Say It's Not Fake

I hadn’t realized Meg’s friends were there. If I had, I would have locked myself in my room. Not that I didn’t like them, but Kyle Webber drove me nuts. He was a nice guy, for a sophomore, and he was relatively popular because he was on the varsity football and basketball teams, but he was just always around when he came over. Hanging around in the kitchen, eating all of our food, rambling about stuff that I didn’t care about.

I swallowed my put-upon sigh and paused the movie. “Watching Dirty Dancing.” I looked up at him.

“You really like that movie, huh? You watch it all the time.” He picked at his lip.

“I guess so.”

“Maybe I could watch it with you sometime. It looks good,” he offered.

Bryan never watched Dirty Dancing with me. No matter how many times I asked him to. He said it was a chick movie, and he wasn’t interested. Which was why I had dumped him.

Kyle was grinning at me in that unnerving way of his. He was always smiling. Especially at me. I didn’t know if it annoyed or flattered me.

“I heard you and Nichols broke up. Sorry to hear that,” he said, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

“Uh, thanks. But it was no big deal. It’s not like we were married or anything,” I retorted dismissively. I didn’t particularly want to talk to Kyle about my breakup with Meg’s friend. Even if he was looking sort of cute in cargo shorts and a tight-fitting polo shirt. When had he started growing his hair out like that? I liked the way it fell across his forehead.

Ugh. Stop it. He’s like sixteen and two years below me in school. I shouldn’t be noticing if he was cute or not.

Kyle plopped down on the couch beside me. “You’re better off anyway. He’s a total dick.” His knees kept bouncing and jiggling. It was putting me on edge.

“Yeah, everyone knows he’s a dick. I guess it took me a little too long to figure that out.”

Kyle pushed his hair out of his eyes. He really did have a nice-looking face. Full lips, straight nose, shiny, hazel eyes. Huh. I had never really noticed before. He really needed to stop fidgeting like that. It was irritating.

“So, I guess you don’t have a date for Prom then.” Kyle licked his lips, staring at me.

Rude much?

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Kyle,” I huffed, pissed off and embarrassed that he brought it up.

“Oh, sorry. It’s just sophomores can’t go to Prom—”

“Rightly so,” I interrupted with a roll of my eyes.

“But if a junior or senior asks them, they can totally go,” he went on, talking so fast I wondered if he was going to pass out.

“But why would they do that? Who would take a sophomore to prom?” I asked with genuine bewilderment. “Now can you shut up already; I’m trying to watch my movie.”

“Oh, should I stay?” he asked, still fidgeting, still bouncing his knees.

“That’s okay. I’d like some privacy, ya know?” I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. I had never noticed the small dimple in his cheek before. It was cute …

“I’ll see you later,” I said, hoping he got the point.

Then Meg was there telling him to come on, and Kyle was getting to his feet, staring at me in that antsy way of his like he wanted to say something. But he never did.

And I forgot about Meg’s weird friend and finished watching my movie.

“So where are we going to eat?” I asked, needing to fill the quiet with something other than his jangly music.

“I thought we’d head out of town. There’s this great Greek place in Kirksville that I’ve been wanting to try. Do you like Greek food? Because if not, there’s Italian or Chinese, and I think there’s a Mexican place in Dryden—”

“Greek sounds great. I lived in Cyprus for six months for a movie shoot, so I could definitely go for that,” I assured him, wanting to assuage his nerves. Because his nerves were making me nervous.

“You’ve really been all over the world, haven’t you? It must have been amazing. I’ve been here. And North Carolina on vacation. And California that time …” His voice drifted off, and he cleared his throat. Now the cabin of the truck was full of other things. Memories that were both sexually charged and wrapped in bitterness.

“Yeah, well traveling was definitely a perk of the job,” I said wanting to change the subject—to move away from remembrances of that weekend years ago. I didn’t want the date—if that’s what this was—to tank before it even got started.

“Do you miss it?” he asked, turning onto the main road that would take us into Kirksville.

“The job?”

“Yeah.”

“I do. I miss it a lot,” I admitted. I had purposefully not talked about the career I had left behind because I had chosen to come home and didn’t want to feel any regret. I had learned life was too short to second guess yourself, even if I second-guessed myself a dozen times every day for every tiny thing I did.