Page 98 of Olivia's Only Pretending
He swallowed. “This toast is a big deal. It’s important to Gabriel. He’s my big brother, and I want him to be proud and to be glad he pickedmeto be his best man.” Emma and Gabe had recently explained how they wanted their toasts shared at the rehearsal dinner instead of the reception.
“Even if you flopped up there, he’d still be glad he picked you. He picked you because he loves you, not because he thinks you’ll deliver the best performance.” I brushed back his floppy, dark hair. “Though you will.”
“At least I can look out and see you and know that at the end of it, I get to kiss these lips and nothing else will matter.” He rubbed a thumb across my bottom lip.
“I’ll be right there, waiting for the kiss at the end,” I promised right before the fire alarm started ringing.
Victor’s brows knitted in confusion.
“Not again,” I moaned. Someone had been pulling fire alarms across campus this whole fall semester. And now they’d pulled it in the history building.
We started for the door when I heard shoes pounding down the hallway, and a blur ran past us with a backpack bouncing against their back.
Victor and I exchanged a knowing glance, and then we ran after the blur like two detectives on the case. As we got closer to him, details became clearer. It was a male student with shaggy blond hair and a big red hoodie. A backpack hung loose off his shoulders.
People were crowding behind us as we hurried down the staircase, feet pounding down the steps.
The door opened up to the outside, and the shaggy-haired blond picked up his pace as we ran out into the sidewalk under the sunshine.
“Hey,” Victor shouted.
“Wait,” I said loudly in my professor voice. “I work on this campus!”
The guy skittered to a stop, glancing back at me with fear in his eyes.
I narrowed my eyes in recognition. He was a back-row kid in one of my introductory courses. “Peterson?” I said his last name.
He swallowed. “Shane Peterson.”
“Did you?” Victor interjected, pointing toward the history building.
He looked down at his white Converse shoes, with hearts drawn in Sharpie on top. I blinked, a flash of memory. Ashley from the book club had the same hearts on her Converse.
“Do you know Ashley Forde?” I felt like an investigator grasping at any pieces I could put together.
He glanced up quickly, in surprise. “Yeah?”
People were flooding around us, griping about the fire alarm stopping classes and interrupting tests and meetings, a loud murmur around us.
“She has the same hearts on her shoes.” I pointed to his shoes. “Are you friends? Does she know you’re pulling the fire alarms?” I was suddenly worried this fire alarm saga involved my book club members.
“I never said I pulled—” Shane tried to defend himself.
“You were running down those halls like you were running from the law—from the direction of the fire alarm.” Victor shrugged, like we had him caught.
“I could’ve been running for my life. There was an alarm going off,” Shane said. His eyes snagged on something behind my shoulder. I turned to see Ashley skipping down the building steps, hand in hand with a tall, dark, and handsome type.
Shane winced, like he’d just been shoved. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”
“Pulling the fire alarm definitely matters,” I said sternly.
“Whatever.” He kicked the ground with the top of his shoe. “You know, she drew these hearts on my shoes to match hers. We did everything together for a while, until she met him.” He pointed toward the guy she was holding hands with. “They’re in the same class. That’s where they just came from. She even picked up his favorite candy on the way to class today.” He said this last part like it was the most heartbreaking detail.
I nodded. Puzzle pieces aligned. “Did they hang out after class for the first time in September?”
I remembered the first fire alarm happened a couple of weeks into the beginning of the fall semester back in September.
He didn’t answer, just swallowed.
