Page 12 of Walkoff Wedding

One day, I’ll stand up to Brent. It just… won’t be today.

As it turned out, I didn’t get to catch Amos up on what happened last night because I worked the entire day prepping hundreds and hundreds of mini king cakes, and before I realized it, the sky was dark, and my stomach was growling fiercely. Unsurprisingly, it took the entire day to complete the last-minute order, and honestly, I have no energy left to even be mad about it any longer.

I’m exhausted, down to my bones, and as I plop down into the chair at my desk, my eyes are already bleary. I’m not sure how I’m going to make it through the next few hours of working on my project. But I don’t want to fall behind on developing ideas for my thesis.

I reach for my sketchbook while staring at the computer screen but stop short when I realize it’s not in the spot it usually is.

I spend the next hour tearing my room apart to the point that it looks like a hurricane has hit it and come up empty-handed.

My sketchbook is not here, and I groan when I realize where I might have left it.

chapter four

Grant

I realized one of two things pretty fucking quickly with this elaborate plan of Davis’s.

One was that I should not have let him be in charge of what actually went on the flyer since he idiotically put my cell phone number on the flyer that we’re putting up around the entire campus.

And two… I will never under any circumstance let him talk me into anything ever again.

“Will you stop freaking out? Shit, man, you’re making me nervous. And do you know how hard it is to make me nervous?” he says, taping another bright blue flyer to a light pole in the common area. “It’s gonna work. Chilllllll.”

Is it though?

Because as of right now, I am not convinced that it will. What I am convinced of, though, is that this is the worst idea I’ve ever had. My phone chimes in my pocket for the hundredth time in the last hour, which cements that feeling.

I narrow my eyes at him, shaking my head. “I’m going to kill you. With my bare hands.”

“Okay, fine, maybe we shouldn’t have put your number on the poster, but what else were we gonna do? We have to find your Cinderella, which means you’re going to just have to deal with it. Now, quit complaining, take these, and go put them up on that bulletin board.” He shoves a stack of papers at me, points to a board across the commons, then walks off in the opposite direction.

Great, now I’m taking directions from the Rookie.

This girl is probably going to think I’ve lost my mind, and you know what, maybe I have. That’s probably why I agreed to this in the first place.

But fuck… I just want to find her, get her sketchbook back to her, and finally meet her after all this time.

I get three signs up before my phone rings in my pocket… again. I pull it out, ready to turn it off, when I see my best friend Reese’s name on the screen.

I put it to my ear, answering with a cheery “Well, hello, stranger.”

“Dude, we literally just FaceTimed yesterday. So, you wanna tell me why there’s flyers posted all over OU social media and up all over campus with your phone number on it that say, ‘Prince Charming searching for his ArtGirl.’ What the hell happened in the last twenty-four hours, man?”

How is he playing in the minors all the way in Washington yet still knows what’s happening on OU’s campus?

“Rosie heard about it and sent me pictures,” he says, answering the question I didn’t even need to ask out loud.

Of course she did. His younger sister, Rosie, goes to Juilliard in New York, but most of her high school friends go to OU, which means she’s the plug for info.

I sigh, narrowing my gaze at Davis, who’s now flirting with a perky cheerleader without a care in the world instead of hanging up the fliers. “It’s a… long story.”

“Yeah? Good thing I’ve got time,” Reese retorts. “Wait till Lane hears about this, Prince Charming.”

I can practically hear his shit-eating grin through the speaker, and I groan. “Fuck off. See, this is why I didn’t tell you two.”

“The disrespect! I’m your best fucking friend, dick, and just because I graduated and moved across the country does not mean that you don’t have to fill me in on your life.”

I know he’s just giving me shit, but damn it, he’s right. Walking over to a nearby bench, I drop down onto the seat. “I know. It’s just a new… development. Super fucking new.”

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