Page 57 of No Interest in Love

I clear my throat and find the irritating wire. “My first time getting a bra off didn’t go very well.”

“Darcy VanCamp. The first girl you traumatized for life,” she says in the same nostalgic tone I used.

“Hey, hey…I was just following her lead when she took me back to wardrobe. I was a gentleman…but maybe a little too anxious with the brassiere.”

She snorts, and my fingers get a good grip on the loose wire and I pull it from the fabric. Shay leans over me, watching my awkward hands maneuver around this thing. Her warm breath washes over my neck, forcing my pulse to increase its chaotic rhythm.

“How long did it take you to get it off?” she asks in a low whisper. I can feel her eyes on my face, on my neck, down my arms and to my hands.

“That’s not important.”

“Half an hour,” she teases.

“Less than that.”

“Five minutes.”

I shake my head, wanting to look at her but afraid of what I might do if I make eye contact. “More than that.”

She grins and scoots on the cement, resting her leg against mine. I move to the other cup, my rough hands pushing on the soft and pliant fabric, trying to make a tiny hole so I can even the cups up. She watches me, breathing against my neck, not saying anything, and so I keep going with my story.

“Well,” I say, voice shaking, and I wish to damn hell that I wasn’t losing my skull. “I-I ended up snapping one of these things.” I wave the underwire at her. “I didn’t even know bras had braces.”

“They’re more like structural beams.”

She gets a legitimate laugh out of me. The kind that comes from the gut, that you don’t expect. And I’m liking it.

I’m liking it more than I should. More than I want to.

“There you go,” I say, handing her bra back, beam free. “You want to keep these?”

I’m teasing, but she tilts her head at the wires and says, “Sure.” So I put them in my carry-on for her while she snaps her bra back on. She tugs at her breasts, and I try really hard not to watch but can’t help it. And when she catches me, I blink away with a laugh.

“Yeah, I was staring.”

She’s quiet for a second. “Did you enjoy the show?”

“Encore?”

She rolls her eyes, sniffles, and pushes on my shoulder. It’s a touch she’s done before, but it feels like it’s the first time, and my body responds like I’m sitting on a fault line.

After a couple of beats where we just watch a few cars pass, neither of us in the mood to try to hitchhike, she wraps her arms around her knees and says, “Was that a first?”

“Huh?”

“Touching a bra without touching the boobs?” Her lips are pushed hard together, suppressing her amusement.

It’s adorable.

It’s terrifying.

“Congratulations. You are a first.” I try to subtly put space between us, but the more I scoot away, the more I want to close the distance back up. “So…you gonna tell me what happened in that truck-stop bathroom?”

She rolls her eyes and puts them back on the road. Mine glue to her mouth, which has tilted up in an unbelievably gorgeous smile. I’m trying not to stare. Really, I am. I’ve seen Shay’s mouth thousands of times. It’s usually moving with some kind of order for me or sarcastic comment. But even though my brain’s saying, “Stop looking,” my eyes want to memorize that mouth. She leans back, hair covering her face as she runs her thumb under her eyes, wiping away the last remnants of her breakdown. Even her crying is adorable. I might even admit that it’s more than adorable. Everything about her suddenly seems different than what I thought before. When I looked at her, I saw a friend. (Sometimes an enemy.) But mostly…a friend I wanted to make laugh. I never realized that once I got the laugh it would mean so much to me. I didn’t realize that putting a grin on a stubborn face would hit me in the deepest parts of myself I didn’t even know I had. I didn’t see myself looking at her in any capacity andwantingher because of it. But that’s what is happening…and not just because my body wants it, but because my mind, my gut, and perhaps my heart does too.

Right then, my heart starts beating loud and heavy, and I realize that the screenwriter has jotted a footnote next to Shay’s character.

Miss Unlikely…will at some point feel like Miss Most Likely, and Mr. Kick-ass Lead won’t know it until it happens.

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