Page 31 of The Pocket Pair

Someone said they saw some kind of brawl right before the owl showed up. Anyone know anything about a fight???

DB

All I know is the guys who brought the owl were non-Sheeters and shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

HP_Fan

Was the owl carrying any letters?

CHAPTER 9

Val

You can stay with me.

Sure, I might have had an owl swooping down over my head. But the thing that I woke up thinking about wasn’t a bird. Or the sight of Wolf Waters handling the massive owl.

Nope—it’s that one simple sentence from Chevy, echoing in my head like the refrain of a Taylor Swift song that you can’t—and don’t want to—get out of your head. Actually, it fits right into the chorus of “You Belong with Me,” so now I know what I’ll be humming all day.

If I could snatch the words out of the air and have them tattooed on my skin, I would. Because Chevy invited me to stay in his guest bedroom. Which is in his house.

Where he also lives.

Oh, and don’t get me started on how it felt to so very briefly pretend Chevy was mine. To lean back into his solid chest and feel his arms slide around my waist like they were made for just that purpose.

Did he feel the same way? I can’t stop my mind from spinning out. He definitely didn’t seem to consider it a hardship, stepping in to be my pretend beau. Does anyone still use the word beau? I know if Jaxon did, he’d add an X.

But enough about him. Between Chevy and the attack owl, I think he’s gone for good.

Unfortunately, the side effect of using Chevy as my get-out-of-a-relationship-free card steered my brain in the direction of imagining it was very real. Or that maybe one day, it could be.

And now, I’m going to move in with him. Temporarily, but still. That cannot be good for my overactive imagination, which will make the leap to much more than friends or roomies. If a very brief fake dating made my brain feel like we were really a couple, what will living with him do?

Five more minutes of thinking, I tell myself. Only five more minutes of lying in bed, remembering the events of the night before. Except the part where I made my very real confession about being in love with Chevy. We’ll just chalk that up to me being an undiscovered Oscar-worthy talent. Hopefully, Chevy didn’t see the truth in those words.

When the door to my apartment bursts open, it’s been way more than five minutes, and I’m still lying in bed, humming as I relive the moment when Chevy nuzzled my hair. I bolt upright as my two besties surge inside, followed by a hesitant Kyoko, who looks a little unsure.

I’ve only met her a few times, so normally I wouldn’t ask her to hang out while I’m braless in bed, but I smile and wave her inside anyway.

I find myself avoiding Winnie’s eyes. I’m not sure what has been posted on Neighborly about last night, but she won’t be happy if she hears about me living with Chevy from anywhere but me. Not to mention the whole fake boyfriend thing, which people watching might have thought was real.

I’m banking on the fact that the owl took center stage. Please, please, let the owl have distracted the gossips from everything else.

“To what do I owe the honor of your presence so early in the morn?” I ask, hiding a yawn with my hand.

Winnie blinks at me from the tiny kitchen area, where dishes are stacked in the sink. Likely not clean. “We’re here to deal with all this. Because obviously, you aren’t.”

“I was getting there,” I protest, but Winnie and Kyoko are already starting in on the dishes.

Lindy plops down on the bed beside me and leans in close. “I know what you did last summer,” she whispers.

I don’t think I even remember last summer. “Last summer? Do you mean the time I tried to climb the water tower to touch up the paint?”

She snorts. “No, dummy. It was an expression. I mean, I know what you did last night.”

My stomach bottoms out. I’m glad Kyoko and Winnie are arguing about something related to dishes and haven’t noticed us whispering over here like co-conspirators in some kind of dangerous plot. “Does Winnie know?”

Lindy frowns. “We talked about it on the way over.”

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