Page 45 of The Publicity Stunt
She nods, attempting a smile. “Right.”
Right. “So, it’s no big deal. Shit happens.” The words pour out of me in a stream of bitterness.
“Shit happens?” April repeats.
“We got caught up in the moment. Or, at least, I did.”
Her eyes turn to glass and she looks down. Her red hair falls around her face. I want her to deny it. I want her to tell me this wasn’t a mistake. I want to hold her hand. I want to dance with her in my front yard. I want to buy her that X-Men comic she’s been dying to read for the past week. I want to give her a hug even when she doesn’t need one.
I don’t want tojust kissher. I want to make her my girlfriend. I want to date her.
“Just to be clear,” she begins, her voice a lot quieter than before. “We’re still …”
“Friends,” I say. “We’re still friends, Chere.”
“Okay,” she whispers, still looking at the ground.
Not okay. I don’t want to be your friend. I want to be with you. Fighting the stinging in my eyes, I swallow those words. “Can you do me a favor, though?” I say instead.
“What?”
I take a deep breath and look at the ground. “Please don’t ask me to kiss you again.” Without meeting her gaze, I turn around and head out of her room, promptly leaving out the second half of that sentence:Because I won’t be able to say no.
I don’t think I know how.
ChapterEleven
Present Day
APRIL
The glass doors slide open and the smell of antiseptic fills my nostrils.
Parker and I stop at reception and he props his good arm on the white granite countertop. One of the nurses looks up. “Hi, how can I help you?” She looks pretty young, mid-twenties perhaps. Her blond hair is chopped at her shoulders.
“My friend has a huge cut on his arm.” I glance at her name tag. Ivy.
“And how did it happen?”
Parker points to the bloody tourniquet. “My girlfriend got a little wild in bed tonight.”
Ivy’s eyes widen and I immediately kick Parker in the foot. He snickers. A second nurse, wearing teal scrubs and a pair of dark-rimmed glasses, walks toward us. She looks older; mid-forties, maybe. She hands me a clipboard. “Please fill this out and wait down the hall. We’ll let you know once it’s your turn.”
Nodding, I grab the clipboard from her hands and two minutes later, the two of us are seated in the waiting area side by side, basking underneath the harsh fluorescent lighting.
“Okay.” I prop the clipboard up on my lap, my eyes skimming the form. “Describe illness or injury.”
“Tiny scratch on arm,” Parker says.
I write, “Gaping wound on left arm” and move on to the next question. “Cause of accident?”
“You.”
A warm blush climbs up my neck and I turn to face him. With his hand wrapped tightly around the tourniquet, he watches me, scrunching his eyebrows and nose like he’s trying to read my mind.
“Cause of accident, short attention span,” I say aloud as I write and he laughs. Next question. “Emergency contact?”
“April Moore.”
