Page 36 of Actually Yours

JAKE: He did not.

AMELIA: I can hear you laughing.

JAKE: What a waste. He saw you, right? Like he saw how gorgeous you are and still brought his mum along?

The butterflies in my stomach take off in a frenzy as I re-read this message from Jake.He thinks I’m gorgeous?

AMELIA: Well, it’s over now.

JAKE: Good riddance…

I pause, unsure of how to proceed.

AMELIA: I guess now I have a date with the letter B to look forward to…

I wait for a response to this.

Nothing.

After three minutes—I time it by counting the seconds in my head—I’m resigned that he’s probably tired of my nonsense conversation and put my phone under the couch cushion, away from the temptation to check it every thirty seconds.

“Millie!” I glance up at my friends who are all watching me, grins beaming from their faces. “We found him.”

I groan, internally so as not to dampen their excitement.

Amy holds up the folder, waving to the page in front of her.

“We found the perfect guy for you.”

They pass the folder over to me and I scan the information laid out on the page in front of me, which now includes photos and a small bio. They’ve really ramped up the calibre of their presentation of prospective mates for me since the last time we’d looked it over.

“You guys are sure about this?”

They’d chosen a friend of a friend who works with Lucas, and who doesn’t seem like a complete loser. On paper.

My three best friends nod in unison and I take a deep breath.

“Then it looks like I’ll be going out with a biomedical scientist!”

Whatever that is.

CHAPTER 8

Amelia

“It was so horrible. He made Tom the accountant seem like a prince!”

Bella chuckles from her position on the couch next to me, her gaze glued to my face, all her attention set on hearing my tale of woe.

“He can’t have been as bad as the Mumma’s boy?!”

I flashback to the night before, my big date with Julian the biomedical scientist and inwardly shudder. The evening with him had started off badly and only gotten worse.

“He took me to a lecture on science stuff,” I say, narrowing my eyes at her to stop her from laughing.

“Science-stuff? Is that the technical term?”

I poke her with my foot which is resting at her waist. The two of us are stretched out head to toe on my couch, settling in for a sleepover. Luckily for me, Bella’s husband Daniel is working the night shift in his job as a firefighter tonight, so I get to keep her all to myself.

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