“Me?” I touch my chest, not believing I could enter this kind of conversation.
He nods. “Yeah, he said you were too good for me, that I would never be able to grow up and be with a girl like you. I was young, rebellious, and when he saidgo, I yelledstop. When he saidLily, I shoutedJuliana.”
“Oh,” I mumble, not realizing how deep-seated the truth really is.
“For the record,” his voice lightens, “I was miserable all night having to listen to her go on about her horses. And if I remember correctly, you did use Jeremy’s short height to your advantage.”
My ears heat and redden at the memory. I use my hands as blinders to shield my mortification. “You’re not supposed to find my past conquests amusing,” I whisper-yell, still blocking my peripheral vision.
His lips quirk. “I love all of you.” He raises my chin with a finger and kisses me so delicately that I wonder who the man is on the other side of me. The tenderness draws me in, and I lose breath in the short moment.
I break away first, not sure if I can last kissing him like this without the promise of wild, passionate sex. He raises hiseyebrows, putting his cup to his lips, grinning. Yes, he knows exactly how I feel right now. I’m so transparent.
I change the topic to keep from oozing into the fountain. “Poppy keeps asking me about your birthday. She wants to meet all of our friends at the party they’resupposedlythrowing for us—Charlie and Stacey especially.”
He remains calm. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her that she’d hate the party. Too many drunken college students, and she’ll have to meet them some other time. She bought it pretty quickly. Besides, she has no reason to believe we’d create fictional friends.”
“I wish you’d chosen a better name than Stacey. I don’t know any Staceys that I’d ever be friends with.”
“That’s name prejudice and immature.”
“There’s no such thing as name prejudice, but I don’t doubt it’s slightly immature. I have many faults.”
“About your birthday”—I stay on track—“since you’re not passing out at noon, can I actually take you out to celebrate?”
He rips off the last of the champagne label. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. We can dress up in costumes and go to a party.”
“Why can’t we just stay at home, drink and have sex?”
“We do that every day, Lo,” I say irritably. Since we’ve been together, my late night clubbing customs have disappeared. Unlike Lo, I’m not used to being cooped up in the apartment so much. “There has to be some perks to having a birthday on Halloween.”
He takes a swig from the champagne bottle, thinking. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I guess we already have the perfect costumes.”
I grin and then immediately frown. “Wait, what costumes?” My stomach flops, and once my embarrassment begins to set in, his face lights up. Oh, I hate him. “No, not the same ones we wore to Comic-Con.” My skimpy X-23 outfit!And his tight, equally revealing Hellion suit. The picture framed on his wall.
“You want to go out so badly, that’s my condition.”
He’s trying to see how much I want it. I inhale deeply. I’ll wear a cape in the front or something absurd to cover me. “Fine. You have a deal.”
“We like making those, don’t we?”
I suppose we do.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Take these numbers into account,not these.” My tutor gives me a concerned look. “Do you follow?”
My eyes grow wide. “I’m going to fail. Again.”
He taps the eraser of his pencil on the thick economics text and stares at the numbers. His lips draw into a thin line, trying to figure out how to tutor the stupidest girl at Penn. I’m hopeless. It took three more days of solo-torture before I sucked up my pride and emailed Connor to tutor me.
Now I have company in hell.
“Try this one, Lily.” He slides the book to me and points to a big paragraph. Words. Too many words for something involving numbers. Why can’t economics choose between the two? Having both numbersandwords in an equation sends a splitting migraine to my skull.
