Page 33 of Not in My Book

Jess:we need to save rosie

Tyler:They’re probably still on the date. Let’s not panic yet.

I rolled onto my side, pulling my blanket around my shoulders.

Rosie:date is over. so bad. i want to die

Logan:tell us everything.

Rosie:we went to a nice restaurant, didn’t rly speak, and then he awkwardly walked me home

Tyler:He walked you home? That was nice of him.

Jess:or the BARE MINIMUM. can we pls stop praising men for doing the bare minimum??

Logan:sooo true bestie

Jess:shut up logan

Tyler:I can’t wait to read about it in workshop.

Logan:this is more of a horror than a romance

Rosie:y’all are ridiculous

I muted the conversation and spent the next hour scrolling through Twitter. Just as I was drifting into sleep, I got another text.

Aiden:Chapter done.

Eagerly, I reached for my laptop on my nightstand and opened our shared doc. The icon with his picture was still on the doc, his cursor at his last words, which meant he was still online and viewing the document. I scrolled to the top of his chapter and started reading.

It was unexpected when Maxine invited me out for dinner. It was even more unexpected when I couldn’t shake my nerves.

I tried to remind myself it wasn’t a real date. Rather a dinner between two colleagues. Who despised each other. Who’d never really seen each other outside of work. Who I desperately tried to make conversation with every day only to ruin everything a moment later.

I willed the anxiousness away, but there was something more hanging in the air. That’s the way it always was with Maxine. We hurled insults back and forth, but how much of them did we really mean?

It’s not a date. It’s a dinner between colleagues. That’s it.I repeated it like a mantra in my head. I hadn’t been on a real date since my last relationship, and even then I wasn’t in the right mind to focus on my date because of everything that had happened with my mom. I wasn’t in any position to put myself out there when it felt like my world had crumbled. The truth was Maxine was so deep under my skin, it was like she had become my veins, not leaving a single part of me untouched. Dating had never been my priority, but I couldn’t say no to her.

—Excerpt fromUntitledby Rosie Maxwell and Aiden Huntington

CHAPTER NINE

A million questions bloomed in my mind. His chapter was so brutally honest, I really couldn’t tell if he was writing as Aiden or as Hunter. I kept reading.

When I arrived at her apartment, I stopped short at the door to her building. Anger and fear for her bubbled up in me. Her first initial and last name were clearly displayed on the buzzer for apartment 9C, but I didn’t need to buzz myself up. There was a brick holding her door open. One of her neighbors, or an intruder, walked past me into her building without batting an eye. I followed, trying to unclench my fists, my nails pressing crescents into the palm of my hand. The elevator groaned with each movement, and I swear I thought the cables would snap.

I would never admit it to her, but Maxine was the smartest woman I’d ever met. During her first staff meeting, she’d been unafraid. Even new to the team and in a room of strangers, she’d had no problem clearly stating her opinions. She even made the entire room laugh once or twice.

I hesitated as I continued to scroll down. I didn’t want to believe he was referring to our first class together last semester. I’d been so nervous during our first workshop that I kept babbling and raising my hand and … Ididmake a few people laugh. Surely it was a coincidence. I was just reading into it; there was no way he was actually talking aboutme.

But I was starting to seriously doubt her intelligence if she lived here.

Okay, maybe he was.

It was reckless, putting her safety in such blatant danger. I knocked on the door in three quick knocks. I could hear her quiet murmurs through the door and although her voice usually soothed me, I couldn’t shake my anger.

She unlocked at least three different locks and answered the door with a smile that was like a constellation in a clear night sky. I didn’t want to look away, I wanted to study it and her. To know who she was outside of the one building we were seemingly confined to. This was the chance I had been waiting for and her smile reminded me why. I wished I could tell her I wasn’t mad at her, butforher.

---