Page 71 of Class Clown

I rubbed at my sore nose. “I did.” I wrinkled it and wiggled it to make sure it wasn’t cracked or something. “I hope you learned your lesson.”

He leaned closer and used a fingertip to tilt my chin up to get a better look at my face. “It looks okay. A little red, but I always thought Rudoph was the best reindeer.” He ran that same fingertip lightly along my chin and dropped his hand.

I fisted my hands to keep from throwing myself at him, and started walking again. He caught up and passed me, once again leading the way, and I definitely did not rub at the place on my face where it still tingled from his touch. I hated people touching my chin area. There were hairs there that I pretended did not exist and now he’d felt them all prickly up against his hand. Still, it had been .

“Are you still upset about Quinn?” he asked once we were marching along again, me mostly distracted by watching birds soaring over the tall trees.

“It’s hard to say goodbye to the only guy I’ve ever been chased by,” I replied. “Quinn also might be a girl, but the principle remains. I usually do the chasing.”

“And then you feel like you get in trouble for it?”

“Yep.”

“Based on what?”

“Oh, you know, like twenty years of my life story,” I responded, kicking at a rock. “When I get old, I’m going to write a memoir and it will be titledRuby’s Life: A Warning.” His chuckled floated over his shoulders back to me and I smiled.

“Tell me about it.”

“About my past love affairs?” I gasped. “Are you wanting to do girl chat with me?”

He looked over his shoulder. “Isn’t it a little sexist to think a guy wouldn’t be curious?”

I cracked a smile. “My apologies for my old-fashioned attitudes. Alright. Well, I’ve only had one actual boyfriend, and that was in college, and lasted six or seven months.”

“Why did it end?”

“He thought as much about himself as I thought about him, which was a lot. Trust me, I’ve been known to lose myself in a guy. But I realized that when both of you were focused on one person, it was lopsided and I was a second-class citizen. Not ideal for long-term happiness.” He made a noise of agreement, and I continued. “Other than him, it’s been one ridiculous thing after another. See a cute guy, chase the cute guy, start naming your babies in your head, force cute guy into your friend group for a few weeks, pretend to love all the same things he loves, find out cute guy doesn’t even have your number saved in his phone, take your heart back and scold it to be better.”

“Repeat for twenty years?”

I sighed loudly. “Sadly, yes. Something about learning from your mistakes seems to have passed me over.” We both chuckled. “What about you?”

“Oh, no, I’m not like your porcupine friend at all.”

“So, you don’t chase women?”

He shook his head. “No. I mostly observe and go over the logistics in my head before deciding it wouldn’t work out long term.”

“Ah, the classic over-analytical wallflower maneuver. Respect.”

“It’s true that I’ve never been asked to dance at a ball and the gentlemen avoid me completely, so I guess I am a wallflower.”

I laughed out loud. Nico was funnier the more he opened up to me, and I was a sucker for a guy with a sense of humor.

“It’s all about keeping hope alive,” I said. “You have to put yourself out there and stop assuming it won’t work out. You go for what you want.”

“Like a porcupine?”

“Not exactly. You don’t want to go in armed with quills and scare people off. You want to be more of a bunny rabbit.”

“They poop when they get nervous.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

He shot me a look over his shoulder. “I had a rabbit as a kid. He pooped a lot.”

I smiled at him. “What was its name?”

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