Page 65 of Before We're More Than Friends
“Just some chocolate chip cookies and a strawberry milkshake.”
“Okay.” He glanced at my pen and paper. “Pour your entire soul onto those pages.”
I gave him a small smile. “I’m either going to need more pages or a smaller soul.”
He rolled his eyes before walking off to get our order.
I sighed and started writing whatever came to mind. I wrote about how pushy Hayden was for making me do this, but then my mind wandered to my birthday party yesterday. Gosh, but Ididn’t want Hayden to know about my whole situation with Raina. Even Raina didn’t know my whole situation with Raina. No one did. Not even Toby.
Toby. My chest ached. We’d barely talked since I moved here. We texted for a bit this morning when he wished me happy birthday, but it didn’t last long.
After about fifteen minutes and two filled college-ruled pieces of paper, my left wrist ached. I dropped my pen. “I think I ran out of soul,” I told Hayden as he sat back down with our shakes and food.
Hayden grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Awesome.” He pulled the pages toward himself and read through my writing.
“How bad is it?” I asked while he read.
“This is a brain dump, all right.” He gasped and frowned at me. “Okay, you didnothave to call me pushy.”
“Well, I have bad news for you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Besides that, there’s a lot you can work with here. Especially the part about missing your best friend.” His dark eyes met mine, my reflection sitting in them. “You’re going through a lot.”
You have no idea. “It’s just muddled thoughts.”
“There’s a song in these muddled thoughts.” He smiled before his eyes drifted off to the audience around us. “Hey, the girls are here.”
“Huh?” My gaze skittered across the café, looking for said girls, and my gaze locked with Raina’s at a booth adjacent to ours.
Raina’s glittery lips curved into a smile. Unlike yesterday, she was perfectly made up. Not a single crack in her concealer.
My heart skipped a beat.Get a freaking grip.I smiled back, an unfamiliar feeling tugging at my chest.
“Someone’s happy to see her,” Hayden mused.
I snapped my attention toward him, my cheeks warming on schedule. How long had I been smiling at her? “Just glad she’s doing better.”
His full lips formed a smirk. “You and Raina, huh?”
I groaned. “It’s not like that.” It was completely like that, but only from my point of view. There was no way Raina looked at me and saw what I saw when I looked at her.
“Uh-huh,” Hayden said. “I’m not stupid.”
“You sure about that, Mr. Bad Party Planner?”
“Hey.” He laughed. “But seriously, you have the hots for her.”
I gasped. “I donothave the hots for Raina Vermont!”
A few people whipped their heads toward me.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die on my seventeenth birthday and Valentine’s Day.
I swallowed. “There’s a fine line between platonic and romantic.” And my mind had long crossed it. But I’d get back on the side I was supposed to be on. Hopefully.
If she stopped freaking grinning at me like that.
If she stopped being so freaking adorable.
