Page 32 of Once Upon a Boyband
Which means now, I just have to tell her who I am.
CHAPTER NINE
Laney
It takesfour rounds of bingo on Tuesday evening, but I finally win my foot spa.
Mimi looks over from her place on the opposite side of Percy and narrows her brown eyes before raising two fingers and pointing them at her eyes, then shifting them over to me in anI’m watching yougesture.
I raise my eyebrows in challenge, and she finally cracks, laughing as she shakes her head and clears her board for the next round.
“You know you’re still giving her that foot spa, right?” Percy asks under his breath. “She’s trying to lure you into complacency with her charm.”
“Fully aware,” I say. “And probably I’m going to let her have it.”
“Sucker.”
“She saved me her Boston cream pie from dinnerbecause she knew it was my favorite. How can I truly argue with her?”
“You’re asking me? The biggest Mimi pushover on the planet?”
“There are worse things to be,” Mimi says from beside him, and we both laugh.
We play a few more rounds while I pepper Mimi with questions about Ethel and Roberto’s lightning-quick courtship and how she really feels about it, then milk her for the “dirty details” she promised about a certain Mr. Martinson who has been coming to visit her every evening to watchWheel of FortuneandJeopardy!. Apparently, they’ve come up with a game they play as they watch. Every time one of the contestants guesses an incorrect letter or misses a trivia question, they kiss.
“The more idiots on the show, the better,” Mimi says with a twinkle in her eye.
“Oh, good grief,” Percy says, but I have to respect Mimi.
“She’s getting more action than either of us,” I say.
Percy laughs. “Sad, but true.”
Another round ends, and we clear our boards for the final round. It’s only six forty-five, but bingo at Shady Pines never lasts past seven PM or residents tend to get cranky. At least according to Mimi.
“So when are you seeing the man who isn’t ready to kiss you yet?” Percy says. “Did you ever make plans?”
“Don’t make me regret telling you what he said,” I say as I cover up a square in mygcolumn. “And yes. He’s coming over to watch a movie tomorrow night.”
“Think he’ll be ready to kiss you then?”
“He did promise next time,” I say. “That’s tomorrow night, so I’m assuming he will be.”
He’d better be,I think. Because I was more than ready when he dropped me off last Friday night, my body practically vibrating with the need to kiss him. I can’t think about it too much, because every time I do, a faint sense of embarrassment washes over me.
I have zero doubts that Adam wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss him. And we’ve been texting almost nonstop ever since. I just can’t figure out why he wasn’t ready.
Maybe he has a no kissing on the first date rule?
Maybe he…was worried about bad breath?
Maybe he has a secret long-distance girlfriend and wanted to break up with her before starting something new?
Oh, gross.I hate that last thought. Adam has been so open with me about everything else, I can’t imagine he’d lie about something so big, but women have been duped before. I’m too practical not to acknowledge that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
But a bigger part of me wants to believe Adam really is perfect—at least perfect for me.
“I don’t know,” Percy says. “I still say it’s weird.”
