Page 53 of All's Well that Friends Well

I turn my attention back to Juliet, because I can only do one thing at a time. “Get up. Come on—get up.”

I can see on Juliet’s face the exact second she realizes what’s going on—her gaze darts up to me, then down at herself, and then around the room, and then her eyes pop wide.

“Oh, no,” she whispers.

I nod grimly.

“Oh, no,” she says again, and I step back as she scrambles out of bed. Her eyes grow impossibly wider as she looks at me, something like panic brewing there. “Nothing happened,” she says quickly. “Nothing happened!”

I pause, momentarily taken aback. “I know that,” I say slowly. “Obviously I know that.”

“Right,” she says with a quick nod, her voice breathless, her eyes still wide. “Right. Of course you do.” Then she clears her throat and takes a sudden step closer to me. “But—Luca.” My name is no more than a panicked whisper. “It reallylookslike something happened.” She gestures back and forth between us—her in my shirt, me innoshirt, both of us fresh out of bed—and I grimace.

She’s correct. No one would look at us and believe nothing happened. I can barely even see the shorts she has under my shirt.

Another knock sounds at the door, louder this time; thenthe doorbell rings. Juliet startles at the sound, letting out a little squeak.

“The breakfast!” she says. “What about the breakfast? What do we do? I won’t let people think of me as the employee who slept her way to the top?—”

“You slept your way to a job as thejanitor?”

“You know what I mean,” she says, and although there’s more attitude in her voice than I normally hear, a glassy sheen is starting to fill her eyes too. “What do we do?”

I run rapidly through options in my head, discarding all of them almost as soon as they pop up. She can’t go out the front door; people are waiting. She can’t even sneak out the back, because people might be back there, too. And now they’ll be coming inside, it sounds like.

“Can you just hide up here until the whole thing is over?”

“I’m supposed to bring breakfast casserole!” she says, dancing on her tiptoes with the kind of frantic energy I’d expect from a live wire. “I’m supposed to bring casserole, Luca!”

I stare at her. “I thought you were bringing the peach bars?—”

“That was just an excuse to see you!” she groans, covering her face with her hands. “I just wanted to see you, you know? You said I could try to get you to fall in love with me, and number one is proximity!”

I have no response for this, and my expression does nothing to hide my shock and confusion—I gape at her for a solid three seconds as my heart pounds.

Finally I manage to force my jaw shut. I want to ask what she means aboutnumber onebeingproximity, but Ineed to align my priorities. “It’s fine. No one likes breakfast casserole anyway?—”

“My breakfast casserole is delicious,” she snaps, once again with uncharacteristic attitude. “Don’t come for my cooking.”

Wildly, bizarrely, a laugh tries to rise in my throat; I push it down, swallowing it completely when I hear the doorbell again.

“All right, fine,” I say quickly. “Your casserole is delicious. Fine.”

She sniffs, her voice prim even as her eyes remain glossy with unshed tears. “Thank you.” She swallows. “But then—what do we do?”

“Get dressed,” I say firmly. “We get dressed.”

“Right.” She nods again, sniffling, her fingers shaking as she reaches for the hem of my shirt. “Here. Take this.”

I freeze, staring at her. “What?”

“Your shirt,” she says, still breathless, her eyes still full of alarm. “Get dressed. Take this.”

By the time I can find my voice to protest, the shirt is halfway over her head.

“What are you—stop?—”

But it’s off. She’s stripped out of my shirt completely, throwing it at me. I catch it without thinking as she stares up at me impatiently, dressed in nothing but a pink bra and biking shorts.

---