Page 156 of Choosing You

“You say no to me all the time.”

“I never say no to you. Now let’s get out of here. All the pink is starting to get to me.”

I laugh, still imagining Garret sitting on the floor next to the stuffed panda bear, pretending to sip tea.

It proves that he’s not just a nice boyfriend. He’s a nice big brother, too. It only makes me love him more.

CHAPTERFORTY-TWO

Garret putsmy bag of clothes on the bed in the room I’ve decided to stay in. “I need to get you a suitcase, Jade. These garbage bags just aren’t working.”

“They work just fine.” I notice a piece of paper on the nightstand. “What’s this?”

“It’s from Lilly. She made it for you. It’s a drawing of you and me that night of the fundraiser. We’re holding the pink punch she gave us.”

I look closer at the drawing. She used a bright purple crayon for my dress and gave me really long hair and bright red lips. She made Garret twice as tall as me but extended his arms so we could hold hands.

“This is so sweet. Damn, if Lilly keeps this cute thing going, she’s going to make me want to have kids someday.”

“I told you she has a way of making you do stuff you never thought you’d do.” He lies down on the bed. I set the drawing down and lie next to him.

“So what should we do first?” I realize as I say it that I sound overly enthusiastic. “We have all this free time from now until Sunday. No tests. No homework.”

He flips on his side to face me. “Is that why you’re so excited right now?”

“I’m excited because I’m staying here in your house without your dad getting mad. And I get to spend Thanksgiving with you.”

My comment brings a grin to his face. “I thought you didn’t care about Thanksgiving. It’s just another day, right?”

“Yeah. I guess it is. But I still like spending it with you.”

He kisses me quick. “So here’s what we’re doing tomorrow. I talked to Charles, our cook, and he wasn’t going to make food just for himself but when he heard we were staying here, it gave him an excuse to make Thanksgiving dinner. That means you should get your appetite ready because he tends to make a lot. I told him not to get too fancy but to stick with the traditional stuff. Turkey. Sweet potatoes. Stuffing.”

“Then I won’t eat anything tonight so I’ll be really hungry tomorrow.”

“You have to eat. Charles is making dinner for us tonight. When someone new comes over, he has to show off his cooking skills. But I told him no fish or seafood. And nothing Katherine would eat.”

I laugh as I get up from the bed. “Show me the rest of your house.”

“Up here is just a bunch of bedrooms that look like this one,” he says as we walk into the hall. We go downstairs to the main level. “My dad’s office is over there just off the foyer. Across from it is the study. And the kitchen’s in the back, off the dining room. And down that hall are the rooms you were in the night of the fundraiser. Those are just used for entertaining. Let’s go to the other wing.”

“You have wings here?” I follow him down a long and narrow hallway.

“This is the movie room.” He goes in a room that looks like a mini movie theater. It has four rows of tiered seating and a massive screen on the wall and there’s a projector mounted to the ceiling.

“You have your own movie theater?” I have to lift my jaw off the floor to say it. I didn’t even know you could put a movie theater in a house.

“Check this out. It even has a concession stand.” He walks to the back of the room where there’s a popcorn machine, a soda machine, and a glass cabinet full of boxes of candy.

“This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”

“If you want, we can watch a movie later.”

“Are you kidding? We’re definitely watching a movie. I might just live in here.”

“You’re funny.” He grabs my hand, dragging me out of there. “Next is the game room. If you haven’t noticed yet, this is the fun part of the house. The other part is the stuffy, boring part. My dad had this section built for me because he knew how much I hated Katherine. It was his bribe to get me to be nice to her when they got married. But I think he secretly likes having all this stuff himself. He just used me as his excuse to have it.”

The next room he takes me in has a pool table, a pinball machine, and some game machines like they have in an arcade. There’s a huge TV hanging on the wall with odd shaped chairs in front of it.

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