1
I’mslicingmushroomsinthe back kitchen at Pizza Fiesta when my friend and co-worker, Molly, bumps her hip into mine hard enough to jolt the cutting board.
“Girl,” she murmurs, “You’ve been smiling for five straight minutes. Are you okay? Do you need… help?”
I scowl at the pile of diced mushrooms. “I was not smiling.”
“You were grinning. At vegetables. Like they told a joke.”
I stab at one a little too aggressively. “It’s nothing.”
It is absolutely not nothing. It’s six-foot-three of nothing, with shoulders so broad they blocked out the sun when he opened the diner door yesterday.
I met him three days ago when I delivered Pizza to his house at the Anthem Country Club mansion. He looked at me like I was the most interesting thing to ever happen to his stupidly perfect life.
Jordan. Even his name sounds powerful.
Ugh.
I reach for another empty pan and catch my reflection in the stainless steel—cheeks flushed, bangs sticking to my forehead from the kitchen heat… and something else. A faint, ridiculous dreamy expression I instantly wipe off.
Nope. None of that.
I am a high school senior, about to graduate and go to college, a responsible daughter who helps out her family and makes her father proud. I'm not the kind of girl who moons over some too-rich, too-handsome stranger.
That’s how girls end up crying in bathroom stalls during lunch period, and I refuse to be a cautionary tale.
Molly—my compact, worldly, and unfortunatelyperceptiveco-worker—leans against the counter and narrows her eyes. “Is this about that dreamboat you delivered pizza to three days ago? The one who lives in that snazzy neighborhood and asked you out?"
"Of course not," I deny.
She smirks. "Hmm. So you were thinking of the customer we had yesterday. They are one and the same aren't they?”
My hand freezes mid-slice. “Molly, how do you even know it was the same guy?”
She snorts. “Sweetheart, how big is Henderson? How many blue eyed gods roam around downtown then drop into the pizzeria to ask for a Sabrina—and not Bree?”
My heart kicks against my ribs. “He was just a customer who liked the pizza and came back for more.”
Molly’s smile turns lethal. “Oh, yeah. And stared at you like you were his dessert.”
“He did not stare,” I protest
“He stared, baby. Sam doesn’t even look at me like that, and we’ve been together three years.”
My stomach does a weird swoop that I immediately tell it to knock off. It does not listen. “He was just being polite,” I insist,trying to sound logical and not like a teenage idiot who let a man with blue eyes ruin her brain cells.
“Polite?” Molly laughs. “Polite doesnotlook like that. That man wants your phone number, your address, your shoe size—hell, your blood type.”
“Molly.” I groan. “He asked me out while I was delivering his pizza. “It was inappropriate, not to mention cliché. Rich guy hits on pizza girl? Please, that's peak playboy behavior.”
“So that’s why you ignored him yesterday?” she presses.
"Yes," I lie.
But the truth—the humiliating truth—is that I didn’t feel insulted at all when he asked me out. I panicked. Because he was too forward. Too old. Too everything.
I liked it.
