Page 4 of Merry Me
“He’s got this,” she said firmly, her voice full of that unshakable faith she had in him.
I leaned back in my seat, watching her watch him. For all her blushing and shyness, Casey had a steel core when it came to Parker. It was nice seeing her like this. Happy. Very different from the quiet, sad girl who I’d roomed with for part of freshman year.
But me? I was going to spend Christmas exactly how I wanted: alone, on campus, with no mistletoe, no eggnog, and no made-for-TV miracles involving hot cocoa and emotional breakthroughs. No pretending the holidays were merry and bright when, for me, they never really had been.
Because Christmas time was when my biological father had left. Second grade. A tree still standing in the living room, lights blinking like they hadn’t gotten the memo. He walked out of the house, and he never came back.
I stopped believing in Santa and fathers on the same day.
So if anyone needed a Hail Mary, it was me. But it wasn’t coming from a quarterback.
I’d ruined my chance at that kind of happiness a long time ago.
CHAPTER 2
NATALIE
The phone buzzed in my hand, vibrating and scaring the living shit out of me since I’d obviously been in a half-asleep, half-scrolling daze because it was eight-fucking-o-clock in the morning.
My sister was calling—a rare thing as of late—which meant that whatever she had to say was going to be important or something I wasn’t ready to hear.
“Hey, Paige. What’s up?” I asked, doing my best to sound like I’d been awake for hours because my sister was one of those people who woke up at the crack of dawn to work out…like a psychopath.
“Nat!” she screeched, and I winced. “I have the best news!”
“You won the lottery?”
She paused. “No.”
“You got someone to pay for that boob job you’ve been wanting?”
“Also no,” she said, beginning to sound annoyed.
“Well, then I can’t think of anything you would have to tell me that would be exciting.”
“I’m getting married!” Her shrieking was so loud that it took me a second to comprehend what she was saying.
Then it clicked.
“What do you mean you’re getting married?” I asked, faintly aware of the fact that my voice was coming out equally screechy.
But in my defense, I hadn’t even known that my sister was dating anyone seriously, so forgive me if my voice had lost its usual, very pleasant tenor.
“Levi asked me to marry him, and I said yes!” she squealed.
“Well, yes. That’s generally how these things work,” I said, still sounding frantic. “But who the fuck is Levi?”
“You know who Levi is…He’s Levi.”
I blinked at the phone, trying to recall who Levi could possibly be.
Until it hit me.
Levi Martin.
My high school boyfriend’s best friend.
My insides clenched like I’d just swallowed an entire lemon.
