Page 35 of Hopeless Romantic
Levi coughed “bullshit” into his hand, but her gaze never strayed. Even with her entire focus on the stop sign, Levi’s body tensed as his truck jerked to a halt, practically bumper-kissing the car in front of them. The car moved, and Paisley shot forward, covering the six feet in the blink of an eye, before slamming on the brake.
The scent of burned rubber and barely avoided death filled the car. Levi sat back and let out a breath when Paisley took a cautious look to the left, and then—
Whoa, Levi was pushed back into his seat with the force of all nine hundred horses simultaneously activated as his one-way looker raced through the intersection, only to apply the brakes hard on the other side, dropping their speed by twenty before settling on a solid nine miles under the posted speed limit.
“Are you excited about the ski trip?”
“What?” She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“Eyes on the road.”
“What is up with everyone talking about the ski trip? Even Mrs. Kale stopped class to talk about the ski trip. She doesn’t interrupt her lecture to let someone go to the bathroom, but Olivia Humbert talked for the whole last ten minutes of class about skiing.”
“The parent permission slips are due Friday,” he said, sitting on his hand so he wouldn’t reach out and grab the wheel. “I thought you were excited to go?”
“I’m over it.”
Fine with him. Levi was over it the minute he discovered the dog-eared article titled TOPTENREASONSWHYSPRING IS AFITTINGTIME FOR AFLINGin her laundry basket. In fact, the moment his niece discovered boys, Levi and the dads started brainstorming how to get the trip canceled. He’d added it to next week’s PTA agenda, Emmitt was working on gaining his mom group’s support, and, in case all else failed, Gray had signed up to be one of the parent chaperones.
But Gray couldn’t be everywhere at once, leaving unsupervised moments for girls and boys to sneak off and get into the kind of trouble that girls and boys have been getting into for centuries. So this news should have him fist-bumping the air. Only, his mom was right—something was up with Paisley.
He hated to admit it, but his sweet, rational niece had been taken over by hormones. There wasn’t much she wouldn’t do to get alone time with a cute boy. And she’d started planning for this trip freshman year when her best gal pal, Phoebe, asked her to be bunkmates. On her nightstand sat a journal with clippings of skiwear, makeup styles, and winter hair tips dedicated solely to this trip. She’d even blown a year’s worth of babysitting on the new ski jumper hanging in her closet.
A jumper that was wholly and completely Emmitt’s fault. Because when Paisley pointed to the glimmering gray-and-pink belted number in a store window, Emmitt had the genius insight to say that if she wanted a glorified skinsuit, she’d have to buy it herself. So Paisley, being the exact image of her mama, applied to be an after-school babysitter to every family in the neighborhood and was in such high demand, she charged more per hour than her friend Owen, who worked at the skateboard shop in the mall.
Her “being over” this trip wasn’t possible.
“Do you even care why I don’t want to go?” she asked.
While the female-aware male in him, who knew talking would lead to tears, wanted to say nothing and avoid being the cause of a nineteen-car pileup, the devoted uncle who’d held Michelle’s lifeless hand and vowed to give Paisley a full and happy life knew his niece needed to talk.
“If you want to tell me,” he ventured softly.
“No.” She sounded appalled. “And why is everyone acting like this trip is the most important thing in the world?”
Last weekend, she had been the main one of those somebodies. Actually claiming, when Gray voiced his concern over her going on the ski trip when she’d never skied, that her life depended on going, and to not go would be social suicide.
“Hello?” she went on. “It’s not the SATs or college essays. It’s a ski trip. We’ve all been skiing, right? Or at least everyone in my grade has but me. How fun would that be? Me on the bunny slopes while my friends are doing black-diamond runs.”
“Not everyone skis,” he reminded her. “And I bet if you talked to Phoebe and Owen, they’d hang with you,” he said, referring to the other two that made up Paisley’s bestie trio.
“I don’t want to ruin their time. Plus, they know me. Know that I don’t even really like the snow. It’s cold, and it gives the worst face tans.”
“But it’s also fun,” he tossed out, noticing that the light a few hundred yards ahead of them had turned red. “I thought you were happy because you got on the same bus as Owen.”
“He’s on the boy’s bus,” she said, and Levi wanted to thank whoever had decided to divide the buses by sexes and not grades this year, only he was too distracted by the big, bright, red light directly in front of them.
“Plus, it’s so deceiving. You know?”
“Boys, or the distance between us the red light ahead?”
“Snow.” She laughed. “It looks fluffy and soft, but when it’s been skied, it gets packed down and becomes unforgiving. So when you fall, it’s like falling on cement,” she said, as if she hadn’t just announced she’d never been skiing. “And you know how easily I bruise. I just healed from soccer season, and I want to spend at least a month bruise-free, because once club soccer starts up, it’s all jeans and pants.”
The bumpers ahead of them got closer and closer, and Levi’s foot pressed harder and harder into the floor, so hard his butt and thighs lifted off the passenger seat and he gripped the oh-shit handle with enough force to tear it off the ceiling.
“The soccer coach in me is happy you’re already thinking about next season, but the uncle in me doesn’t want you to miss out on the fun parts of high school.” He rested a cautionary hand on her thigh. “Be aware, the light ahead is red.”
“Even Owen is excited. And he hates school trips,” she went on, paying neither him nor the light any attention.
