Page 18 of Happiness for Beginners

He lifted his eyebrows. “In case you wanted to play.”

I felt a resigned sigh escaping my chest. Something about Jake seemed to wake me up. “I do actually love to play Scrabble.”

“So do I,” he said, and laid the box between us. He still had a few droplets of water near his collarbones.

“Are you going to put a shirt on?” I asked.

He looked up, like the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “Should I?”

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked, my gaze drifting to the damp locks of hair against his neck.

“Nope.”

“Don’t you feel kind of naked?”

“Nope.”

I sighed. “Well, I feel cold and naked just looking at you.”

That made him smile. Then he left me on the bed with my tiles, disappeared, and returned a second later in a T-shirt withHARVARDacross it.

“That was fast,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t want you to feel cold and naked.” He met my eyes for a second.

There it was again. The flirting. Was he daring me to be offended? I ignored him. “Nice shirt,” I finally said.

“I thought it might intimidate you,” he explained, tapping his head.

“Itmightintimidate me,” I said, “if you actually went to Harvard.”

“I did go to Harvard.”

I gave him ayeah, rightlook.

He met my eyes and nodded. “I did, actually, go to Harvard.”

I shook my head. “But Duncan went to Boston College.”

“True.”

“So how could you be college roommates if you didn’t go to college together?”

He shrugged. “Off-campus housing.”

“But why?”

“Well,” he said, “I promised to be Duncan’s roommate. But then he didn’t get into Harvard.”

“Of course he didn’t get into Harvard! He was always smoking dope.”

“True.”

“And so were you, by the way.”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“You weren’t smoking dope?” I lifted one eyebrow to say,Faker. “All those times I came home and you were in his room and there was smoke literally billowing out from under his door, that was just Duncan?”

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