Page 44 of Hypnotized By Love

“You’re here!” Sierra said. “What did you do last night?”

“No one,” she sighed dramatically as she sat on the stool next to me. She looked at me appraisingly and said, “Savannah, why is it thatevery time I see you lately, you look like someone just told you the test came back positive?”

“I don’t know? Mason Beckett, mostly.”

“But he seems so nice,” she said.

“Great. Now I have a new trigger phrase to avoid,” I replied. “‘Calm down.’ ‘You’re overreacting.’ ‘Mason seems nice.’”

“Bridget, I have a question for you,” my sister said. “When Mason saw Savannah the other morning, how did he look at her?”

“Like he’d been fasting for a month and she was a life-size porterhouse steak.”

I tried to protest that they were both wrong, but I knew when I was being ganged up on, and that I wasn’t going to be able to change their minds.

They were free to hold on to their delusions.

A barista put out a sign indicating that they were out of egg bites, and Bridget grumbled. “Just great. Now what am I going to have for breakfast?” She longingly eyed Sierra’s blueberry muffin. “Maybe I could have one of those.”

“Don’t do that. You’ll get sick,” I said. She was already looking a little run-down and tired. She didn’t need to add stomach troubles on top of that.

“I know. It’s my toxic trait—seeing food that I know will upset my stomach and wondering whether it will still hurt this time. I’m basically in a civil war with my intestines.”

Sierra said, “My toxic trait is that I think people will have common sense and then I get mad when they don’t.”

They both looked at me expectantly, and I said, “My toxic trait is—”

Then, as if on cue, Mason walked in.

And headed straight for us.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Good morning!” he said, sounding far too chipper. “Lovely to see you all. Sinclair, you’re looking particularly beautiful today.”

I felt both thrilled and angered. Being around him was like getting on a roller coaster that had no exit. I always felt a bit off kilter, like I was going to puke, and the tiniest bit exhilarated.

Sierra and Bridget greeted him, but I stayed quiet. Bridget asked what he was up to today, and he said, “I’m grabbing coffee for my mom, and she doesn’t like to be kept waiting. I’ll see you all later. And, Sinclair, I’ll see you tonight for our date.”

“It’s not a date!” I yelled after him, and half the patrons around us turned to stare at me. “It’s not a date,” I repeated quietly.

Mason’s order was waiting for him, and he grabbed it and headed for the door. He waved goodbye to me.

“Porterhouse steak,” Bridget observed with satisfaction. Meanwhile, Sierra’s eyes were so big she looked like an anime character.

“Not one word,” I said to her.

“But I have so many words! First, what, and how, and what, and when and huh? Basically, all the questions!”

Bridget clapped her hands together. “Okay, tell me every single little detail about what happened on your date the other night after Ileft. Most especially the parts that are inappropriate, explicit, and totally objectifying.”

“Wait,” Sierra interjected, “Savannah was on a date alone with Mason? I’m confused. I thought you wanted to date him, Bridget, and Savannah was just crashing it. How did Savannah wind up on a date with him?”

I again tried to say it wasn’t a date, but no one was listening to me.

“Oh,” Bridget said with a wave of her hand, “wanting to go out with him was about my pride and his hotness. I’m over it.”

“What about girl code?” Sierra insisted. “You like him, and so Savannah can’t date him.”

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