Page 73 of The Do-Over

I nodded. “Little bit.”

“Give me your crust. Now.”

He reached over and grabbed my crust. I was on my third piece of pizza, and we’d already established that my least-favorite part was his favorite, making him my cleanup crew. He lifted it toward his mouth and asked, “Is it so wrong that I like being single?”

“It’s not, but you don’t.”

He took a bite of the crust and said, “How do you know?”

“Because Iknow.” I wasn’t being delusional, convincing myself of what I wanted to believe. I wasn’t even talking about me in thisscenario, to be honest. I was absolutely just talking about him. Nick Stark was warm and funny and caring, and his face lit up when he was with his friends and remembering his brother.

The Nick he was forcing himself to be at school, though, distant because he couldn’t work up the strength to take on any additional emotional lifting, was work for him. I think he truly believed that happiness was elusive and fluid because of what’d happened to Eric, and instead of reaching for it and risking being shattered, he was just no longer interested in reaching.

For love, or even for friendship.

“Well, let me ask you this, then,” he said, grabbing a napkin from the dispenser and wiping his hands. “If youknow, how come you thought you were madly in love with someone this morning, and now you ‘forgot that he existed’?”

“Let’s not talk about that,” I said in a teasing voice, but I reallydidn’twant to talk about it. I was way more interested in Nick. “How about we move on.”

“Okay. But.” He narrowed his eyes. “First, tell me the thing he does that works on your last nerve.”

“Oh my Lord,” I laughed, “It has to be his ringtones.”

“Please explain.”

I lifted my cup and poured an ice cube into my mouth before saying, “He still thinks ringtones are hilarious. Y’know, like we all did in middle school? He actually takes the time to save a different one for every single person he knows, and he finds it funny to sneak into my phone and add them when I’m not paying attention.”

“He gets in your phone?” He shook his head.

“I don’t care about that—I have nothing to hide. But he assigned a neighing horse to his name in my contacts. He thinks it’s hilarious that every time he texts, I hear the sound of a stallion.”

“What a tool,” Nick said.

Nick looked a little jealous, and I wanted him to be. I said, “The funny thing is that it just bugs me. The sound of that horse makes me want to throw my phone through a window.”

“I bet.”

“But he thought he was being nice by adding it for me.” I grinned and said, “He beams every time he hears that stupid whinny.”

“So you pretend to love it?” he asked.

I just nodded, which made him make a face and shake his head like I was pathetic.

“Can we stop talking about relationships now?” He pushed his plate and cup into the center of the table before checking his phone. “We should probably head back to the truck, actually.”

After we bundled back up and went outside, Nick gave me another piggyback ride. I couldn’t stop laughing as he decided it would be funny to loudly hum “our theme music,” which sounded alotlike the “Thong Song” even though he denied it. My stomach hurt from laughing as I snuggled my face deep into the side of his neck for body heat.

“Jesus, your nose is cold,” he said, sounding like his teeth were close to chattering.

“Sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t. I full-on let my face absorb his warmth.

He coughed out a breathy laugh. “I’m not complaining.”

I realized that Nick was incredible. He was fun and beautiful and I’d never felt more comfortable around a boy. Like, ever (except for Chris).

Weird, right?

Because this no-holds-barred Em that I was being on the DONC wasn’t me at all, so my lovesick musings didn’t even make sense. The real Emilie Hornby would never get this close to someone she barely knew before today, so this person he was seeing wasn’t actually real at all.

---