Page 22 of Head Over Heels

Except honestly? I kind of know I’m not.

She gets out of the car and waves goodbye and I pull away from the curb. Headed home. Which is where I’ve wanted to be all evening.

Truth?

It goes back to last night. To that weird fucking moment when Katie commanded Liv and me to fall in love with each other. And we did. Look into each other’s eyes, I mean, not fall in love.

Okay, I’m just going to put it out there.

I was not pretending.

I mean, you can’t fall in love on command; that part is ridiculous. But something definitely happened in that moment for me that wasn’t all acting.

I wanted to kiss her.

A lot.

And I still do.

Chapter 10

Liv

When Chase comes home, one of the women in the movie, Simone, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Tears are pouring down my face. I’m crying so hard, I almost don’t hear the door. This group of friends, they have such an awful shared history, but they’ve always been there for each other, and Simone is such a gentle person, like, I don’t know, Beth inLittle Women.She doesn’t deserve this. It’s so unfair.

I pause the movie, grab a wad of tissues from the box on the coffee table, and scrub the tears away.

Chase comes into the living room.

“Oh, wow,” he says, taking in my tear-ravaged face. “Wait. No, don’t tell me. Someone dies?”

I punch him in the shoulder.

“Ow.” He plops down on the couch beside me. He looks good. Worn jeans, thin where his thighs strain the denim, and a gray Mariners T-shirt with navy trim, including bands that stretch over his biceps. He tosses his baseball cap on the coffee table. His hair, of course, is a total, gorgeous mess.

“Shitty date?”

He gives me a weird look. “It was fine.”

“It’s only midnight.”

“I can get a lot done in a short time.”

It shouldn’t, but that makes me laugh. I don’t doubt it. “So—on a scale of, I don’t know, ‘woulda rather watched a movie’ to ‘planning marriage proposal’?”

“Um, I don’t know; it was fine.”

Chase isnevercagey with me. Or at least not in this way. I raise my eyebrows. “I might need a little more than that.”

“Whatever,” he says irritably. “She was cute. Blond hair, high ponytail. Definitely loves sports. Scored the game, explained ERA to the kid next to us—”

I feel an unfamiliar twinge. Like—jealousy? Because some blond girl with low-maintenance hair knows stuff about baseball?

Surely not.

“—likes stadium food. Seems really easygoing. Loves camping, loves playing sports, too—she plays pickup basketball and Ultimate Frisbee—”

He’s ticking off the items on his checklist, one by one. In fact, he’s pretty much ticked off every item on the list,exceptone.

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