Page 29 of The Kiss Class

Lost in thought and texting, I collide with someone. A bunch of stuff clatters to the floor.

My apology at the ready because I’m guilty of texting and walking, a sweet baby powder scent meets my nose.

It’s Cara.

Something flickers inside. “Sorry, I was just texting a friend, asking about where the best place to get a tree is in Cobbiton.” That sounds wholesome and cannot be misconstrued as flirting, which will both keep me from getting booted off the team and is a little more like the guy I was before being a hockey hottie—puck bunny term, not mine—went to my head.

“You were what?” she asks slowly, palming her phone.

I scramble to pick up a couple of notebooks and a tin of pencils, then pass them to her. Our hands graze, sending the hall slightly off-axis.

“Getting a Christmas tree,” I clarify.

“Me too.”

“You too what?” Confusion dents my brow.

“I was texting someone about getting a tree.”

“’Tis the season,” I say.

We stare at each other for a long moment as the conversation I’d struck up with My Dream Girl lines up like a row of evergreens.

“No,” I say slowly.

“No,” she repeats.

“Text pal?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer.

Her lips part. “Nolan?”

I tilt my head, giving it a shake. “The Zamboni driver?Sorry. My mistake. I’m just texting a friend. It’s not outside the bounds I made about my promise.”

Unblinking, Cara says, “That was my sister.”

I frown when I remember the triplets parading out of Badaszek’s office.

She explains how her sister pretended to be her and struck up a conversation with Nolan. “She snuck onto Dad’s phone and forwarded the number, but it must’ve been the wrong one.”

I rub the space between my eyebrows. It seems like Cara and I have been on a collision course. “Nolan Arscott. Pierre Arsenault. Easy-ish mistake to make.”

“So we’ve been texting?” Cara asks, dumbfounded.

I ring my hand behind my neck. “I guess so.”

She gives the middle distance a side-eye. “What sorcery is this?”

“I think it’s a series of coincidences.”

“Seems like something that has my sisters’ names written all over it.”

“I was thinking it was a team initiation. But maybe it was a happy accident that they set you up on a blind date with Richard and on a text date with Nolan, aka me.”

“But that’s the problem. You’re you.”

I slouch backward, not used to women pushing me away, instead of dragging me with painted nails into their clutches. Not that I objected . . . until now.

She winces. “I didn’t mean it like that. On paper, you and I aren’t—what I mean is, you have a reputation and I don’t. My sisters call me the innocent one. The brainy one.”

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