Page 18 of Practice Makes Perfect
Still at the diner?
I type back quickly:
Just finished. Heading home now.
The reply comes quick:
Cool, Dec and I are at the library. Won’t be back until late.
Relieved, I reply nonchalantly:
OK!
Then she surprises me by replying again:
I still need gossip on what happened with Linc! Dec is playing dumb!
I put my phone away without responding. She wants answers, but her being out means no interrogation, at least not yet.
The irony of avoiding Lea isn’t lost on me. Last semester, I was both her cheerleader and perpetual shoulder to cry on while she worked things out with Declan. I listened to every tearful play-by-play, offered sage advice at 3 a.m., and provided gallons and gallons of cinnamon cider.
But that was different. That was Lea’s love life, not mine.
“Just a little double standard,” I mutter to my reflection in the rearview mirror. “Totally reasonable.”
The thing is, I’ve been deliberately vague whenever Lea’s asked about potential romantic interests, or past ones. She used to ask all the time, but my answers were always some version of “meh” or “not interested” or “did you see that guy’s shoes?”
Eventually, she stopped asking.
And good thing, too, because there’s a history Idon’twant to share.
But then she’d watched me follow Linc outside.
And now she wants to knoweverything.
But what can I even tell her? That I ran away from the hottest guy on campus because he touched my jeans? That I’m a twenty-one-year-old who freaked out at the prospect of going beyond second base? That I decided to wade into the pool of boys after alongtime on the sidelines and barely made it past my ankles?
But that’s all stuff I don’t need to deal with right now, so I start the car, pull out of the parking lot and drive back to campus—fifteen minutes of just me and my thoughts, which is approximately fourteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds too many right now.
Wow, I’m a mess.
It’s just… kissing Linc was a mistake. A hot, electric, toe-curling mistake that I’ve replayed in my head approximately eight million times since bolting from his apartment, but a mistake nonetheless. I liked my crush better when it was just that—a crush.
A little heart skip when I saw him, coupled with the complete absence of pressure to act on those feelings. It was safe. Uncomplicated. And now it’s a mess.
Because once he kissed me? Game over. His lips felt too good against mine, his hands too perfect on my body. By the time his teammate whooped at us, I wasn’t even embarrassed—I was too focused on getting closer to Linc, until I remembered why I kept the distance from guys in the first place.
Derek’s sneering face flashes through my mind, his words from four years ago still as sharp as glass. I squeeze my eyes shut, push the memory away. It’s ancient history. I’m not seventeen anymore, and Linc isn’t Derek.
But I still ran.
Because the truth is, I don’t know how to do this. How to let someone touch me without panicking, how to be vulnerable without expecting the worst. And now I’ve probably ruined any chance of finding out if Linc could be different.
All because I freaked out the second things got a little heated.
As I pull into the parking lot outside my dorm, I rest my head against the headrest and close my eyes, trying to be reasonable and let some light into the gloom inside my head. I mean, the night wasn’t atotaldisaster. For starters, asking Linc to go outside was probably the most forward move I’ve made.
I’ve never been shy about speaking my mind in other areas of my life—I once told my dance instructor her choreography looked like a kindergartener designed it while having a seizure—but with men… well… not so much. Yet something about Linc had made me bold, for a while, at least.
