Book Boyfriend (Someday #5) (5 page)

“Because…look at you. And look at me. Guys like you are not generally attracted to girls like me. Is this some kind of bet or dare? Because I’ve seen that nineties teen rom-com in all of its forms, just like everyone else.”

Whoa. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had been under the impression that she felt like she was too cool for me—not the other way around! “No! God! It’s nothing like that. Why would you even think that?”

“Okay, well, then is it some kind of librarian fetish? Like, you think one day I’m going to shake my hair out and take my glasses off and be instantly transformed into the gorgeous supermodel that was somehow always hiding underneath my bookish façade? Because I’ve seen that porn too. And, frankly, if that’s what you’re waiting for, you’re going to be waiting a long time. That’s not real life.”

I brushed her hair out of her face. She closed her eyes and drew in her breath sharply.

I leaned close to her and whispered, “Not only do I not fantasize about you taking your glasses off, I kinda think you should leave them on. Don’t get me wrong. You’re cute as hell without them too. But I see now that I never gave them proper credit for how hot they are. They’re very you. And you’re sexy as all get out.

I rubbed my thumb against her cheek as I spoke. When she tilted her head to the side, almost imperceptibly pressing her face into my hand, I knew I was getting through to her—even if it was just a little bit. So I pressed on.

“Now, I’ll grant you this: Girls like you don’t usually end up with guys like me. But that doesn’t make one tiny bit of difference to our situation. You know why? Because I’m not ‘guys like me.’ I’m just me. And you’re not ‘girls like you.’ You’re just you. And ‘just me’ thinks ‘just you’ is pretty damn spectacular.”

She opened her eyes and pleadingly looked into mine. “But that’s the thing. That’s my question. Why?
Why
do you think that? I’m being serious!”

I nodded. Insecurity simmered behind her eyes, making her vulnerable. She had never shown me that side before, and I was willing to bet that she rarely showed anyone that side. It broke my heart and made me want to protect her from anything or anyone who might hurt her. I needed her to know that, as long as I was around, no one would ever have the chance. They’d have to go through me first.

I dropped my default teasing tone. “All right, then. A serious question deserves a serious response. Reasons Why I Like Michelle: Part One. Note: The creator of this list reserves the right to add to it on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Number one: the most unpredictable damn things come out of your mouth. Ninety-nine percent of the world is as predictable as if they were reading a script, but
you
are one of a kind. And it gives me an actual physical craving, like a hunger, to know what the next thing you’re gonna say will be that absolutely knocks my socks off.

“Number two: I’ve never seen anyone light up about anything the way you light up when you talk about books. The way your eyes spark with fire from inside when you recommend a story to somebody in the library or even just talk about what you’re reading to someone when we’re in class. Your skin glows with it. You’re so alive at that moment that it makes me feel more alive just to see it.

“Number three: well, damn. I was about to talk about how gorgeous your eyes are, but then I thought…no, her dimples are my favorite feature. But the thought of your dimples brought to mind your smile, and of course, then I thought that was my favorite. But, just as I was about to settle on your smile, I remembered your long, graceful fingers and how, every time I look at them, all I can think about is you touching me and what that would feel like and look like. That, of course, made me realize I hadn’t added all of your, shall we say,
sexier
parts to the list of my favorite attributes. So, now, I’m realizing I should just go with…number three: you are one helluva beautiful woman, and I’d be honored to have you by my side.” I gave her my best devilish smile. “Or in my bed.

“Number four—”

I never got a chance to tell her what number four—or any of the rest of the numbers up into the thousands—were. She stopped me by pressing her lips against mine and kissing me in a desperate frenzy, those beautiful, elegant fingers buried in my hair. And, before too long, I couldn’t even formulate that list anymore if I’d been asked to. It flew right out of my brain.

That wasn’t important though. The only thing that mattered was that it was still written in my heart, and nothing could ever change that.

Michelle

“S
o, holy shit.
You’ve been talking to Sebastian Winters!” Sandy burst out before I had even fully walked through their door.

