Page 19 of Better Than the Movies
“Oh.” Oh no. He thought my adorable dress, the one that was supposed to make me stand out from the crowdto him, was a waitress uniform.
Kill me now.
I looked at Wes, and he gave me aLet’s-see-how-you’re-going-to-get-out-of-thislook. I stammered, “My uniform. Yeah. Um, I, uh, pick up hours sometimes at the diner.”
“What diner?”
“The, uh,TheDiner.”
Wes’s face opened into a huge grin. “I loveTheDiner.”
Sweat beads formed on the tip of my nose as I lied. “I barely ever work there.”
Michael tilted his head just a little. “Where exactly—”
“I wish you’d moved back into your old house, Young,” Wes interrupted. “Because we could totally re-up our last epic game of hide-and-seek.”
I made a mental note to thank Wes later for the subject change.
Michael grinned and took a drink from his red cup. “Can you imagine?”
“I prefer not to.” I smiled at him and ignored Wes’s chuckle. “When our hide-and-seek games turned ‘epic,’ that usually meant that Wes and the twins were terrorizing me.”
“How many times do you think I snuck over and warned you?” Michael’s eyes ran over my face like he was reconciling the old and the new. “I saved you from so many bugs and frogs down your shirt.”
Wes said, “The twins used to get so pissed when you helped her.”
Michael shrugged and turned his attention back to Wes. “I just couldn’t let you do that to Liz.”
Ed Sheeran was back in my head as I watched Michael laugh with Wes. The three of us tripped back a few years to our firefly childhood, and it felt so good.
How would you feel,
If I told you I loved you?
“Every time I see a cheesy movie on TV, I think of Little Liz.”
Only, when he said it, Michael managed to make the word “little” sound sexy.Lil, but he sounded like a sleepy rancher when he said it, as opposed to someone referencing the newest mumble rapper,LilLiz.
He lifted his cup and finished the last of his beer. “Remember how she always watchedBridget Jones’s Diaryand gotso madif we made fun of it?” They’d never known it was because that movie had been my mother’s favorite.
“Do we have to rehash the past?” I pushed my hair behind my ear and tried to direct them to a topic that would show Michael how interesting I was now. “I heard—”
“Can you get me a beer?” Ashley was back, holding her cup out to Michael and smiling at me like we were besties. “I’m bad with the keg and always end up with too much head.”
Ugh—she said it inthatway. You know the one.
Michael smiled but didn’t sound flirty when he said, “Sure.”
He turned his back to us and grabbed the tap while she turned her attention to Wes. “Are you going to prom, Bennett?”
Wes looked at me and raised an eyebrow, smirking. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Dream on,” I muttered, making him chuckle as Ashley continued, oblivious to our exchange.
“A whole bunch of us are going as a group.” She was slurring pretty heavily now. I started to wonder if we should find her friends. “You two should come. We’re getting a limo and everything.”
I glanced at Michael, but he seemed to have missed the comment, thank God.
