Just Pretend (Love Comes To Town)

“You do have his number,” Josie says, leaning forward in her seat as eagerness kindles in her blue eyes. “Though I disagree about the classification part.”

Wynona’s already sunk back into her gloom, though, judging by the slump of her shoulders and the curve of her lips. We’ll need to rustle her out of it fast—if we’re going to be able to at all.

I take out my phone, open up the camera application, and give it my ugliest, creepiest smile, complete with bulging psycho-looking eyes, before taking a picture. I glance at the twins, all of us chuckling as I turn the phone their way. “Maybe I should send him that?”

“No caption, just that picture.” Josie laughs so much she snorts as she looks at the hideous result. “Perfect.”

Even Wynona cracks a smile as she looks at it, although she shakes her head. “You need something more sexy, less ugly.”

We both know I’m never going to send any of these, but I giggle as I unzip my hoodie to play along. Anything to make my friend smile. “OK, boss.”

“Oh yeah, girl!” Josie cheers, giggling away. I position my cleavage, then give the camera my most sultry face at the same time I give it the finger. When I check the result, I end up staring at it for a good few seconds.

“What?” Josie says. “Come on, show us!”

“It’s…”

Well, what’s the word? Sexy? I don’t know, I’ve never been big on taking ‘those’ sort of photos—I’ve always been too paranoid that they’d be leaked. After all, it happened to one girl in our school back in 11th grade—Erin, wasn’t it?—and she never got over it. Apparently, it even fucked up her university applications and she now works at some sort of call center trying to scam people out of their old air conditioners or something.

But now that I’m looking at the picture—me, with the smile that came from I don’t know where, my bare breasts pressed into a hot V of cleavage—I can see where the allure comes from. I look good. I look damn good.

“Ooooh,” Josie squeals as she peers over to see the picture. Then she laughs. “Love the middle finger.”

“What can I say,” I say in a faux haute couture voice. “I’m model material.”

“Let me see,” Wynona protests.

When I hand her the phone, her eyes light up. “Wow.” She taps away.

“Hey,” I say. “What are you…”

I grab the phone just in time to see the SENT signature on the photo she just sent to 1-718-675-3434. AKA Nolan’s number.

I sit there, staring at it in sheer shock for a few seconds. When I can finally speak, all I can say is: “You didn’t.”

Chapter 5

Nolan

“Found anyone to marry yet?” Jax teases.

I toss a striped Kleenex box that misses him by an inch, thanks to his quick ducking.

“Bro,” he grumbles.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a dodgeball whiz?” I ask innocently.

He scowls bigger, and I regret it. Even if Jax pressed my buttons first. He can’t help it—the man loves a good argument the way rabbits love carrots. He’s a good guy in spite of that.

And in spite of him ordering about five boxes of pizza after I came home from the dinner last night, and eating four.

Right now, I basically feel like shit. Earlier today, after some more unproductive time at the comedy club trying to get the renos into something other than a complete fiasco, I tried calling up Dirk. After hours of him dodging my calls, he finally answered, long enough to say that no, there was no way around my Dad’s will stipulation and yeah, basically I was screwed. OK, maybe not the second part, but it pretty much came down to that, close enough.

Slinging himself on the couch next to me, Jax repeats, “So, you find your honey yet?”

I gesture to the pizza box on one side of me, the thong of whatever girl stayed over a few nights ago on the other. “What does it look like?”

Jax dangles the thong from his finger, gives it a little whirl, then tosses it off. “Maybe she’s right under your nose and you’ve been missing her?”

“And maybe you need to fuck off,” I grumble. I open the pizza lid to find one sad excuse for a slice that I take anyway. Maybe food will make me feel less pissed off.

Although part of me being pissed off is that I’m pissed off in the first place. Why should I give half a shit about some chick who showed up, gave me my phone back, then disappeared before I could even ask for her number?

There’s at least four billion women in the world, at least a quarter of those eligible, last time I checked.

“Speaking of honeys,” I say, mouth full of pizza. “Won’t Laura be worried about where you are? You’ve been here, what, like four days now?”