Page 33 of Crazy Pucking Love
I cleared my throat. “You ready?”
“Almost. It’s not quite warm enough for this dress, so I’m going to throw on my boots and grab a sweater.”
It was a shame, covering up all that creamy skin, but there was also something sexy about watching her put on her boots, the slow pull of the zipper on the side completely mesmerizing.
She glanced up—and I had no doubt she’d caught me staring, but she simply smiled and then stuck in her earrings, these dangling, interconnected black and pink butterflies.
“Are those made out of…soda cans?”
She beamed at me. “Yeah. They’re from a recycled Rockstar Energy drink. I got them on Etsy. Cool, huh?”
The door swung open again, and a girl with tawny skin and curly, black hair stepped into the room. She glanced from me to Megan. “All the late nights are starting to make sense.”
A thread of jealousy rose—was Megan hanging out with some other guy late at night? I hadn’t been out with her in almost a week, and thinking about her chatting and laughing with someone else turned the thread into a toxic churning ball in my gut.
Megan’s cheeks flared pink. “Dane and I hang out sometimes, yes. Both of us are night owls,” she said, and the jealousy faded. She meantourlate nights. “Vanessa, this is my friend, Dane. Dane, my roommate, Vanessa.”
She flashed me a wide smile as she assessed me. “Hi, Megan’sfriend.” There was something about her that reminded me of Jazmine, more than their similar hairstyles. Or maybe I was so desperately looking for ways to hold on to my resolve that I was seeing things. Either way, it was a good reminder that the last time I crossed the friends line the relationship had crashed and burned and destroyed a friendship in the process.
Also that it’d happened during hockey season, when I’d tried to balance both and found that it was next to impossible.
Megan hooked her hand in the crook of my elbow. “Let’s go.”
We walked to my car, and I helped Megan inside and bit back a groan when her skirt drifted up on her thighs, and quickly closed the car door. I exhaled every ounce of air from my lungs, wishing the conflicting feelings about what I should do versus what I wanted to do would escape with it.
Once I was inside, she gave me directions, glancing at her phone every few minutes to make sure we were on track.
When a commercial came on the radio, she reached up and tuned the knob to the station that played bubblegum pop. Sure enough, an obnoxious song heavy on the dance beat and synthesizers blared through my speakers.
“You know I think you’re cool as hell, and I thought it was awesome that you sent me that picture while you were in the comic book shop,” I said, and she smiled. “But I have to say, you have super shitty taste in music.”
I pushed the button on the steering wheel, changing the channel to the alt-rock station.
“Hey.” She gave my shoulder a shove, and I laughed. “Rude. This angry yell”—she made air quotes—“musicdoesn’t do it for me, either. Why listen to screaming lyrics when you could listen to happy ones?”
“I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. And the driver picks the music.”
“Next time, I’m driving, then.”
I decided to go ahead and let her think that, and in more proof that this girl made me mentally unstable, I actually looked forward to the fight we’d have over it.
“Okay, this is it,” Megan said. “Park right here.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, glancing at the tiny, nondescript building with its grocery-filled windows. “I thought this was the number one spot on your list, and this looks like a New York bodega, where we might also get mugged.”
“Is getting mugged not on your list of things to do in Boston?” she asked. At the scrunched-up look I flashed her, she laughed. “Just trust me.”
A bored-looking employee stood behind the counter, and a few not-suitable-for-children pictures hung on walls that had their fair share of graffiti.
“Oh good.” I took a step toward one of the shelves. “Laundry detergent. I need some.”
Megan smacked my hand when I reached for it. “We’re not here for laundry detergent. Ooh, there’s the Snapple machine.” She clamped onto my arm and dragged me over to it.
“They still make Snapple?” And she sounded so excited about it, too. The machine also had a “No pictures” sign.
“I’m about to blow your mind, so watch.” Megan linked her fingers and then pushed them out, cracking her knuckles, and I wondered what she was up to.
She studied the floor, and then she stepped forward and tapped one of the tiles. The machine slid to the side and Megan squealed and stepped through the square hole it’d revealed. The room behind the machine had pale wooden floors and cherry wood shelves lined with shoes and clothes.
