Page 49 of The ABCs of You & Me

He frowns. “You wanna get through the alphabet faster, sunshine?”

A nervous laugh bubbles out of me. “What? No, but now I’m curious what you’re going to pick for some of the letters.”

“Oh, I’ve got those figured out, don’t you worry.” Why does he sound flirty? Why are my nails digging into my thigh?

“I’m not worried,” I counter.

His eyes travel behind the phone, and he sighs. “I am working through my own daily alphabet, though, and I’ve done R so need to do S.”

Sex? Suck? “Shower.” It comes out a bit too dreamily. “Nothing like getting clean,” I squeak, cringing at myself in the process.

He smirks back. “It does make getting dirty more fun.” His eyes widen comically, and all the nerves and mortification I had been feeling disappear.

“Go shower, Foster, you probably stink. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Night, Soph.” He gives a little wave before hanging up, and it leaves me fucking breathless.

TWENTY-THREE

FOSTER

LilWalsh

Heads up, I told Mom that you were bringing your new girlfriend to breakfast.

CASSANDRA she’s picking me up in 5 minutes.

And she’s not my girlfriend!

Hey, this way Uncle Phil won’t go on and on about how you’re a deadbeat that can’t even get a woman. You walk in with smokeshow Sophie and you’ll be laughing all the way over to the Hores for brunch.

She’s not wrong, but now I have to ask Sophie to lie about us again. She must think I’m supremely pathetic.

Also, I told her she has to play the girlfriend part already and she’s fine with it.

Well, that makes things a bit easier.

Can you at least run stuff like this by me before hard launching devious plans?

Pfffff nope, the surprise is half the fun!

Don’t say hi to the relations for me!

Sunshine

I’m here

Coming

“You really don’t have to do this you know,” I say as Sophie pulls into my parents driveway and parks behind my uncle’s obnoxiously large pickup.

“Do you not want me to? Is it going to be harder for you to be here if we pretend again?” Yes, but not for the reasons she thinks. Because it’s hard enough to keep my hands to myself when we aren’t pretending. Pretending means I get to touch her and then it’s nearly impossible to reprogram my brain when we’re alone again.

“No, pretending is very easy. And having you here will make everything more tolerable.”

She pulls her phone off the charge cord and swings the door open. “Excellent. Let’s do this, boyfriend.”Call me boyfriend again.Call me whatever the heck you want, just don’t stop. She doesn’t, but she does twine her fingers with mine when we meet in front of the car.This is equally nice,my body hums.

The front door swings open before we’ve even reached the end of the sidewalk, and my uncle Phil blocks the view into the house. Phil married into the family and brought with him his ignorant ideas and vocabulary. He’s such a walking stereotype that it’s almost boring at this point. Cass got sick of listening to him lecture her on her own sexuality and fully skips out on most functions he attends now because it stresses her out too much, and she’s the most unflappable person I know.

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