Page 112 of Friends Don't Kiss

She rolled her eyes. “You gonna go through the whole family? The mama, the cousin… Fuck.” She set her fists on her hips and stared up at me. She was short, and I was sitting in my truck.

I chuckled. This was getting entertaining. “My cousin is a baker,” I continued, noticing her features soften and her interest pique. “And he’s constantly on our case about the food we eat.”

“And?” she said, and something in my chest fluttered.I had her hooked.

I shrugged. “That’s it. You made me think of him.”

“Is he hiring?”

That thing in my chest blossomed, the heat of hope and never-ending tomorrows filling me. “Who?”

“Who?! The pope! Is the pope hiring? ’Cos I’m a qualified cardinal.”

The fight in this girl was like nothing I’d ever seen. I hid my smile. “When was the last time you ate? Are you thirsty?”

She licked her lips, my gaze flicking there for a beat. “Are you saying I’m a bum?”

“Your word, not mine. Your getup suggests something’s going on.”

She stood taller, shoulders back. “What’s it to you?”

Her answer made it clear that she was living out of her car. And yet, she oozed pride and confidence.

Coming back to the present, I stroke her shoulder. “I didn’t feel like you were mine. More like, I tried to make you a part of me.” It’s really hard to explain. “You were everything I wasn’t. You looked fragile but you were strong. You looked lost but it seemed like you knew where you were going. I was the opposite, on all fronts—or that’s how I felt. I wanted to be more like you.”

She lifts herself off my shoulder. “You’re kidding, right?”

I shake my head. “I wanted to be able to say fuck you to people who got in my way—the way you did to me. I wanted to have a sense of purpose that was other than just… following.”

“Really,” she says, clearly perplexed.

“Course, it didn’t hurt that you were a stunner. But you shut that down pretty quick.”

She laughs. “Yeah, I was that way, back then.” She tucks her head deeper in the crook of my arm, and splays her hand flat on my chest, her memories maybe taking her where mine are. To how she got to Emerald Creek.

“Why don’t we go ask him?” I’d answered to her question about Chris.

“Ask who what?”

“My cousin. He might be hiring. Only one way to know.”

“'Kay. Where is he and what’s his name? I’ll check him out. Are you gonna get out of my way now?”

“No.” I wasn’t letting her out of my sight so easily.

She rolled her eyes so far back she could have played in an exorcist movie. “Ugh!” she cried out.

“I’ll take you to him. You follow me.”

That day, after meeting with Chris, she slept in the spare bedroom at Mom and Dad’s (the one that had been Chris’s not so long ago), and once she had her first pay stub from the bakery, she moved into Sunrise Farms.

“You kind of were my knight in shining armor,” she murmurs. “I don’t think I ever thanked you for that.”

“No need to. I did what anyone would have.”

She snorts her disagreement. “I was so scared at that time, you have no idea. I didn’t know where the next blow was going to come from. I couldn’t trust anything or anyone.”

I hate that she went through that. Someday I’ll have to find out absolutely everything that happened to her, but now there’s something I need to know. “What made you trust me?”

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