Page 33 of Two Kinds of Us

She sang some classic rock song, and at least she could carry a slight tune. “I guess I’ve never really imagined it before. Not sure I’m wired that way. I’m not really…creative. Or outgoing.”

“At all?” he asked, almost intrigued. “No art, no creative writing—nothing like that?”

“Nope. It makes sense, though. My parents are both analytical thinkers. I guess we’re a family of nerds.” I thought about Nellie spelling things out and Jamie with his love of reading. “I don’t really have anything I’m passionate about. Not right now, at least.”

“You want to travel,” Harry said, taking a sip of his hot water. “That’s something to be passionate about.”

“Mmm, that’s more of a dream,” I told him, leaning my head onto my fist as I gazed at him. “Something that could be achievable, one day. Hopefully. One day that might have to wait until after college.” Saying the words aloud felt like admitting defeat, even if a part of me didn’t quite believe them in their entirety.

Harry leaned across the table, his forearms resting on the top. “If it’s something you want, something that your heart dreams of, don’t let anyone talk you out of it.”

I wish it were that easy. “You’re probably right.”

I took a sip of my latte, a good kind of tension filling the air—the kind that almost felt intimate. Harry looked at me so intensely, as if his eyes were diving into the deepest parts of me, trying to see what sort of secrets my soul kept.

“You’ve got the prettiest eyes, you know that?” he said after a beat.

Words like that made me want to pinch myself. “Look who’s talking.”

“They’re beautiful,” he murmured, picking up his cup again.

I studied him for a moment, watching for a crease in his expression, anything. “You say the flirtiest things,” I told him. “I wonder how many of them you mean.”

We were both leaning over the table, almost breathing the same breath. “With you, I mean every word.”

A brief laugh dragged out of me. He was doing it again—the flirtatious words rolling off his tongue with ease. But he hadn’t said them with a smirk or with amusement dancing in his eyes. He was serious.

Harry opened his mouth to say something when the song ended and the girl who’d been singing wandered off the stage. Harry glanced over his shoulder, and when he looked back, excitement filled his expression. “Come on.”

“Come where?” I asked, not liking that he kept looking at the stage. “Whoa, wait, wait. Remember, I said I’m not sure I’m wired that way. Plus I think it’d be cheating if you went up there.”

But Harry slid out of the booth, reaching for my hands, which I’d rested on the table. “It’ll be great,” he promised, his hands latching onto mine. His touch was soft, his grin infectious.

“I’m not a good singer.”

“Then be terrible,” he declared. “Sing your absoluteworst. Pitch your voice as high as you can. I dare you. I’ll sing terribly too, if it would make you feel better.”

It was obvious then that he wasn’t doing this because he wanted to perform—he wanted to sing because he wanted to have fun. He could purposefully sing badly, and he’d still want to do it. He was spontaneous, outgoing, and charismatic.

Everything I wanted to be.

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to laugh and climb to my feet or snatch my hand back. “You’re a weirdo, you know that?”

“Be a weirdo with me, Stella,” he said as he leaned down, words a hum of a whisper sending a shiver down my spine.

He’d invoked a name that wasn’t my name.Stella. Margot’s words echoed in my mind.What would Stella do?

Stella would do something like this. She’d be outgoing, carefree, fun. That thought alone had me rising from the booth.

Harry must’ve done this before because he walked over to the karaoke machine and scrolled through the songs. “There’s one by Outside Inclusion,” he told me. “I had Vincent add it to the playlist a few weeks back.”

“At least I’ll know the words,” I muttered, Destelle taking over even though I had the Stella wig on. This anxiety, these nerves? Totally Destelle. She would never do something so wild.

He must’ve heard the tone of my voice. He looked over his shoulder, uncertainty in his eyes. “Hey, we don’t have to—”

“We’re doing this,” I said, forcefully cutting him off.Be Stella. “You can’t promise me you’ll sing terribly andnotfollow through.”

After pressing the button to cue the song, Harry passed me a microphone. “You take the first section and we’ll orbit from there, okay?”

---