Page 114 of Changing the Playbook
“That’s exactly what you look like.” He steals mozzarella from the bowl. “What’s the crisis? World hunger? Whether pineapple belongs on pizza?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Controversial. But you’re deflecting.”
I focus on spreading sauce, avoiding his too-knowing gaze. How does he read me so easily now? “Just thinking about how normal this feels.”
“Making terrible pizza?”
I risk a glance up, catching something soft in his expression before I chicken out and return to sauce distribution. “Not waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Hey.” His fingers catch my chin, gentle but insistent, tilting my face up. “No shoes are dropping. Just pizza dough. And that was your fault.”
“I was trying to fix your yeast situation!”
“My yeast situation is perfect, thank you.” But his thumb strokes along my jaw, and his voice goes serious. “This is real, Soph. You and me.”
My chest fills with so much feeling I might explode—not the panic attack tightness I know so well, but the terrifying fullness of too much emotion. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He looks like he wants to say more, eyes dark with that intensity that usually leads to me naked and extremely late for things. But my phone buzzes.
I freeze. Old habit. The sound still makes my heart skip—never knowing if it’s nothing or everything falling apart. My hand hovers over the phone, and I read a text from Maya:
Study tomorrow? The pharm exam is going to eat me alive.
The breath rushes out of me.
“See?” Mike’s shoulders relax too. “Not a crisis.”
“Shut up,” I say, smiling as I type back confirmation.
He grabs some mozzarella. “Hey, Sophie?”
I look up and see his intent a second too late.
“Don’t you dare, Mike!”
Cheese rains down.
I stand there, shocked and decorated in dairy, watching his triumphant grin. Then I grab the sauce spoon, flinging with the accuracy of someone who grew up with a coach. Red splatters across his shirt in a perfect arc.
He grins. “Did you just turn me into a crime scene?”
“You mozzarella’d me first!”
“That’s not a verb!”
“It is now!”
He lunges for the flour bag. I shriek and dart sideways, but his kitchen’s too small and he’s too quick. White powder explodes between us, and soon I’m coughing and laughing and blind, hands outstretched to ward him off.
“Truce!” I gasp through the flour cloud. “I call truce!”
“What are the terms?” He’s closer than I thought, voice warm with laughter.
“No more food fighting?”
I crack one flour-crusted eye open. He’s covered in white powder and sauce, looking ridiculous and perfect and mine. Devastatingly handsome despite it all. Or maybe because of it.
