Page 23 of It Was Always You

I grabbed the throw pillow beside me and chucked it at him.

He blocked it with his hands and laughed. "Sorry. It was just right there. I had to say it." And he just kept on laughing.

"I'm glad you can at least amuse yourself," I said as seriously as I could muster. I couldn't let him know that I actually kind of enjoyed his teasing. Which was another stupid thing. It reminded me of something Raven was ranting about last week. She said that when a boy teases a girl and we dismiss it as harmless and just a showof affection, we’re actually encouraging future domestic abuse by enabling this behavior and mentality.

But it was hard to think of Noah's teasing like that when my stomach did little flips every time he winked at me.

"Okay, sorry." His face sobered, and he looked repentant. "What are the guidelines that we need to set?"

I shifted in my seat, preparing myself to talk about possibly awkward things.

"I was thinking that since we're pretending to be dating, we’ll probably end up in awkward situations. So I want to make sure that we set up some rules for each other, so we don’t cross any lines of comfort."

That came out weird, but I hoped he got the gist of what I was saying.

"That sounds like a good plan." He nodded, and for the first time all day he actually looked serious.

"Good. And I figured I'd jot them all down here, so I can send them to you later."

"Is this like a binding contract? Are you going to send me to a fake-dating jail if I mess up?"

"Of course not."

"Good."

"So do you have any specific things you don’t want me to say or do while we're in front of people?"

He cleared his throat and sat up taller. "Actually, today…" He shifted his gaze to the side, as if about to saysomething nerve-wracking. "Um, when you put your hand on my arm and told me I had a million-dollar smile, I felt really uncomfortable. Like, I really didn't like it."

For a moment, I sat there in silence, stunned that he would actually feel that way. Of all the things that happened today, he thoughtthatwas bad?

"I'm sorry, Noah. I had no idea..."

And then, of course, his lips lifted up into that million-dollar-smile of his.

"I'm joking, Lexi. I really don't care what you say or do to me." He burst up laughing. "You should have seen your face, though."

I grabbed the pillow again and threw it at him, this time hitting him right in the face.

"Hey!" He rubbed his eyes, but I couldn't manage to feel one ounce of guilt for making them water.

"So this whole conversation’s going to be pointless then?" I asked.

He held his hands up in surrender. "That was the last one. I promise for real this time."

"It’d better be."

"You won't even need to use this pillow again." He set it down on the floor, as if that would help prove he was suddenly trustworthy. Then he pulled the recliner back to its seating position. "I'll even sit here like I'm in a business meeting with you."

"You really don't have to do that," I said.

He tilted his head and scrunched up one side of his face. "Actually, I probably do. I tend to get unruly when I'm relaxed."

"Unruly?"

"Yeah, that Jane Austen lady must be getting to me."

"Okay," I said, finally ready to move on to the reason why I'd invited him over in the first place. "I guess I just wanted to figure out what we'll do in certain situations at school. Like, how far are we going to take this?"

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