Page 35 of Trip Me Up

“For some of it. The dedication. She hasn’t read the book yet. She’s readingSecretsfirst. Maybe she’ll stop reading before she gets to Lobelia.”

Gabi’s unusual silence told me exactly what she thought of that idea.

“I have to tell her, don’t I?”

“You asked me before you turned me into an ax-wielding dwarf.”

“That was different. We were already friends. When I wrote Lobelia, I didn’t think I’d ever see Sam again.”

“So you turned her into your manic pixie dreamgirl.”

“Lobelia’s not a manic pixie dreamgirl! She’s got her own goals, separate from Nieven’s. And I don’t know that they’re interested in each other. Romantically.”

“She’s not Nieven’s dreamgirl, Niall. She’s yours. Look at this picture.”

“What picture?”

“I texted it to you. Take the phone away from your face and look at it. It’s on Kari Singh’s blog.”

“Kari Singh? I met her. She’s at Sam’s university.”

“Not anymore. She graduated, and now she’s atGossip Grrlz. An up-and-comer. She’s built a bit of a specialty around you. And now some of the other gossip sites are following her. And you, too.”

I tapped the text icon at the top of the screen and then opened the photo she’d sent. Sam—though she’d been Samantha then—and I stood in front of the beige building on her campus. That blogger, Kari Singh, must have snapped it. Sam’s face was guarded like I’d remembered. But I grinned at her, completely gone.

Oh, shit.

“You like her, Niall.”

“No, I don’t.” The words came too quickly to be believable. “She’s a total techie. I don’t think her phone has left her hand since I met her. She even read her passage on a tablet. She brought her purse dog on this tour like a diva. We have nothing in common.”

“Wait, I’ve seen this movie before. They both say, ‘No way,’ in Act One, but by the middle of Act Two, they’re in love.”

“Fuck you.” I rubbed my hand over my eyes.

“Love you, too, buddy.”

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