Page 48 of First Love, Second Draft

Yeah, definitely something they needed to address. Would have earlier if it hadn’t taken him so long to dry off and return to regular life-sustaining temperatures again. “So, hey. About earlier.”

“Paper plates.” Rachel snapped her fingers and spun for the cupboard. “Can’t eat pizza without paper plates. I know I’ve got a few here somewhere.”

“Right. So, the whole dunk tank thing.”

“Oh my goodness, yes. Congratulations,” she said, her voice much louder than it needed to be as she continued opening and slamming cabinet doors. “I heard you raised close to a thousand dollars between Abe and all those other donations. Even sold some cats. That’s great.”

“Well, we didn’t technically sell any cats. They were free for adoption. And Wombat was the only one who took one. But anyway, that’s not—”

“Eureka! Knew I had some. Shoot, they’re on the top shelf. You mind grabbing them?” She must not have realized he had already stepped behind her. She spun and stabbed his chest with her paintbrush.

All he could do was look at his shirt. Look at her.

She grabbed a paper towel to clean off his shirt, and in the processsomehow managed to swipe a streak of paint on his jeans. “I should probably just set the paintbrush down, shouldn’t I?”

“What is your problem?” And he didn’t just mean her uncanny ability to touch everything but the walls with her paintbrush. Why was she avoiding this conversation and yelling out words likeEureka!

She held his gaze, her dark eyes pensive. Undecisive. As if she couldn’t decide whether to call out the elephant in the room or just dump a bucket of paint over it instead. She took a step back and swallowed so loudly it could be labeled a gulp. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—” Matt lifted a shoulder, not at all liking the sudden tension permeating the air between them worse than paint fumes. Not at all liking how Rachel was looking at him like a student about to get her score back on a test she hadn’t studied for. And trust him, he’d seen that look plenty enough times on her face throughout their four years of high school French to know it.

What was going on? This wasn’t their relationship. Awkward. Strained. Stiff. No. Their relationship was fun. Relaxed. A breath of fresh air. That’s why she’d always been his favorite friend. His best friend. That’s why he loved her.

He inhaled a slow breath, afraid he was about to start making gulpy sounds if he wasn’t careful.

Oh, wow. Aimee was right. He loved Rachel. Had for a long time.

Which is why he couldn’t afford to rush things and lose her. Even if that meant staying in the friend zone a lot longer than he wanted.

He blew out his breath. “You have lit-er-ally”—he made a great show of enunciating the word as he circled his finger in the air around them—“left a crime scene of paint throughout this entire house. Don’t act like you don’t have a problem.”

And just like that, it was as if the windows opened, clearing all the tension-filled fumes right out of the room.

Rachel’s shoulders relaxed and her eyes took on their usual playful glint. “Um, excuse me, but I don’t have toactlike I don’t have a problem because Idon’thave a problem.”

She folded her arms over her chest, smearing her inner arm withpaint since she was still holding the paintbrush. She slanted a look at her arm. “Okay, I might have a problem.” One of her trademark giggle-snorts followed.

“You do understand the idea is to get the paint on the walls, right?”

“I was getting to that. I just had to get everything prepared first.” She dropped the brush in the sink and started washing her hands.

He stepped next to her and scraped a finger over a crusted glob behind her left ear. “Is dunking your head in the paint can part of the preparation process?”

More giggles as she finished washing her hands. “There was a little bit of an issue when I poured paint into the roller cover thingy.”

“Uh-huh, and did this little issue cause you to step in the roller cover thingy and leave gray-painted footprints all over the carpet?”

“I saw a mouse. I can’t be held responsible for what my feet do in a moment of crisis.”

“Really?” Matt opened the fridge and grabbed two of the root beer cans he’d left behind the other day when he started repairing her front porch. He handed her one. “I would’ve thought we set enough traps earlier this week to put mice on the endangered species list.”

She sank into a kitchen chair and snapped back the tab. “All right, fine. It technically wasn’t a mouse that I saw. It was the black hair scrunchie I flung in the air this morning when I freaked out over seeing a legit mouse.”

He leaned against the counter and narrowed his gaze at her. “And by legit mouse, you mean...”

“The gray ankle sock I whipped on the floor two nights ago to kill a spider.”

“And when you say spider...”

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