Instead of walking away with the unofficial Most Likely to Flunk Out of College award, my fellow high school peers did me an injustice. Obviously, I should have won Most Likely to Stand Silent When Faced With a Sexy Man Who Also Happens to Be My Best Friend’s Brother.

Go me.

“You didn’t ask me if I knew anything else about you.”

Honestly, I’m not sure I can handle anymore revelations today. Not when he seems to have an arsenal at the ready to make me question everything I know about him. “Was I supposed to?”

He doesn’t look away. “I think you should.”

Heart beating rapidly, I tap the outside of my thighs. “All right.”Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. “If we’re not friends, prove it and forever hold your peace. Unless there’s something else you know about me.”

Pushing off the wall, he slips past me but turns once he’s another foot or two away. Walking backward, toward the main room ofAgape, he flashes me a small, get-ready-for-it grin that lights me aflame. “I know that you liked me for years, Ermione. That, on the night of your prom, I crushed you when you realized I wasn’t going to kiss you. It made me sick, thinking that, when all I wanted to do was to make you feel better, that I’d somehow made you feel worse instead.”

Ringing.

A loud, ear-piercing ring is all I hear as his words sink in and the floor beneath my feet fails to heed my wishes and do me a solid.

By opening up and swallowing me whole.

“Nick,” I whisper because, oh my God, I need to saysomething. Holy shit. Holy shit, I’m panicking. Straight up, freaking out as I stare at my best friend’s older brother who apparently has knownfor yearsthat I spent the majority of our youth wanting him the same way all the girls in my school wanted Nick from the Backstreet Boys. I’d wanted a different Nick, one less famous, and yet it might as well have been the same thing: neither me nor any of my classmates were going to get the Nick we wanted.

I swipe my tongue over my suddenly dry lips. I feel parched. On the verge of dehydration and a new illness calledfuck-me-sideways-this-can’t-be-happening-itis.The cure: currently unknown. “Nick—”

He watches me steadily, and there it is—the challenge in his gaze . . . proving me wrong. That I don’t know him at all and have maybeneverreally known him.

“Tell me something,” he says, turning on his heel as he moves toward the main room. He casts a quick glance over his shoulder, and I can’t read himagain.Embarrassment slinks into my veins and turns my limbs to liquid ice. “Tell me all about your dream salon and don’t leave a damn thing out. I’m gonna bring it to life for you, just you wait and see.”

The last thing I actually see before he turns the corner is his amazing ass in those dark jeans he’s wearing.

This was supposed to be an exchange of services: he pulls a Chip and Joanna Gaines and rehabs my salon and I fake-date him until the paparazzi learn that Nick is the most boring lead who’ll ever exist.

Except . . .

Nick apparently beat up the bully who made my life hell in high school.

Andhe knew how I felt about him on prom night when he danced with me in his arms, and I learned that even though I was finally eighteen and totally fair game, he’d fallen for someone else.

The woman who dumped him at the altar six years later.

10

Mina

“Welcome to our final stop of the night, Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, where the tombstones are riddled with bullet holes and full-body apparitions are often spotted under the starry night sky.”

Almost in unison, every member in the tour group holds up their cell phones and cameras and trains them on Effie, who’s perched next to a tombstone and decked out in full eighteenth-century garb.

It’s been a few months since I last joined my best friend on one of her tours, and since I’ve heard this particular ghost story atleastas many times as I’ve watchedMy Big Fat Greek Wedding, I linger at the back of the group and keep my hands stuffed deep in the pockets of my wool coat.

The bite of the February wind cuts through my thick, fleece-lined leggings and I burrow deep in my scarf. It’s cold, my nipples feel like frozen raisins in my bra, and I’ve spent the last two miles wondering why I opted for a dress tonight instead of jeans. Fashion over comfort was not the right decision, my friends.

I may have begged Effie for a girl’s night—all the better to corner her and ask when the hell she told Nick how I’d crushed on him for years—but with the touring season slowing down for the next few months, I wasn’t about to miss tonight for anything.

When you’re best friends with someone, their successes becomeyoursuccesses and I make sure to hop on Effie’s tours as often as possible. Tonight, she’s got a few of the Boston Blades, and their significant others, along for a spooky walk through the city. It’s a huge step for her career, and when she blurted out the news over the phone earlier today, excitement dogging every word, I knew my night would be spent tromping around graveyards and narrow, gaslit streets.

“And the bullets?” one of the hockey players calls out, his arm wrapped around a willowy redhead. “That’s a real story?”

---