Wait a minute, is he suggesting…?
I shake my head. “No. No way.”
“You don’t know what I was about to say.”
“Sure I do. I’m a mind-reader.”
His bright smile flashes. “We could help each other out. If you take me shopping, I’ll take you partying. It’s a perfect solution.”
“Read my lips: No.”
“Come on, Embers.” His smile fades and a crease appears between his dark brows. “There’s this wedding reception you’re supposed to attend and don’t want to. There are clothes I’m supposed to buy and I don’t fucking know how. The clothes I buy when left to my own devices are crap, they don’t last the damn month. I need someone… Someone to show me how to spend, crazy as it may sound. Someone to tell me it’s okay to use the money, to buy something good.” He presses his thumbs to his temples, as if fighting a headache. “Would you think about it?”
Holy hell, he is serious.
It’s a crazy idea. Tempting. But crazy. May be fun.
Frigging insane.
I sigh. “My parents believe going out will solve all my problems. I only have to change, get out of my shell.”
When I look up, I see a flash of emotion in his eyes I don’t have the time to decipher before it’s gone. “I don’t think you should change,” he says. “You’re just fine as you are.”
I blink at him. That’s not the reaction I was expecting. It was either a guffaw, or him agreeing with my parents’ assessment.
“I am?”
“Yeah. Why should you pretend to be something you’re not? To like something you don’t? Like parties. If you hate them, then why pretend you don’t?”
God, good question. “Because then I seem like a freak? I mean, everybody likes parties, right?”
“You’re not everybody, and you’re not a freak,” he says, his smile faint, but I think I like it even more than his smirks and wide grins. It feels more real.
And wait, hasn’t he said this before? About me not being everybody? It’s obvious, and yet another meaning lurks between his words, something he’s trying to tell me.
Yeah, or I’m imagining things.
“Come on.” He raises his mug, clinks it with mine. “Say yes. Help me out here. Otherwise I’ll show up at the wedding naked.”
And of course my gaze immediately flicks back to his sculpted chest and arms, and my mouth runs dry. I lick them. He’s putting me in a tight spot there.
“Okay, on one condition.”
He puts down his mug, wary. “Spill.”
“You will answer three questions from me.” And why the heck am I doing this? Curiosity, I think. It’s gotten the better of me.
He stills, not even blinking, for a long unnerving moment. Then he shrugs. “A game, huh? Well, why the hell not? I’m in.”
Wow. I realize I didn’t expect him to agree. What do you know… and what have I gotten myself into?
Too late to back out now, though. “Then it’s a deal.”
Part Two
“One day,” Helen says, “our luck will turn. You’ll see. Life can’t keep fucking us up. Something’s gotta give.”
“Whatever,” I mutter, hands in my pockets, trying to pretend I don’t give a fuck about tomorrow, though I know she sees right through me.