Page 26 of Heartthrobs Don't Date Wallflowers
The sound he made was somewhere between a groan and a chuckle. “I never should have told you that nickname.”
His voice was smooth and buttery, and he had an accent that I loved. Some sort of British accent, I was pretty sure, but I couldn’t quite place it beyond that. His voice sounded so familiar—like it was on the tip of my tongue, just waiting to be realized—but I couldn’t focus on it right now, because my mind was screaming,oh my gosh, you are calling with Not Zesty!and that stopped any reasonable thoughts from coming through.
“Hi,” I said again, because it had been too long, and something needed to be said, obviously.
He chuckled. “Hi back.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward—not in the way that silences usually were when I was sitting with people and didn’t know what to say. Instead, it was kind of comfortable and I surprisingly didn’t mind it in the way that I normally would.
“I called you by accident,” I blurted.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, Siri thinks your name sounds like my sister’s, apparently,” I said. “Poppy, Not Zesty—the same really.”
“I hear no difference.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek and laid back on my bed and stared up at my ceiling. On a whim the other night, I had decided to stick some glow-in-the-dark stars up there to make the room feel more lived in. They looked a little stupid now, and I was questioning my decision, but I wasn’t going to take them down. That would’ve been just as much work, with no gain. At least now they gave me something interesting to look at.
I didn’t want to fall into the trap of small talk, so I asked, “What are you doing right now?”
“Right now?” he asked. “Well, I just got out of the shower.”
If I’d had any sense of what he looked like, a mental image probably would’ve popped into my head. As it was, he was a little bit of a formless blob in my mind, so I had nothing—which was probably for the best because I didn’t need to imagine him walking around soaking wet and in a towel.
“And ten seconds ago, I changed into some old pajamas,” he continued. “And now I’m sitting at the desk in my room, trying to will myself to do homework, but I much prefer talking to you.”
I grinned, even though somebody preferring to talk to me over homework was pretty much a given. There were very few people who would rather do homework than talk to somebody, even if it was someone as awkward and shy as me.
“What areyoudoing?” he asked.
A piece of me wanted to lie, to say that I was doing something more interestingthan I was. But I also knew there was no reason to do that. It wasn’t like he was doing anything interesting. He just showered and was supposed to be doing homework. Why was what I was doing any worse?
“Honestly, I’m just lying in bed, staring at the ceiling,” I said. I lifted one leg in the air, stretching it toward my face. “Now I’m stretching because it feels less lame than just lying in bed. And I’m looking at the stick-on stars on my ceiling.”
“Still there from when you were a kid?” He asked.
“Nope. I just put them up a few days ago actually.”
“Really?”
“Well, if you knew me, you’d know I’ve never lived in the same house for more than three years,” I said.
“Army brat?”
I laughed. “Most people assume that, but no. My dad’s a CFO of some big company. He gets moved around a lot for work. So, every couple of years, we pick up and go wherever they send him.”
He was quiet for a second before he mumbled, “Sounds exhausting.”
I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. “I’m used to it at this point. And it’s fun for a while—getting to see new cities and stuff.”
“Must be hard to have friends.”
It was. On top of already being shy, always moving around and constantly being the new kid didn’t leave much room to hold onto the friends I managed to get. It was why I was so close to Poppy—she’d been the only constant in my life all this time. And really, asmuch as I hated my ex for what he did to me, I knew that the relationship couldn’t have lasted much longer because I was going to be moving here and that long-distance wasn’t to work.
“And that’s the beauty of meeting you,” I said teasingly. “It doesn’t matter if I move away because you’ll never know the difference.”
“And you won’t know if I move either,” he said, his voice thoughtful, as if it was just dawning on him as well.
