Page 48 of Under My Skin
I swallow at the thought.
“Oh, come on.” She nudges me, and I blink, refocusing. “Haven’t you ever let yourself be nerdy about something?”
My eyebrows furrow, and I pull back to look at her. “I’m nerdy about lots of things.”
She steps back to get a better look at me, and under normal circumstances, I’d probably feel weird being blatantly analyzed, but all I can focus on is how pretty she is. From the way her tank scoops low under her open cardigan to reveal the soft curve of her breasts to the way her black leggings hug her hips. I think I could look at her all day and never get bored.
“No,” she says simply, concluding her assessment. “I’m not seeing it.”
Laughter rumbles in my chest. “Maybe you’re not looking hard enough.”
She frowns as she gives me a second look and bites her thumbnail. “You’re a tall guy who works out, is covered in tattoos, and rides a motorcycle. Oh, and your supposed ‘favorite tattoo’ is probably the scariest of them all.”
I glance down at the spider on my hand, my bemused smile growing. “You think I work out?”
She waves away my question. “See?” she says like she’s won the argument. “Nothing screamsnerd.I, on the other hand, already dress like a grandma who works at the library. No one would be surprised to find the boxes of books I’m hoarding.”
I chuckle. “You don’t dress like a grandma.”
She keeps digging through the books. “Picture some glasses on the bridge of my nose, you’ll see it.”
I grin at her response. “Look,” I say, holding out my hand to show her the spider. “This isn’t scary. This is where Peter Parker was bit.”
She looks down at the tattoo and then up at me. “I thought he was bitten on the back of the neck.”
“What?” I shake my head. “No. He was bit on the hand. That’s what’s in the comics, and that’s what’s in the original movies.”
She holds her sideways glance. “The ones with Tobey Maguire?”
I balk at her. “Yes, the ones with Tobey Maguire. Those are the best ones.”
She nods slowly. “Yeah . . . I haven’t seen those.”
My brain feels like it’s short circuiting. “You’ve never—what?How?”
She smiles at my reaction and shrugs. “I don’t know. I mostly watched the Andrew Garfield ones because I thought he was hot.”
I let out a groan, burying my face in my hands as I take a seat on her bed. “Spider-Man isn’t supposed to be hot. He’s supposed to be a nerd.”
She laughs. “Well, based on this interaction, I’d say you’re a hot nerd.”
I peek at her through my fingers. “Don’t do that.” I could tell her this isn’t even the nerdiest tattoo I have, but I’m too stuck on the fact that she’s never seenSpider-Man.
Her smile only widens as I drag my fingers down my face. I’m about to tell her I’ll watch the damn movies with her to right this injustice, but my phone rings in my pocket. Shifting my weight on the bed, I look down to see a call coming in.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
LUCY
Everett’s demeanor immediately shifts.His shoulders tense as he gets to his feet. “I have to take this,” he says half a second before swiping to answer. “Hey. Everything okay?”
I do my best to give him privacy, but it’s not like I can’t hear him. This room is only so big, and there are only so many places I can go. He listens for a while on the phone, and I sneak a glance his way to find him rubbing the back of his neck as he stands with his back to me.
“Yeah, I am,” he says in a low voice.
The person on the phone says something, and even though I can’t make out the words, it sounds like the voice of a woman coming through the muffled speaker.
His eyes dart in my direction, and I quickly look away. I sift through the books to the bottom of the box where a few notebooks and journals left over from my teenage years lay scattered at the bottom. Who knows what’s written in them. I’d probably be better off burning them than reliving any thoughts I hadback then.
