Page 35 of Not in My Book

Aiden:Okay.

Rosie:just jump in whenever!!

Aiden:Okay.

I smiled triumphantly and continued to type.

“The reason I asked you to dinner was because I wanted to call a truce,” I said, tilting my chin up, feigning confidence. Underneath the table, I wiped my palms on my skirt.

His brow furrowed, lines appearing across his forehead. “A truce?”

“I want this presentation to be as painless as possible. There’s no way out of working together.” He nodded, conceding. “And frankly, I’m exhausted by hating you and working so hard at the same time. So, I thought I’d eliminate one of the factors.”

I waited for Aiden to jump in, but he didn’t.

“A truce,” he said as if he was tasting the word on his tongue.

Aiden finally jumped in.

“What would this truce entail?

I straightened, beaming at him. “I’ve decided I don’t hate you anymore. Once we’re done, however, feel free to hate me.”

I paused, unsure if I was writing solely as Maxine now, and he was writing as Hunter. He started to type.

“All it took to get you to stop hating me was taking you out? I should’ve done this years ago.”

I ignored him. “Truce?” I held my hand out across the table.

He shook it once.“Does this truce mean we have to be friends now, or is it more of a ceasefire?”

I pondered this for a moment, my nose scrunching. “Well, if we were friends, you’d have to give up valuable information about yourself.”

He rolled his eyes, sipping his water. “Oh really, like what?”

“I don’t know. I sit five feet away from you every day, but I hardly know anything about you. I don’t even know where you’re from.”

He frowned. “I’m from here. I thought you knew that.”

I waved him off. “I know you’re from New York, but where? I bet you went to some prep school on the Upper East Side.”

“Upper West Side,” he corrected. “From kindergarten to high school.”

I placed my elbows on the table in an unladylike manner and held my chin in my hands. “What was it like growing up in New York?”

“What was it like growing up in Tennessee?” he countered.

I watched the shield in his eyes go up to protect himself. I didn’t want to push him too far, but I was so desperate for even the smallest tidbit about him to satiate my curiosity.

“It was okay,” I said thoughtfully. “It wasn’t always easy being a Hispanic kid in school in the south.”

“You’re Peruvian, right?”

My chin jerked back, surprised. “Yeah. I am. How’d you know that?”

“You came in one day with a bag that had a pin with a red flag,” he said, sheepishly. “I looked it up after class.”

Aiden’s cursor quickly backed up, deletingclassand replacing it withwork. My heart leaped a little in my chest.

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