Page 21 of The Perfect Steal

And a few days ago, he hadn’t really known I existed, past being best friends with the girls sitting next to me.

Our food came, and I poured ketchup on the country potatoes. “Him asking about me means nothing. We got assigned to a group project in Life Skills.”

“Since when has Nate cared about school?” Penny asked. She took a sip of orange juice and grabbed the salt and pepper for her omelet.

Kate nodded. “Let’s be honest. When have any of the baseball guys cared about school or their futures until we got into the picture?”

She had a point there. Jake had struggled with school. Ben had kind of liked school, but he was a perfectionist and took double the amount of time to finish anything as a normal person. And Dax, well, he’d just needed someone to believe in him. All of their grades had gotten way better over the months the girls had dated them.

“Oh great, so you think I can be Nate’s school-fixer?” I shook my head. “Not going to happen, guys. I’ve got too much going on as it is.” But spending more time with him, even if it was to help him with his homework, couldn’t be bad, right?

“Why don’t we plan a sleepover soon?” Kate asked. “We haven’t done one of those in ages, and it would be nice to just hang out and stay up late.”

Although a sleepover couldn’t do a whole lot, it helped to have support from my friends still. I’d been pushing it away because of the little differences that made us such a great group when I could have been leaning on them through the hard stuff in my life.

“Thanks, guys. I think that would be great.” I just needed to survive all that was piled up this week and hope it went according to plan.

12

Nate

Why was I so nervous? I mean, I talked to girls all the time, had even kissed a couple of them. But the idea of meeting with Brynn, even if it was over a video call, had my pulse racing and my palms sweating.

I clicked into the app and saw I was the first one in the hangout. In an attempt to impress her and to show her she could trust me to make things a little easier in her life, at least on this project, I’d spent the morning looking up all sorts of houses and cars, hoping to make something work with the small budget we had to work with.

“Hey,” Brynn said, bringing my attention back to the screen.

“Hey,” I said, unable to contain the smile on my face. She was the first girl I’d been able to connect with about the hard things in life, and I hoped she felt the same energy between us.

“How was your morning?” she asked, glancing down. It looked like she’d arranged several papers and books on a table.

I held up the notebook where I’d taken several notes. “I think I found us a house.”

Her head popped up, and she leaned in, her eyes going wide as I showed her the three pages of information.

“You already looked through all that stuff?” She tipped her head back and let out a long breath. “Thank you for doing that.”

“It was no problem. I told you I would. I did all the math to make sure I had the correct budget on what we can afford. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

Her expression dropped to one of confusion, and I had to hold back a smile.

“I’m not really sure. We’re still talking about our fictional assignment, right?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Just for the assignment. So, we don’t qualify for a house with all the fees and down payments, but we can buy a tiny house and have money for a car, or we can rent a townhouse and take public transportation.”

Brynn put her hands to her mouth, and at first, I thought she was going to cry.

“Wait, Brynn, I’m so—”

She laughed, lighting up her whole face. “That’s awesome. I was thinking you’d try to get us some mansion near your house on the tiny salary we have.”

That might have jabbed a little, but I hadn’t always been from a wealthy family. “Nah, we aren’t going to live there, so I’m not picky.”

“Would the tiny house have room for our two fictional children?” Brynn asked, resting her chin in the palm of her hand.

“Believe it or not, whoever built it managed to fit a master-type suite and a loft where the children could sleep.” I laughed, the sound of it stranger than normal.

“Then I say we choose that one. Trying to take public transportation anywhere in Pecan Flatts is not convenient, even if it’s fictional.” She stopped for a second and said, “Maybe the mayor should do something about that.”

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