Page 26 of The Strike Zone

Ace grabbed Tanner’s cheeks and squeezed. “Good for you, bud. There’s no way she can hold out against this face for much longer.”

“Right?! Thank you.”

“Always here for you, man.” He patted him hard on the back and turned to me. “But right now I want to know more about Parker.”

I picked up my coffee and sipped. “What about me?”

“It’s the first away series. Scout will be there. She’ll be traveling with us. What’s the plan?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Well…” Ace glanced from me to Lux and then to Tanner, before back to me. “You asked her out and she said no. And now you’re gonna be ‘friends.’”

I ignored the way he air-quotedfriends. “So?”

“You seem pretty chipper for a guy who got rejected.”

“I didn’t get rejected.”

“I think that’s what ‘no’ means.”

“By that logic, Millie rejected Tanner, he’s still chipper,” I shot back, turning to Tanner. “Sorry, bud.”

But Tanner shrugged it off. “I am chipper. Because I know Millie will come to her senses soon.”

Ace rolled his eyes and focused back on me. “But seriously, why?”

“Because…” I replied, pushing my fingers through my hair, and scratched hard on my scalp. “She likes me.”

“And this is based on her looking at a picture of you on her laptop.”

“Not looking.Staring.”

“Which you don’t do with a guy you want to be friends with?”

“Justfriends,” I corrected. “Exactly.”

I closed my eyes, bringing back the memory I had of her sitting at the table in the cafeteria.

I hadn’t even realized she’d be in there, but I’d spotted her the second I’d walked in. It hadn’t been hard. The place was virtually empty during mid-morning, and she’d been sitting at a table right in the middle, her back to the door while she worked away.

Except from the angle she was at, I could see her screen clear as day. I could see exactly what she was working on.

Me. My face. Wide on the screen. Whatever she was working on had something to do with me. Not unusual, yet as I stood there and watched I realized she wasn’t doing anythingbutstaring at my face.

I waited for a good two minutes to see if she’d move on to another picture.

She didn’t.

Even if she had been “doing her job” no one stares at a photo of someone for over two minutes if they don’t also have other things on their mind. In a rare turn of events, Tanner was correct, Scout liked me. What sealed the deal was how badly she flustered when she spotted me, and her entire face turned a very sexy shade of pink.

A shade I wanted to see again, and more of.

Without sounding conceited, I know when a girl likes me, and Scout Davison fell right into that category.

“What’s the plan then?’

“The plan is…we’re going to be friends. Best friends. I’m going to be the best friend she ever had.”

---