Page 26 of A Slice of Love

Add in the fact that I wasn’t just going to be known for being the pastor’s daughter but also the principal’s daughter?

Yeah, count me out for any social event ever.

I withdrew.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I became shy. A book nerd. A complete loner.

I was okay with that for the most part. A lot of it was my own doing.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t ever lonely.

Talk about the shock of the century when not one person in my new school took the time to acknowledge me until the first Friday of my freshman year, as least not to my face.

An entire week.

Not a single soul.

Until him.

Until Jonas.

“You’re new here, right?”

I turned to my left, locking eyes with the prettiest shade of green I’d ever seen.

His jaw was square, nose sharp, and he smelled faintly of grease or oil or something along those lines.

Looking at him was intoxicating, and I was ready to get drunk.

“I-I-I am.”

“I’m Jonas. It’s nice to meet you.”

I didn’t say anything back. I couldn’t. I was paralyzed by him.

“Say, do you have a pencil I could borrow? I seemed to have forgotten mine.”

“S-Sure.”

And that was our first encounter.

We didn’t become instant best friends or anything like that, but I did feel something instantly.

Over the years, we shared more classes, but I was never lucky enough to sit next to him again until senior year. We didn’t run in the same circle—okay, fine, I didn’t have a circle—but our paths crossed in other ways. Overlapping gym classes. The fact that I was in band and got to play at all his football games.

The fact that he was Jonas Schwartz and he was all over the school all the time.

Sometimes, he’d nod at me in the hall or give me a small smile, and though I knew it had nothing to do withmeand everything to do with Jonas being friendly to everyone, it was always enough to make me giddy for weeks.

There’s no denying I had a mad crush on Jonas from the first day I met him. It was a no-brainer to me that when he finally saw me for me and liked me back, I gave him my all.

Except he turned out to not be the guy I thought he was and ripped my heart out.

“My lost virginity says he is,” I snark at my best friend. “Besides, you went to college with him—I’m sure you saw all the girls he was with.”

“Actually, come to think of it, I can’t recall a single time I saw himwitha girl.” Julian runs a hand through his hair, playing with the dark blond locks, pulling and twisting them. “Sure, there were always chicks around, but I surprisingly didn’t hear many rumors about him and his extracurriculars, not like we did in high school. He kept things lowkey.”

I hate the way my blood starts pumping a little faster at this new information.

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