Page 31 of What I Like About You

4:41 PM

It feels so good talking to Nash from my phone, as Kels, like before. At school, the best strategy when it comes to dealing with Nash is total, complete avoidance. I always arrive to our shared classes right before the bell. I claim the lunch seat wedged between Sawyer and Autumn. Any and all school-related talk is strictly about assignments and due dates.

It’s the only way to avoid a repeat of that awkward first day.

Because already I can see that Nash is just as smart and funny and filled with book puns for every situation as he is on my screen. If I get to know him, I know I’ll think he’s even more wonderful, and I’ll wish I were brave enough to tell him the truth and take his reaction, whatever it is. Which I won’t be.

When we have conversations like this one though—where Kels can talk to Nash as if nothing has changed, where Nashconfidesin Kels—the IRL awkwardness is worth it to risk not losing this.

Enough about that. Are things going

okay at the new school?

4:42 PM

i’m trying to make friends, i swear, mom!

4:43 PM

That’s not what I meant.

4:43 PM

… ok that’s kind of what I meant.

4:43 PM

is there even a point? It’s senior year. i’m at yet ANOTHER new school. maybe it’s better to save the whole IRL friends thing until college

4:45 PM

That sounds lonely.

4:46 PM

who needs real people when i have the internet?

4:47 PM

You mean when you have me

4:45 PM

“What is all of this—?”

My eyes snap up from my phone, meeting Gramps’s voice, and wow, his pained expression wipes the Nash smile right off my face.

Okay, so I kind of made a mess … and am in the process of frosting two dozen cupcakes.

But Gramps is looking at me like—I don’t even know. Like I’ve done somethingwrong.

I place my phone facedown on the table. “Peak stress baking?”

“Is this—it’s all Miriam’s stuff? How?”

His voice cracks when he says Grams’s name and my eyes instantly start watering. The mixer, the bowls, the pans and spatulas—they were all Grams’s. But she always let me use them, and all of it was just sitting in a box in the garage, clearly labeledKITCHEN STUFF.

“I just needed to bake, Gramps. I didn’t think—”

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