Page 51 of Hopeless Romantic
Beckett didn’t want to read too much into those words, but she smiled all the same.
Telling herself to get a grip, she zipped her jacket over her offensive tee and opened the door, not as wide as to showcase her dad’s equipment strewn around the front room, but enough so she could look out.
“Hi,” she said with a smile. It was a goofy smile, but she couldn’t help it.
“Hi, Beck.”
“Hi,” she said again, as if her conversational skills were those of a toddler. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood and figured I’d offer you a ride to the bowling alley.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said. He raised his brow, and she realized she’d sounded accusatory. “Thank you, but I can drive myself.”
“I know you can, but you’d be a Popsicle by the time you arrived.”
“You live near Bowl-A-Rama. If you drove me, you’d have to bring me all the way back across town after. That would add like an extra hour to your trip.”
He shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
Beckett couldn’t tell if he was being serious or sarcastic, and she instantly felt uncertain about this whole night. She’d never had a guy pick her up at her house before, always opting to drive herself. She met her dates at a pre-arranged location, and left her phone on in case her family called and she needed to cut out early.
But tonight wasn’t a date. Her dad had promised there’d be no hysterical calls from home. And Beckett was supposed to have fun. She’d really thought over what Levi had said about putting herself first every once in a while. Tonight was her inaugural run.
“Okay, let me just change out of my work clothes,” she lied. She was about to close the door when his foot slid into the small opening.
He pushed it back open a tad. “You want to invite me in first?”
It wasn’t that she didn’t know basic etiquette; she simply didn’t know how to tell a guy who’d just offered to go an hour out of his way to drive her home that she didn’t want to invite him in. His seeing her daily reality wasn’t how she wanted to start the night.
But if she was going to do this, then she was going to be honest about who she was and how she felt. It was a risk, but she’d rather know what she was walking into before she let even one more feeling escape.
“Would it be okay if I said no?”
Levi pushed off from the railing, his boots clicking on the wood porch, not stopping until he stood so close, she smelled the frost on his skin. “I showed up unannounced, so you can tell me whatever feels right. You aren’t going to get any pressure from me, about anything.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, trying to remember the last time a man had been so unfazed by her tics and quirks. “Would you mind if I shut the door for a moment while I tell my family I’m leaving? I don’t want the animals to get out.”
Those beautiful blue eyes softened with understanding, and Levi took a step back. “Like I said, I’m here for the long haul.”
Beckett slowly closed the door, her eyes on Levi, until it clicked shut. Then she sprinted down the hallway. By the time she reached her room, she was sweating through the armpits of her shirt. Tossing it onto the dirty pile, she pushed way back in her closet, where she kept all the clothes she wished she could wear but never had a place to wear them to.
And there it was.
The slinky, stiletto red shirt she’d bought to wear to a party. She’d spent a pretty penny on it, but it made her waist look a size smaller and her boobs two sizes bigger. More importantly, it made her feel sexy in that confident, self-assured way of women who have it together. Which was why she’d bought it.
The purchase was a challenge, issued to herself, to be bold and prove she had it together. It was only a silly shirt, but to Beckett, it represented so much more. All the missed opportunities—road trips with friends; sneaking out to go a boy’s house; flipping through a college catalogue and deciding where she wanted to go in life, what she wanted to be.
One shirt couldn’t give her all that, but it went a long way toward saying she was the kind of woman who went bowling with friends on a weeknight.
Slipping on a leather jacket that had zippers on the cuffs, she found her dad in the studio, lifted his earphones to tell him she was taking off, then raced back to the door in under two minutes.
She found Thomas in the entry and Levi still on the porch, foot tapping hello. The sight would have been endearing had Beckett not been so focused on the fact that the door was wide open, and Hurricane Jeffery was on display for the whole neighborhood to see. The only person she cared about was Levi. What did he think about the state of affairs behind the Hayes’s front door?
Her confidence shaken a little, she zipped her jacket to the neck, then walked to the door. “Sorry I kept you waiting. I had to find my dad.”
“No, you didn’t. You were changing shirts.” Thomas tugged the red hem out from under the black jacket. “This was not the shirt you had on before.”
“I wasn’t finished getting ready,” she explained.
