Page 80 of Best Friends for Never

“Do you want it to be over?”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Was thinking we could make dinner at your place?”

My brows shoot up as we pass by Fran’s pie shop, which is closed for the evening too. “You cook? Because I distinctly remember you setting off the smoke detectors over a grilled cheese sandwich—twice.”

“First of all, I wouldn’t have burned a thing if you hadn’t distracted me.”

“I was just doing my homework.”

“Exactly, and it was incredibly distracting.” He grins. “Second, I’ve come a long way since then. I can cook several things now, thank you very much.”

“Like?”

“Well, breakfast, for starters.”

“Everyone can make breakfast. It’s called cereal.”

“I meanrealbreakfast. Eggs, bacon, hash browns, waffles. That kind of stuff.”

“Fine. I’ll give you that. What else you got up your sleeve, Chef?” I tug on his plain mustard-yellow shirt as we walk by the local butcher shop that makes thebestgrab-and-go burgers. It shouldn’t be a color that looks good on him, but somehow, it does.

“I can make pasta. And before you say that’s just boiling noodles and opening a jar, I mean, I can make itfrom scratch.”

“You make your own noodles?”

“Well, no. But I make my own sauce,” he says proudly as we hook a left and cross the street to the side my house is on.

I nod. “You’re impressing me more and more. What else?”

“Let’s see. There’s steak.”

“Yummy.”

“A mean French onion soup.”

I wrinkle my nose as we pass my neighbor’s yellow house, their front yard full of flowers that Clifford planted last year. “Pass.”

“Reubens,” he adds.

“And you’re reeling me back in.”

“Salmon, chicken, shepherd’s pie,” he continues, listing off foods as we turn into my short driveway that’s more of a parking spot. “Oh, and of course, your favorite dish, la—”

“Mom!”

I quickly drop Noel’s hand and take a step away from him like I just got caught doing something I shouldn’t be doing.

I don’t know why I do it. It’s not like my mother would be upset if something happened between me and Noel. She loves Noel. She’d be thrilled.

But still ... I want to keep this to myself for just a bit longer. At least until I know there’s actually something to tell.

If she notices we were holding hands, she doesn’t show it.

“Well, well, well,” she says, rising from the chair on my front porch and walking down the front stairs to meet us. “If it isn’t my daughter who I was just about to send the Coast Guard out to look for.”

I roll my eyes. “You’d send Park Services, not the Coast Guard, Mom.”

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