Page 6 of Kiss the Girl
“I see why Brooke has you running interference with her mom,” Noah said.
I pretended to be composed and glanced over at him. “So you’re obligated to do the rehearsal dinner because you’re ushering tomorrow?”
He flashed me a big smile. “I am. King of the ushers.”
A big old piece of arugula was stuck to his front tooth, right up against his gumline.
“Oh, uh…” I’d have told Brooke if it was her, but how did you politely tell a brand-new acquaintance they had food stuck? I couldn’t think of anything smooth, so I went for it. “You have some food caught on your tooth.”
“Whoa, thanks.” He closed his lips, ran his tongue over his teeth and bared them again. “Did I get it?” he asked through his clenched jaw.
“You got it.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” It made me feel a tiny bit better about falling off my own shoes. “So what does king of the ushers do?”
We chatted for several minutes like any strangers at a dinner party might. At some point, the reverend sitting on his other side asked him a question, and Noah turned to talk to him. Mrs. Spencer reclaimed my attention, and I listened to herover the musical lilt of silverware on fine china and the murmur of conversations happening up and down the table.
The servers collected our salad plates and replaced them with salmon, lemon pasta, and sautéed bok choy.
“Oh man, this is good,” Noah said. He cut off another piece of his salmon. “Do you like fish?”
“Yeah, salmon especially.” I was going to ask if he’d tried the bok choy when I noticed a cowlick had formed since the last time we spoke. A tuft poked out near his part. His hair product must be failing…although it didn’t look like he used much. His medium-brown hair was the kind of short where he probably had to get it cut every four weeks exactly or it would get shaggy. But unlike the lettuce in his teeth, there was nothing he could do to fix the cowlick, so I didn’t say anything.
It looked ridiculous, and I did appreciate the universe trying to tip the scales between us again.
“I know I already said this, but seriously, you do look familiar. It’s bugging me that I can’t put my finger on it.” He studied my face, not in an intrusive way, but my eyes still skittered to his cowlick. “You’re from here?” he asked.
“Yeah, Creekville born and bred. Graduated from Lincoln. You?”
“I’m not from Creekville.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. “I know that. If you’d gone to high school here, I would know you.”
“Right. I’m from Mineral.”
It was only two towns over. “So you went to Lone Valley?”
“Yeah.”
“I went to a homecoming dance there once.”
His gaze sharpened. “Wait, did you go with Blake Garner?”
My eyes widened. “How’d you know that?”
He started laughing. “We double-dated. That’s why you look familiar.”
I blinked a couple times. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. My date was Serena, the redhead? And I was a lot shorter. I grew eight inches the summer before my junior year, after that dance.”
“You were my height at that homecoming.” I couldn’t process it. “You were so puny. I was taller than you in my heels. And now you’re not puny. You did all that in one summer?” I waved my hand to encompass him head to toe. If he was under six feet, it wasn’t by much.
“I’m 5’11 now, but I got it all at once. It was an uncomfortable summer.”
“I can imagine. Or maybe not. I never got my growth spurt.”
