Page 114 of Better Than the Movies
They both just stared at me, and the hard lines of Wes’s facemade me homesick for ourbefore, for his laughing eyes before I’d ruined everything. “It’s weird how sometimes there can be a penny that’s, like, always there, and you think you don’t need it and don’t even like it, right?”
Alex tilted her head and scrunched her eyebrows together, but not a single thing on Wes’s face changed as I rambled.
“Then you wake up one day and your eyes are opened to just how amazing pennies are. How had you not noticed before, right? I mean, they’re like thebest coins ever. As in, better than all the other coins combined. But you weren’t careful and you lost your penny and you just wish you could make your penny understand how much you regret not cherishing it, but it’s too late because you lost it. Y’know?”
“Liz, do you need to borrow some money?” Alex looked at me, and I was a little bit close to crying again.
I shook my head and said, “Um, no, thanks, I’ve got to run—even though I’m penniless, ha ha ha—so you guys have fun.” I took a step backward and did a tiny wave thing. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Stop talking, you dipshit!
I sensed—without looking—that they were still staring at me as I climbed over Wes’s fence and ran through my backyard.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“But, you know, the thing about romance is, people only get together right at the very end.”
—Love Actually
“Thank you.” I took the bag from the McDonald’s employee, tossed it onto the passenger seat, and drove away. It was midnight, and I’d spent the past hour just driving around, cranking Adele and sob-singing, and trying to stay gone long enough for Alex to have left and for Wes to have gone inside. I would rather have done almost anything in the world than see either one of them, so I’d texted Helena and just cruised the city.
And my dad was the coolest person on the planet for not texting me a single word of warning when he knew I was driving around aimlessly after midnight. It had to be killing him.
I’d considered getting ice cream on my way home, but I hadn’t been up to actually gettingoutof my car, so I’d settled on the golden arches. I just wanted to go home and sad-eat, watch a movie, and try to forget how badly I’d humiliated myself.
A penny. Seriously? They’d probably laughed about me until they fell into each other’s arms and had perfect sex.
“Dammit.” I grabbed a fistful of fries and jammed them into mymouth before pulling into The Spot. It wasn’t mine anymore—it was Wes’s forever—but at the moment I didn’t care. His car was in his driveway, so screw him.
Instead of getting out after parallel parking, though, I just sat there, wolfing down my food and listening to the radio. Getting out of the car and walking across the street seemed like work at that tired moment, and I was also terrified of running into the happy couple. It would be just my luck to walk by at the exact moment they decided to get hot and heavy in his driveway, or something equally nightmarish.
I finished my food and was drinking my chocolate shake with the seat half-reclined when there was a knock on my window.
“Shit!” I jumped, and my straw splattered milkshake onto Wes’s hoodie. I looked through the fogged-up window and could see a tall body in a letter jacket.
Someone please kill me.
I wiped my mouth with my fingers, put my seat back up, and rolled down the window. Gave him a cool smile. “Yes?”
Wes glared down at me. “What are you doing?”
“Um… parking.”
“I watched you park ten minutes ago. Try again.”
“Wow. Creep much?”
“I wanted to talk to you, so yeah, I was waiting. But now I think maybe you’re never going to get out of that car.”
I rolled my eyes and set down my shake. Apparently I was going to have to face him and my utter humiliation twice in one night. How awesome. I got out of the car and shut the door.Crossed my arms and looked up at his face. “What do you need?”
“Well, for starters, I need you to explain what happened earlier.”
My heart hurt as I looked at him. His hair was tousled, like he’d dragged his hand through it a hundred times, and he was wearing his untucked dress shirt and tuxedo pants under his jacket. He was an absolute mess, and my fingers itched to touch him.
I narrowed my eyes and acted confused. “Are you talking about when I lost my—”
“Nope.” He gave me a look of warning and said, “Do not say ‘penny.’?”
