Page 4 of Fight for Me
“I’m going to take that as a no,” Conner said, gripping the back of the nearest kitchen chair and leaning over it. “Dude, what is wrong with you?”
“Give the guy a break,” Noah cut in from his place on the couch. “It’s a lot to suddenly be face-to-face with your daydream. What would you do if Natalie Portman walked out of Pennington Hall and grabbed your arm?”
“I’d ask her to homecoming,” Conner shot back, a cocky smirk on his face.
“Maybe. If she was still there when you finished wetting yourself,” Noah said.
Jake couldn’t help but laugh dryly, feeling the sound vibrate across the cheap Formica tabletop. “Guys,” he groaned. “What am I going to do? It’s not usually this hard.”
“You’re making too much of this,” Conner said. He cleared his throat and resumed his pacing. “She’s a girl, not an alien life-form. You’ve got to take her off her pedestal and treat her like anybody else.”
Jake lifted his head cautiously.
“Look, girls seem to like this farm boy thing you’ve got going on,” Conner continued, gesturing toward Jake. “I know you get plenty of attention, though why you don’t take advantage of that, I’ll never understand. I mean, chicks at this school will—”
“Conner, focus,” Noah interrupted.
“Okay, but you know what I mean. She’s not the only fish in the sea. You’re putting too much importance on this one girl because of some bizarre feeling you hadthree years ago.”
“As much as I hate to say it, the man has a point,” Noah said, joining them in the kitchen.
Jake sat up and leaned his chair back on two legs before remembering what had happened the last time he did that. He came back to the floor with a thunk.
“We’re talking about Lexie Preston,” Conner went on. “The unicorn who appears in our lives every few semesters and twists you up in knots until you can’t see straight, but who you refuse to have an actual conversation with in case she won’t agree to have your babies on the spot.”
Jake scoffed. “I don’t think—”
“No, youdothink,” Noah said, cutting him off. “And that’s the problem. You were struck by lightning at our freshman mixer, and ever since then, you’ve been convinced this girl is your future wife. Of course you can’t have a simple conversation, because in your mind, you already have grandchildren.”
There was a long silence, during which Jake tried to find the holes in Noah’s argument. Unfortunately, there weren’t many.
“I wasn’t struck by lightning,” he grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. It was true; nothing spectacular had happened the first time he’d seen Lexie. It hadn’t been a Hollywood moment—no clap of thunder, no booming voice of God, no angel choir bursting from the heavens—but Jake had had the sudden, vague sensation that, for whatever reason, he would remember that exact moment in precise detail for the rest of his life. She hadn’t even seen him, perched as she was on a teetering stool on the far side of the gymnasium. She’d been laughing, part of a crowd of new students all getting to know each other before the first day of classes. He didn’t even remember why he’d lookedup from the precarious tower of cheese fries he and Conner had been devouring at the time. And yet... he had.
And the rest, as they say, was history.
If history could be summed up as several years’ worth of false hope on his part. Conner was right; there was no logical reason why Lexie Preston should be special. But Jake still couldn’t shake the feeling that shewas.
The corners of Noah’s mouth quivered as he worked to keep a blank look on his face. “That’s all you got out of that?” he asked, the humor evident in his voice.
“Shut up,” Jake shot back, instantly feeling like he was back in the sixth grade.
“Look, has it ever occurred to you to just be friends?” Noah asked. “Just get to know her—therealher and not your made-up fantasy version. Maybe she is all you’ve got her cracked up to be, and maybe she isn’t, but you’re never going to find out if you keep acting like an idiot every time she walks in the room.”
Jake scowled, and his mouth popped open to respond, but nothing came out. Grudgingly, he considered whether his friends might be right. It was much harder to talk to someone when you felt like your entire future was on the line.
“Just be friends,” he repeated, as if testing the idea in his mind. He thought about the deep green of Lexie’s eyes as they’d caught his, the electric current that had sparked up his arm when she’d touched him. “I can do that.”
He took a bracing breath and glanced out the front window, watching cars of every color whizz past on the highway. Maybe it would be as easy as it sounded.
“We’re still onfor tonight, right, babe? I’ll be there in twenty,” Colt said, his voice booming from where Lexie’s phonesat at the edge of the bathroom counter. She applied another coat of mascara and examined her reflection critically.
“Yes, we are, but would it be so terrible to stay in? It’s been a long week,” she said, glancing longingly at the sweatpants that lay discarded on the tile floor.
“Exactly! That’s why we need to get you out and shake the rust loose! You know how uptight you get when you’re stressed.”
Lexie’s hand stilled as she reached for a tube of the matte pink lipstick Colt liked.
“I don’t get uptight,” she protested, glaring at her phone as if he could see her.
