Page 106 of What I Like About You

It’s possible.

Until he pulls away.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

“Kels,” I say.

I mean to form a full sentence. To blurt it out, lay it all on the table while my head is still foggy from Nash’s kiss, in this moment when we are so close.

I am Kels.

Nash’s mouth parts in a perfectOand his arms drop. “We should—”

I step back. “Yeah, we should.”

It’s almost two-thirty, according my cell phone. If we go inside, Scout will a hundred and ten percent wake the entire house up.Don’t wake me upwas literally what Gramps said when I asked if I could go to the movies tonight, when I told him it’d mean I’d be out past curfew. But we can’t leave it like this, so we walk back down the driveway to Nash’s car. I don’t realize I’m shivering until he cranks the heat. We sit side by side in the front seats, looking straight ahead. There’s an awkwardness to this moment, like the weight of what just happened slaps us in the face, but there’s somehow still a charge in the air between us, too.

Nash chews on his bottom lip.

I play with my hair.

“So,” Nash says at the same time I say, “Kels, I—”

“I’m so into you,” Nash blurts, followed immediately by his deep blush. “Kels doesn’t matter. It’s just imaginary internet bullshit I’ve held on to since I was, like, fourteen. I spent so muchtime waiting for her to give me a hint, but it’s never going to happen. Seriously. Kels isn’t real. This—you, are. Real, I mean. This is real.”

Kels isn’t real.

“I can’t believe I just said that out loud,” Nash says.

Words, Halle. Form words.

Nash waits for me to say something, but I can’t. Nash chose me, but Kels isn’t real. And I get it, but she alsois. She’s half of me, half of us in a way—but now she’s reduced to just a series of zeroes and ones sending messages to a boy who loves graphic novels. For Nash, this supposed “hiatus” isn’t temporary. Kels and Nash? That’s over.

Truth is a bomb; it’ll desecrate this moment.

I don’t know how to form the words, so I lean forward and kiss Nash.

Because it’s easy. Because I’m Halle, and I’m so into him, too.

Because Kels isn’t real.

From: Alyssa Peterson

To: Kels Roth

unique cupcake inquiry!

Hi Kels,

Thank you so much again for the FANTASTIC cover reveal forRead Between the Lies. Ariel just about died when she saw your #CupcakeCoverReveal—and this might sound crazy, but we were wondering if you do catering?

Okay, hear me out. Ariel is launchingRead

Between the Liesat Central Square Books in Boston on April 6th—we would LOVE to have OTP cupcakes at the event! Obviously, we don’t know where you’re based or how realistic this is. However, if there’s any way this can happen, we believe that it will bring amazing publicity to bothRead Between the Liesand OTP. And of course, there will be compensation.

Let me know if this is something you’d be

interested in!

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