Page 3 of Nerdy Dirty Valentine

God, my memory was shit sometimes. And the beard and glasses had thrown me. But you don’t sit next to somebody who humiliated you in school andtotallyforget.

“James Harridan.” Blood drained from my face, and my stomach clenched tight. The noise from the diner dulled under the pounding of my heart. James was here? A blast from the past, shattering my present.

“Phineas Carey.”

No wonder I’d felt weirdly drawn to his drama, the crack in his voice. He’d had a high voice then that broke when he got emotional. That was why my body reacted to it. I had heard it many times. I’d always had a thing for intelligent, nerdy types. And James was the GOAT.

I had crushed on him hard before I was even out of the closet. His younger face was etched into my heart. I’d secretly drawn it in my notebooks. The future valedictorian of the school. Not like the student that I was, popular and wild. And drunk. The one who’d left by sophomore year, transferred schools endlessly, and only later got a GED.

And fucking James. He had crushed my crush. Had he even thought about me? I stared at him. James adjusted his glasses, but the cold glint of the metal frames had nothing on the icy glint in his eyes.

I’d actually stayed away from guys who resembled him for years afterward. It was freshman year of high school, over a decade ago. I’d been fourteen and already on a downward spiral. Maybe I’d hoped a guy like James, so wholesome and intense, could see me and help me.

Nobody could. I had learned that much. I had to save myself, and I did… many years later.

For a second, all the old emotions flooded me. Wild attraction, sadness, shame. To see James all these miles from where we were raised, so many years later, was to look at the old me in the mirror.

I flinched. Despite my hard work on being a better version of myself, it all rushed back to me. The yearning for James to notice me. How I’d mooned over his gangly limbs and serious face. He rarely smiled, even then. And those eyes that saw right into a person, with their laser-sharp blue beam, how I could even have missed that for a second perplexed me. The sting of his judgment in those eyes. Then and now.

Here he was in the flesh. Recently humiliated, which I tried not to be happy about, and glaring at me as if he’d reason to hateme.

The way I remembered it, James had given me shit the moment we’d been assigned seats in school.

Yet James looked like he wanted to flee. I was hulking over him, and although I’d been a big guy in high school, it was nothing compared to now.

“Please, go.” James pressed his lips together. His mouth was pinched, like he was holding it hostage.

I folded my arms at my chest. “Not yet. I’ve deserved an apology from you for years. Time to collect.”

“An apology from me?” His lips curled. “I don’t think so… You should be the one apologizing.”

“For what?” I floundered. “You humiliated me.”

“I tried to help you, Phin.” He lifted his chin. “And you wanted me to cheat instead. When I refused, you bullied me.”

“Me? No.” I flushed. My brains, though, were as scrambled as my eggs. Yeah, in a moment of pure weakness, I’d asked him for help. He’d not only refused but ratted on me. Around that same time, I began to drink the hard stuff.

“Not that I gave a damn what you and your dumb friends did.” He stood, tossing his money on the table. “I’m leaving.” He gave me a death glare, his cheeks sucked in, that overly large nose near mine. “Don’t try and stop me.”

“Why would I?”

He shook his head, his gaze dropping to my firefighting uniform and then up again.

“Guess you’re some kind of a hero?” He scoffed.

“Just a regular guy, doing my job.”

“Good for you.” He tried to move past me, and I took his elbow.

“Don’t touch me.” He recoiled, and I immediately dropped my grip.

He paled.

“Shit, I’m sorry?—”

You bullied me.

His words suddenly registered. I had been focused on how he’d hurt me, my memories of James and the past. Not his. What had I done?

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