Page 93 of The Do-Over

“Um.” I didn’t really know what to even say to that. “Sorry. Ijust—I’m stunned you’re being so nice after the intercom thing.”

He glanced over. “I mean, I didn’t love that, but I probably had it coming.”

“Wow, Sutton—you sound so mature.”

That made him look at me again, I think checking to make sure I was teasing. When he saw my grin, he smiled. “We’ll call it personal growth.”

“So.” I tucked my hair behind my ears as my brain filtered through information. “You said it’s complicated. Are you going to ask Macy out now? Reconnect with her?”

He crinkled his nose. “I doubt it.”

“What?”He was crinkling his nose about Macy?“I mean, it’s none of my business, but why not?”

He downshifted and glanced over at me. “Besides the fact that I just got out of a relationship?”

I gave him an eye roll.

“Well,” he said around a sigh as he turned his eyes back to the road, “I’m just not really into Macy anymore.”

That answer irritated me. “But you two have chemistry.” I saw it. More times than I wanted to.

“We havehistory.”

“That’s a pointless distinction.”

“It’s not.” He swallowed. “I mean, of course it is. But do you know what popped into my head when we were alone in my car?”

“?‘WWJD’?”

“Hilarious.” He reached out and adjusted one of the heatvents. “What popped into my head, smart-ass, was the realization that you’ve never been like that with me.”

“Like what?”

“Buzzing.” He shook his head, his eyes staying on the road, and he said, “Nervous. I’ve always known that you like me—as a person—but I’ve never felt like you were into me.”

I squirmed a little in my seat. “What is this, couples’ therapy? Are you filing a complaint that I wasn’t attentive enough so you had to go elsewhere?”

“That’s not at all what I’m saying.” He turned onto my street and said, “It was more that I had this moment where I wondered if you’d ever been into me at all.”

“That’s not fair,” I said, even as I doubted.

“I’m not directing this at you, Em. My point is that I wondered, when I went back to class after the near-kiss with Macy and tried to figure out what in the hell had just happened, why we were dating at all.”

I looked down at my lap; I couldn’t meet his eyes. The words “because you were on my checklist” hovered on my lips, but I held them back.

Josh was the perfect boyfriend for me on paper: smart, motivated, and charming. But I didn’t realize until I watched him kiss Macy that the paper didn’t always translate.

Josh was the guy that the girl I wanted to be should want.

My throat felt tight as I thought about how wrong I’d been, how wrong I still was. If planning didn’t root out true love, andfate didn’t either, was it even a tangible thing one could hope for?

“We like each otherso much.” He cleared his throat and downshifted. “We have since the beginning—we’re, like, the perfect match. And we have a blast together. But can you honestly say that you have feelings for me?”

I raised my eyes to his face, and he was giving me a patient smile. But then Nick’s face popped into my head, the face that weakened my knees every time he looked at me. The boyIhad instigated a downtown kiss with.

“That’s what I thought.” He looked at me and slowly shook his head, but it wasn’t mean. It was a little bit sweet, like a gaze of fondness. “I think the idea of us together was so good that we both might’ve forced it.”

I took in the fact that Josh knew how I was feeling before I did. “So you never—”

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