His brow ticks up. “And I thought you were blowing me off.”
“No! I want to be…friends.” The last word takes effort. It’s true, but it’s so fucking trite. My brain is a math-deficient, cliché-ridden void.
“Usually when people say that, they don’t mean it.”
“Well, I mean it,” I say. He doesn’t move. “West, look at me.” He forces his gaze to mine, his expression hard. “Do you still want to be friends with me?”
He swallows heavily, and I feel a surge of panic. I want to rewind the last sixty seconds, anything to avoid hearing him say no. But the truth is stuck behind my teeth.
He scrutinizes my face for a long time. “Okay,” he says eventually, and just like that, our fate is sealed.
Nine days islonger than you’d think. It’s enough time to add twenty thousand words to my manuscript, decide I hate it, and start something new. It’s enough time to binge the entire first season ofGirlsand wonder if I should move to New York likeHannah Horvath. It’s even enough time to go to a USC baseball game with my brothers, get relentlessly mocked for checking my texts between every pitch, and learn the meaning of the wordregret.
I’m an idiot! I admit it! It seems that turning down my crush didn’t make me think about him any less. The first text from West (Drive safe, Jupiter) set off a ripple of stomach flutters that quickly upgraded to a constant, unavoidable tug. I spent the week with my nose in my phone, either grinning to myself or wanting to delete our whole thread, depending on how long it’d been since he’d replied.
By the time I pull back into Tucson on Sunday afternoon, my stomach is chaos. I’ve replayed the kiss with West so many times that it’s burned itself into my brain, like a person who stares at an eclipse too long and sees crescent shapes for the rest of their life.
Making lunch?West’s lips on mine.Falling asleep at night?West’s hands on the small of my back, pressing me closer.Standing in a steaming-hot shower?West’s breath on my neck, a shiver tracing my spine.I don’t want to do anything else until I’ve kissed him again.
I drop my clean laundry in my room and walk straight to West’s dorm. No one answers when I knock, so I sit on the floor with my back against his door and wait. I jump to my feet when the door to the stairwell opens, and every muscle in my body draws taut in anticipation. West steps into the hall and does a double take.
“Mars?”
I smile. His nails are hot pink, and his hair is straightened within an inch of its life, and I’m officially obsessed with him. “Hey.”
He props the door open behind him, and a pretty girl with short blond hair steps into the hall. Her mouth turns into a frown when she sees me. She glances quickly up at West’s deer-in-the-headlights expression before looking back at me. “Who are you?”
I blink at her in surprise, wondering when and how they met. If she knows him from class. If she has a crush on him. If she knows that he likesme.
“I’m Mars.”
She tilts her head and adjusts her thick black frames. “Like the planet?”
West flinches, and I feel it in my bones. I swallow heavily. “Like the Roman god of war,” I tell her, my eyes on West. When he doesn’t crack a smile, I know it’s over. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Bethany.”
“Like West’s ex-girlfriend?”
She wraps her arm around his waist. “Like hiscurrentgirlfriend.”
11
Present Day
Not all booksignings are created equal. Some are filled with what I call BDE, or Big Debut Energy, a term I’ve coined for new authors who are so optimistic about their book signings that they go all in on props for their table. Giant banners, bookmarks, costumes, stickers, character art, and table games. And when all that fails, candy to lure in unsuspecting passersby. (As someone who is too anxious to eat actual meals before events, I love sitting next to a candy table.) I sigh wistfully as I observe the hopeful setup in front of me.
I miss who I was before this job made me cynical.
West’s signing tent is two-thirds BDE, one-third MIA. The table on the far left is holding the most intricate model pirate ship I’ve ever seen, next to a bowl of candy, and the table in the middle is occupied by a woman in a black velvet cloak with a crystal ball and tarot cards. She promises a free reading for anyone who buys a copy of her book. And then there’s West’s table on the right, empty except for a stack of books and a picture of his face. His author photo looks exactly like I wouldexpect from a pretentious literary upstart: dark and moody, with a Chris Evans cable-knit sweater wrapped around his unfairly broad shoulders.
I pretend to browse photoprints from a local artist while I keep an eye on West’s lonely stack of books. I wonder if he’s sitting alone in an empty classroom right this minute. When he eventually realizes that I’ve set him up, he’ll curse, sprint down five flights of stairs, trip in his haste, and tumble ass over teakettle all the way to the bottom. He’ll lie on his back and stare up at the ceiling, tears running off his whiskered jaw, and rue the day he agreed to join my panel. Realizing his mistake, he’ll withdraw from all festival events.
I hope he goes home to lick his wounds and think of me.
I smile at my farfetched little daydream. If even a fraction of it comes true, I’ll go to bed a happy woman tonight. But I won’t know for sure until I see what kind of mood he’s in, which is why I’m waiting around for him to show up instead of downing margaritas at a campus bar with Daphne at this exact moment.
My eyes wander again to his empty table, and curiosity draws me toward the stack of untouched hardcovers. I edge my way toward them and have just opened to the dedication page when a hand reaches out and snaps the book shut. I wrench back and look up to find a pissed-off West towering over me, his fingers steepled on the cover of his novel. “That’ll be twenty-eight dollars. Should I make it out to you?”
