Page 2 of Made Over by Meredith

Then the gorgeous siren licked her lips and pivoted away from me, her fingers absently brushing down my arm and across my torso.

I hadn’t seen her again since that night.

But here she was, smiling and laughing with Jimmy, not a care in the world. Like she hadn’t knocked me on my ass all those months ago.

“Hey.” Claire nudged me with her elbow. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. Fine. Why?”

Her mouth flattened in an attempt to hold back a smile. “You look….”

I ignored how she pointedly trailed off to gulp my beer. Claire wasn’t bossy like Rosie or nosey like Julie, but she was curious. In a big loud family, Claire was the quiet calm. So it beat the hell out of me how she ended up falling for Jimmy.

“He’s just trying to decide what to do about the girl at the bar,” he said, like the asshole he was. Though I could never really be mad at him. It was impossible. Not when he stood by Claire through everything at the school and basically ingratiated himself into our family.

Meredith perked up. “Who? Which one?”

Jimmy tipped his chin in the girl’s direction. “Short brown hair, white shirt.”

I sighed, and Claire laughed next to me. “Like two peas in a pod.”

Meredith, much like Jimmy, had a lot of energy, but hers was more simmering volcano where his was like a rocket ship. Between her smile and looks, you were lulled into a sense of welcomed security, and then she’d say something or laugh, her volume a fifteen out of ten, and you realized exactly how much she had inside of her.

It was terrifying.

And hypnotic.

“Oh, she’s cute,” Meredith said. “Why don’t you go talk to her?”

Before I could answer, Jimmy piped up. “He’s in recovery. Had his heart trampled on.”

I whipped my head around to him. “Will you shut up?”

But it was too late. Meredith already caught the scent and leaned toward me, interested. “What happened? Bad break-up?”

“No, we weren’t even…” I shook my head, rubbing my palms down my khaki-clad thighs. “It wasn’t like… It was only a couple of dates.”

Meredith tucked a long lock of honey-colored hair behind her ear. “You were in love with her after only a couple dates?”

“No.” I shot a death glare at my future brother-in-law. “I am not heartbroken, and I wasn’t in love.”

“So…” Meredith rolled her hands in a circle for more. “What’s the problem?”

The problem was I wanted to hang out with my sister, not be harassed by two loud-mouthed infiltrators on our quiet evening. Although I guessed it was safe to assume with Jimmy around, there would never be another quiet evening.

Make it double for Meredith.

When I didn’t answer, she stared at me, relentless. It would have taken a much stronger man than me to withstand her gray eyes burning a hole in my soul. “It wasn’t that big of a deal,” I said. “Didn’t work out is all.”

“He keeps getting friend-zoned,” Jimmy added, and I felt Claire’s leg kick out a second before he grunted as if she nailed him in the shin. “Ow. What? It’s true. Right, Rube?”

I rubbed at my forehead.

Meredith angled her head back. “Rube?”

“Short for Rubik’s Cube,” Jimmy explained. “This kid can solve them in, like, thirty seconds. It’s crazy.”

It’s not that I was embarrassed by my nerdy habits, and it’s not that I thought Meredith was a stereotypical big-breasted blonde, but I was, in fact, a nerd, and she definitely was a big-breasted blonde, and, historically, those two things never went well together. So, I didn’t want to add more fuel to the fire on that front.

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