Page 17 of Pick Me

“Don’t get me started. That boy has the facial features of an angel.” I rubbed my hands across my chubby cheeks. “And his cheekbones are to die for.”

“I don’t know, you look pretty good to me,” Henry said before turning to his friend. “You know what? The more I look at her, the more I think I recognize her.”

“You do?” I smiled. Maybe they weren’t so bad.

“Yeah.” He wagged his finger down at me with a small smile on his face. “You were in the school paper, right?”

I frowned, knowing exactly where this was going.

“You burned the sorority down, didn’t you?”

Was that incident going to haunt me for the rest of my life like the last one?

“I didn’t burn it down. There was an issue with the wiring.”

“You know what,” Brandon said, “I think she is Tanner’s sister; they have the same eyes.”

“You been staring into my brother’s eyes? Sorry to tell you, he’s taken.”

“I haven’t—”

I raised my hand. “Look, it’s fine. Like I said, my brother is gorgeous, so I get it. Who wouldn’t want to be with him. It doesn’t bother me. Whatdoesbother me is that your pizza is going cold while we’re talking.”

They looked down at the greasy box of deliciousness.

“And I just wanted to know if you two would let me hang out with you for a couple of hours while I waited for my roommate to get home?”

They looked at each other with unease. I couldn’t blame them, given I was staring at their pizza box like it was a football player squatting to tie his laces.

“Uh.” Henry nodded. I ignored the unease because once they got to know me, they’d realize I was harmless.

Brandon, the one holding the pizza—and my destiny—didn’t respond.

Was he going to leave me out here?

“Come on. What do you guys want for a slice of pizza? I’ll do anything.”

Just as they were about to answer, my balance was thrown off by the door moving behind me. When it opened, I fell to the floor, landing between a thick set of legs. Dang, even in sweats, I could see how muscular Jackson’s thighs were.

Jackson didn’t look at me. He was too busy grinning at my new friends. “Hey guys. What are you doing out here?”

“Jackson,” I muttered, stopping my hands from wrapping around his ankles and digging my nails in since I didn’t want to be locked out again. “What are you doing? I thought you weren’t going to open the door until ten thirty?”

“Haven’t you checked the time? Oh, that’s right. You can’t. It’s ten thirty, Pyro.”

“Is it?” Had I been out here wallowing in my own misery for that long?

“I thought you said no one was home,” Henry said, and I rolled onto my side, using Jackson’s sweatpants to help me up. He might’ve had a point about them being too tight to cut the circulation off, because they didn’t move.

“I didn’t think he was in. He was supposed to have a girl over.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Jackson said behind me.

“It’s okay. We all know the real reason you were pretending you weren’t home is because you were jerking off and were too embarrassed to admit it.”

The guys went silent, so I continued, gesturing in a way that made it easy for them to understand. “It takes him a while. He needs absolute silence to get the sprinklers going, if you know what I mean?” I winked.

“Pyro.” The warning did nothing to deter me. Jackson left me outside on my own for an evening. He could suffer a few embarrassing comments.

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