Page 49 of Kiss the Girl
“She was fine.”
I did gymnastics inside. “Fine” was bad.Yes!
“But I don’t want to talk about that date. I had an interesting conversation with Dr. Boone the other day.”
“You want to date your boss?”
He put a hand over my mouth. “Hush or I won’t get this out.”
I licked his hand. It had always worked like a charm with Tabitha, but Noah gave me a half-smile and kept his hand where it was. “Careful.”
Of what, I wanted to ask. But saying that would have been a dare, and I was glad I couldn’t talk. I raised my eyebrows, like, “Get on with it.”
“So the thing is…” He removed his hand and stared down at it, cracking his knuckles before he got on with it. “Dr. Boone called me in yesterday to update her on the booth progress. I thought she’d be impressed. But she raised some other concerns. And I could pretty much feel the coaching job slipping out of my fingers, so I…”
That was it. He just stopped. My eyebrows went up again, this time in confusion. “So you what?”
“ItoldDr.Boonewe’redating.”
I stared at him. Surely I’d misunderstood that jumble of words. “You told Dr. Boonewhatnow?”
“I, um.”
“So help me, Noah…” I pulled the hammer from my toolbelt and hefted it as a warning.
“I mentioned that we’re dating.” He looked deeply uncomfortable, like sudden-onset-hemorrhoids uncomfortable.
“Why would you do that?” I wasn’t even sure what I thought about this other than that hemorrhoids would be the least he deserved if this was a true confession.
“Because she implied with all the subtlety of the Bulldogs play-by-play announcer that she thinks I’m a bad candidate for head coach because I’m likely to get married and run off to another town.”
“So you decided to—” I glanced at Evie and dropped my voice “—lieto her?”
“I panicked. Please don’t make me tell her I lied.”
“Noah…”
“Grace. How does that mess anything up for you? It’s not like it’s going to screw up your love life here. Is it?”
He was working way too hard to sound casual on the last question.
“That’s not the point. This is how rumors get started. She’s going to mention it to someone thinking she’s reporting facts, and it’ll spread like lice at a summer camp.” My voice was barely more than a heated whisper because of Evie.
“Okay, I get that, but honestly, do you think it’s fair that she won’t consider me for the job because I’m single?”
“No,” I admitted grudgingly. I shot another glance at Evie. “You are definitely a grounded guy.”
“Right? So I gave her a different lens to see me through because I need the job, Grace. Teacher’s salaries don’t become livable until year ten, and I’m doing my best to cover Paige.”
I didn’t love the idea of fielding questions about this from the entire town. I wasn’t sure how I would explain this to my parents. I already dreaded Brooke’s glee when she heard about this. And I was sure Handy’s could expect a spike in business as people came in to sniff out the details under the guise of making random hardware purchases.
But I looked at Evie and knew what I was going to say. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Yeah?” The lines around his eyes softened.
“Dr. Boone doesn’t come into Handy’s, and I don’t go to the high school. It’s not like it changes a single thing about how we act around each other.”
Noah didn’t say anything. It was a very suspicious quiet.
