Page 116 of Better Than the Movies
“She. Isn’t. You.”
I shut my mouth and looked at him, scared to believe he was saying what it sounded like he was saying.
“She’s pretty, but her face doesn’t transform into sunlight when she talks about music.” He did that clench thing with his jaw and said, “She’s funny, but not spit-out-your-drink-in-astonishment funny.”
It felt like my heart was going to explode as his eyes moved down to my lips under the glow of the buzzing streetlight. He moved his face a little closer to mine, looked into my eyes, and rumbled, “And when I see her, I don’t feel like Ihaveto talk to her or mess up her hair or do something—anything—to get her to swing that gaze on me.”
My hands were shaking when I tucked my hair behind my ears and breathed, “You haven’t messed up my hair in a really long time.”
“And it’s been killing me.” He took a step closer, which pressed me against the side of my car. “I fell in love with teasing you in the second grade, when I first discovered that I could turn your cheeks pink with just a word. Then I fell in love with you.”
I’m pretty sure my heart was developing an arrhythmia with each word he said. “So you and Alex aren’t—”
“Nope.” He reached down and wrapped the drawstrings on my hoodie—hishoodie—around his hands. “We’re just friends.”
“Oh.” My brain was trying to keep up, but his handsome face was making it difficult. That and his sudden presence in my personal space, not to mention the gentle pull of him tugging me closer. I was muddled. “Well, why did you act like you wanted me to say yes to Michael’s promposal?”
“You’ve loved him since kindergarten.” His eyes were all I couldsee as he quietly said, “I didn’t want our kiss to get in the way of that if it was what you really wanted.”
How had I ever thought Wes was anything other than amazing? I didn’t even try to stop the lovesick smile from taking over my face as I set my hands on his chest and said, “What I really wanted was to go with you.”
“Well, you could’ve told me that, Buxbaum.” His voice was just a breath between us as he said, “Because just seeing you in that dress made me want to punch our very good friend Michael.”
“Itdid?”
He yanked on the drawstring. “That’s not supposed to make you happy.”
“I know.” I was giving away my every emotion as I beamed up at him, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t hold back and be cool even if I tried. Because the thought of Wes being pissed at Michael—and jealous—over me, was just too wonderful. “But it does. It’s just so swoony.”
“Forget swoony.” He let go of the strings and slid his hands up the sides of my face until he was holding it in his big palms. I sucked in a breath as his mouth lowered, and my brain cued up the perfect song for this ending. Or rather, this beginning.
I’ve been searching a long time,
For someone exactly like you
Our kiss was breathless and wild and Wes pulled away too soon. He wrapped his arms around me, picked me up, and moved me to the trunk of my car.
He smiled after plopping me down and said, “Do you realizewe could’ve been doing this for years if you weren’t such a pain in the ass?”
“Nah—I didn’t like you until recently.”
“Enemies-to-lovers—it’s our trope, Buxbaum.”
“You poor, confused little love lover.” A giggle shimmied through me before I set my hands on his face and said as I pulled him back to me, “Just shut up and kiss me.”
Cue the Bazzi.
EPILOGUE
“A girl will never forget the first boy she likes.”
—He’s Just Not That into You
“But she’ll also never forget the first boy she hates.”
—Liz Buxbaum
I dropped the bright yellow mum into the hole and covered the roots with dirt. The early-September sun was hot on my face as I planted the flowers, but it had the blurry feel of a day in transition, like its heat was all for show and entirely lacking in the power it’d once held.
