Nothing More (Landon Gibson 1)

I don’t think she wants to hear about my actual experience.

I don’t think I’d want to tell her.

It’s kind of like when people ask “How are you?” and really only want you to say “fine.” Any further explanation makes them uncomfortable.

“I didn’t get to go to a real high school. I went to a small private school near Seattle. It was awful,” Nora says, surprising me with another small glimpse into who she is.

“My school was awful, too,” I admit.

Nora regards me with a skeptical look. “I bet you were one of the popular kids. You played sports, didn’t you?”

I nearly laugh at the idea of me being a popular kid.

A jock? Me? Not even close.

“Not quite.” My cheeks get red. I can feel it. “I wasn’t anything, really. I wasn’t cool enough to be popular, but I wasn’t smart enough to be considered a nerd. I was just in that middle ground where no one gave a shit about me. I was chubby then, so I got teased when the popular kids got bored with their usual prey. But honestly, I didn’t realize how bad my high school was until I moved to Washington halfway through my senior year. My experience in Washington was so different.”

Nora walks over to the utility closet and grabs the broom and dustpan. She starts to sweep the floor and I prepare to fill the silence with more ramblings about my high school days as I wet a paper towel and clean the rest of the counter.

“Nothing is worse than a bunch of assholes who peak in high school,” she observes.

I bark out a little laugh. “That’s one of the truest things I’ve ever heard.”

“I guess I wasn’t missing much,” Nora says, her eyes distant. She has that expression on her face again, the one that looks like she’s grown bored.

“Did you always want to be a pastry chef?” I ask. The sugar is close to being cleaned up now, but I don’t want the conversation to end. I almost wish there was another bag of something for me to accidentally dump on the floor.

I’ve never heard Nora talk this much before, aside from her and Tessa gushing over the two boys kissing on that demon-hunting show Tessa’s obsessed with. Usually, I’m never a part of their conversations, I’m in my room studying or at work when she’s here, and now that we are alone and she’s being uncharacteristically chatty, I want to gather in as many words as she’s willing to say.

She moves the broom across the tile floor and looks over at me. “Thanks for remembering not to call me a baker. And no, I actually wanted to be a surgeon. Like my dad and his dad and his dad.”

A surgeon?That’s the last thing I expected her to say.

“Really?”

“Don’t be so surprised. I’m actually very intelligent.” She cocks her head to the side and I decide that I really like her playful attitude. It’s different from Dakota’s, not as harsh or as hard.

Dakota.

I haven’t thought about her once in the last thirty minutes, and her name sounds foreign inside my head.

Does that make me a bad guy? Naked with her one minute, not thinking about her the next.

Is she sitting at home, waiting for me to call her?

. . . Somehow, I doubt that.

“I’m not doubting that.” I raise a sugary hand to her. “I just thought you would say something more . . . art-related.”

Nora regards me with a thoughtful look on her face. “Hmm, why is that?”