Page 19 of One Little Kiss
“We can only handle so much school spirit,” he agrees.
“Should we bail?” I ask, relaxing into the warm leather of the heated seat as I fall effortlessly into the easy banter.
“Definitely,” he says. “Although…”
“We’d never get away with it,” I finish for him.
“Mara would come and drag us out of my room kicking and screaming.”
I huff. “Celia would call in the big guns.”
We share a look and say in unison, “Addie.”
“They’ll have her call and ask if we’re okay…” He shakes his head in mock horror.
We have a longstanding joke about the amazing power of Addie’s sweetness. Seriously, it’s like a super power. “She’ll blink those big eyes—”
“Over Facetime,” he adds.
“And then she’ll be like ‘why aren’t you going?’” I do my best sweetheart Addie impersonation and Elijah grins as he shakes his head.
“Dude, you know I can’t fight that.”
“Who can?” I say.
We agreed a long time ago that Addie’s kindness is basically our version of kryptonite. She makes even the most jaded and cynical among us cave to her optimism.
“Looks like we’re gonna have to go then,” he says.
“Looks like it.”
He shoots me a sidelong look and I meet it with a smile. This guy. How could I have thought there was weirdness here?
It’s basically already forgotten.
He turns the car onto my street and I’m starting to regret saying I wanted to go home rather than to his house. My mom will have some low-calorie diet meal waiting for me, as opposed to Elijah’s, where we’d probably end up ordering pizza.
I’m thinking about telling him to forget it and take us both to his place, but then he says, “So who are you going to go with?”
“What?”
“The dance,” he reminds me. “I don’t think we can do the group thing again.”
I’m nodding before he even finishes. “That was kinda miserable. I felt like a charity case.”
He nods in agreement. Truthfully…we had fun. But when you’re sharing a limo and a pre-dance dinner with two ridiculously loved-up couples, it gets a little awkward. There were a few of Elijah’s teammates and another girl friend of ours as well, and that made it even weirder for some reason. It felt like everyone should be a pair but we had an odd number, and two in the group had dated and were not pleased to be sharing a limo and…
“Yeah, let’s not do that again,” I say.
He arches a brow as he slows in front of my house. “You gonna ask that intern your dad set you up with?”
I snort. “To a high school dance? I don’t think so.”
“Too cool for that?”
I arch a brow of my own. “Too old.”
He gives a snort of laughter that makes me smile. “All right then, it’s settled.”