Wow. Welcome to ATB.

“Damn, Sandy. At least let her set her books down before you pounce,” their roommate, Cat, laughed as she cleared a place on her desk for me to set my messenger bag.

“I honestly don’t know why you persist in the fiction that we are actually going to study here by lugging that heavy messenger bag to our room every time you come over,” their fourth roommate, Evelyn, dryly observed. “At this point, we don’t really need to pretend that this is a study group. You can feel free to accept the fact that the studying part of this is out the window and we’re just hanging out.”

“I just like to keep my options open,” I protested. “We always meet up in your guys’ room because you have one of the super suites and it’s so much more comfortable. But that means that, if we did suddenly decide to study, you’d all be prepared. And I wouldn’t. And I really like to be prepared.”

“Agreed,” Brandy said solemnly.

“This whole ‘preparedness is next to Godliness’ philosophy must be a library-employee thing,” Sandy blithely observed. “Now, let’s stop talking about boring old books and talk about what we really all gathered here tonight to hear about: Sebastian. Freaking. Winters.”

This whole line of questioning really made me feel put on the spot. After all, even the talking (and making out) in Grandma Trudy’s backyard yesterday hadn’t completely rid me of the sensation of waiting for the other shoe to drop where Sebastian was concerned. I still felt like, at any moment, I was going to wake up and find out that this had all been an extremely pleasant but singularly unrealistic dream. Talking about it with Brandy had just seemed like chatter. Talking about it with all of these girls? That would make it real. And real was scary.

“I don’t really know what there is to talk about,” I hedged, pulling my legs up in the chair and tucking them underneath me.

“Classic evasion,” Evelyn noted.

A theater major, she wanted to be a classically-trained New York theater actress. She made it her business to study body language and connect it with the internal story that it told. After all, she’d pointed out, if she wanted to be able to embody other people on stage, to understand and portray their motivations and their emotional landscapes, she had to be able to interpret what those landscapes were by observing them. She had to pay attention. And she had gotten unnervingly good at it.

I sat up straighter, attempting to make my face and my demeanor as blank as possible so that she couldn’t read me. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said in as neutral a voice as I could manage.

All of the girls burst out laughing. I looked around, my brows furrowed. What was so funny?

Finally, Cat took pity on me and said, “Sorry, Michelle. It’s just that we’ve all tried that ‘blank slate’ routine with Evelyn at one point or another. Trust us. It doesn’t work.”

Evelyn nodded slightly, her eyes narrowing as let her laser-focused gaze travel up and down the length of me. “The flat, monotonous tone. The shrug. The going-for-blasé-but-not-quite-getting-there face. The downward rounding of the shoulders as the legs are tucked out of sight. Yep. All of these conspire to indicate that someone is trying to deflect attention. To hide. And what that tells me is”—she smiled wickedly—“this is someone who
has
something to hide.”

I shook my head and buried my face in my hands.

Evelyn gave a
what-did-I-tell-ya
shrug. “Wow. Do I even need to comment on the literal hiding of the facial expression?”

I looked up at the girls. My cheeks were flaming, which wasn’t part of my normal MO. Then again, being this far out of my comfort zone wasn’t part of my normal MO, either. So, who knew how I would usually react when put in this kind of situation? I couldn’t ever remember having been in one before. When it came to positions in the social structure,
center of attention
was not my go-to place.

Cat, the sweetest and most nurturing one in the group, immediately rushed to my defense when she saw my face. “Okay, guys. I think that’s enough. If Michelle doesn’t want to talk about Sebastian, then she shouldn’t have to.”

I smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Cat. I appreciate it. It was super sweet of you to stick up for me. But I’ll be honest. Even as you’re defending me, I can hear the disappointment in your tone underneath the layers of solidarity.”

She laughed. “Guilty as charged. I have to say…when I found out you were hanging around with Sebastian Winters, I was just about eaten up with curiosity. After all, he usually never goes outside his little group of jocks and the future supermodels that surround them. I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone on campus that’s actually had a real conversation with him. I’m dying to know what he’s like. Is that weird?”

