Page 20 of Puck Block

“Like you did tonight,” she adds.

I growl with annoyance. “Like I did tonight.”

She looks pleased with her little victory before losing her smile and tapping her chin with her finger. “And…”

I drop my hands and grab her waist to steady her. “Whatever you’re going to add…no.”

“I need you to teach me how to date and…”

My heart skips a beat. “And what?”

She looks away bashfully, so I put my thumb on her cheek and bring her eyes back to me. Her thick lashes flutter against her pink cheeks. “Teach me how to be one of those girls that has one-night stands.”

No way.

“Please, Ford.”

I wish she’d stop looking at me like she is, but the hope in her gaze makes me feel like I can help her hang the moon.

“Okay, Heartbreaker,” I say. “I’ll help you.”

She smiles, and my world spins.

I grab her hand, and for once, she doesn’t pull away.

I’m not exactly thrilled about what I just agreed to, but at least she stopped crying.

A win is a win.

[ 9 ]

TAYTUM

“One, two, three.”The vitamin D supplements drop into my pill sorter one by one with a little clink. This is something I’ve been doing since being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, all because a nurse once mentioned to me that Vitamin D has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, but it still makes me feel like I’m eighty-four instead of twenty-two. I shake the pill bottle and pour a few more vitamins out into the palm of my hand and drop them in before closing the lid and pushing it to the far corner of my nightstand.

A pill a day–that’s what stands in between me and no longer having diabetes.

I laugh under my breath with the manifestation. It’s unrealistic, but a girl can hope.

I turn toward the door when I hear girly squealing downstairs. I already know that some hot jock has shown up on our doorstep to take one of the girls out, because it’s the college-girl chorus. The shrill squeal is what every single freshman does when they come into contact with someone other than Joe Schmo from their little ol’ hometown.

It’s exhausting trying to teach the younger sorority sisters how to be safe and not trust every guy who pursues them just because he has a hot smirk and a devilish glint in his eye.

“Ladies, ladies,ladies. I’ll sign autographs later.”

There are more girly giggles, and I snort at Ford’s smooth voice. I roll my eyes so hard it hurts. My back is to him when my door slides over my fluffy carpet, and for the first time in a very long time, my stomach flips with nerves.

I cried in front of him.

Me.Taytum Elizabeth Olson, the composed ballet-dancing college student with an airy attitude who has always seemed collected on the outside, cried.

I never cry, and even though it was in front of Ford—someone who has seen me at my worst—I’m still embarrassed by it.

Even days later.

“You gonna pretend I’m not standing behind you?” Ford asks.

My lips want to curve, but I do exactly as he says. I pretend he isn’t there. I grab my copy ofA History of Romantic Literatureand sit on my bed. I flip open to the chapter on Sylvia Plath, but my finger freezes on the corner of the page when Ford begins to recite her entire biography from memory.

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