“I think it’s kind of weird,” Brandy answered. “Hell, he’s not a celebrity. He’s a frickin’ student! Just because he plays a sport, damn! Am I literally the only person on this entire campus who’d never even heard the name Sebastian Winters before Michelle started talking with him?”

“Yes,” the rest of the girls answered in unison.

“He’s Winship royalty, Bran,” Sandy explained.

Brandy shrugged like she still didn’t understand what the big deal was, but she dropped the subject.

“No, Sandy’s exactly right. She hit the nail on the head,” I said. “That’s the issue. He’s Winship royalty. And I’m a Winship peasant. So, how did this happen? That’s what makes me nervous about the whole thing.”

“You’re not a peasant!” Cat exclaimed, clearly hurt on my behalf that anyone would say such a thing about me, even if that
anyone
was me.

“I’m not saying that to be down on myself,” I clarified. “In the Winship hierarchy, I am. And that’s totally fine. The majority of us are. If the Winship social system were an economy, Sebastian would be part of the One Percent.”

“And you would have been out in the park on Wall Street, occupying your anarchistic ass off,” Brandy added.

“Precisely. So Sebastian’s taking an interest in me… I guess I just don’t really understand how that happened. And, if I don’t understand that, how can I trust it to last?”

“Shit, girl. You’re asking all the wrong questions,” Sandy said.

“What are the right questions?”

“Instead of asking yourself how and why this happened, ask yourself how you can make the most of it. Instead of spending time and energy wondering how long it’s going to last, ask yourself what you can do to enjoy it as much as you possibly can while it
does
last.”

Brandy raised her eyebrows. “Wow, sis. For someone who doesn’t often give a lot of thought to topics beyond clothes and makeup, that was shockingly sage advice.”

“You don’t give me enough credit,” Sandy said haughtily.

“Clearly.”

“I also think about hair,” she added.

Brandy narrowed her eyes and smirked. “Smartass.”

“Okay. Clever twin banter aside, I actually think that’s very good advice,” Cat said. “What’s wrong with just relaxing and letting it play out? Not everything has to be forever. Why miss out on a good thing just because you’re not absolutely sure, going into it, that it’s going to last? Maybe it will still be amazing, even if it eventually ends.”

I nodded. I could see the wisdom of the advice, so I vowed to do that. To stop overanalyzing and thinking everything to death, killing any pleasure I could experience in the moment because I was trying to see ten months—or ten years—down the road. I was going to relax and go with the flow, baby.

Even as I smiled my agreement and made that internal commitment, though, I found myself wondering if I would be able to actually live up to it when it came down to it. Was there any way on earth—or any way in Heaven or Hell, for that matter—I was going to be able to look into Sebastian Winters’s intoxicating, blue eyes and want anything short of forever?

Sebastian

A
t the beginning
of the semester, when I had signed up for my classes, I would’ve called anyone who had told me that the highlight of my week would be going to debate class a fucking idiot. That my heart would beat faster when I thought about walking through the auditorium doors. That I would count down the days and the minutes until the next class started. That my palms would even get a little sweaty with anticipation when I thought about the next time I’d drop into one of those seats and listen to one of Professor Kaminsky’s boring-ass lectures.

But, obviously, that had all changed on the first day of class. That was the day I’d seen Miche. That was the day everything had changed—and not just the way I felt about Debate class, either.
Everything
.

I still remembered the first thing that attracted my attention: her blue hair. I smiled now while thinking about it. On closer inspection, though, I had realized that it wasn’t entirely blue. There was just a blue streak running through her beautifully wavy, chestnut-brown locks. Then, looking her up and down, I noticed her skirt. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It was a bunch of neckties all sewn together, side by side, with the pointy sides falling at her knees. The vibrant colors and patterns of the silky ties were at distinct odds with the rest of the outfit, which consisted of thick, black tights, scuffed Doc Martens, and a grungy thrift-store tee. However, none of it seemed sloppy or thrown together. It gave the impression of being very carefully thought out.