Misfits Like Us (Like Us #11)(110)

His space babe.

I try to restrain a bursting smile.

“This is for you.” He passes me a wrapped sandwich and a carton of banana pudding. “Figured if we were gonna have the talk tonight, we might as well eat while we do it.”

“The talk,” I say softly, unsure of what the talk entails. I unwrap the sandwich.

“What we are to each other.” He licks mustard off his thumb from his leaking hoagie, then watches me pick off a shaved strip of roast pork. “They were out of tomato pie at this one place, which was my first choice. Who runs out of tomato pie, right?”

“Tomato pie thieves at play.” I drop the roast pork strand into my mouth, which makes him smile for some reason. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t like it. “I can pay you back for the food.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I wanted to buy you dinner and dessert.”

Giddy feelings are swarming me. I smile into my next bite of juicy meat, provolone, and bread. Tastes better than any sandwich at Lucky’s Diner. “Where’d you get the pork hoagie?”

“This bad boy isn’t a hoagie.” He bites into his, then chews and swallows. “It’s a roast pork sandwich. I got it from John’s.”

I take a bigger bite and mumble, “That’s a place?”

Donnelly nods, watching me for another second. “I’ll take you there someday.”

He’ll take me there. “Does that mean…we’re like…?” I didn’t think this part would feel like I’m rocketing to another galaxy, but here I am, dizzy as I leave Earth’s atmosphere. “Are we dating?”

He pops the cap off a beer with his lighter. I’ve never seen anyone do that before. His eyes flicker up to me. “What do you think?” He’s volleying this back into my stratosphere.

“I think…I know what I want,” I say, “but there’s still some problems.”

“Yeah?” His frown hurts to look at.

I set aside my sandwich and wipe my hands on a napkin. “Xander. We don’t know how badly he’d react. My dad. You kinda said things got left more up in the air with the whole subject of me and you. I don’t know if it’d be better to keep things private or to just talk to them.”

He offers me a beer and an energy drink. I take both while he says, “So we can figure that out, but either way, we’re not looking back?”

I nod.

“So do you wanna date me?” Donnelly asks gently.

I take a small sip of energy drink, wetting my lips. Insecurities suddenly twist my stomach. “I think I should be just super upfront.” My voice goes quieter.

He isn’t moving a muscle. “Yeah?”

“I don’t know how to be a good girlfriend, Donnelly.”

He exhales the biggest breath. “Fuck, I thought you were gonna say something worse.”

“Like what?”

“Like, you’re not relationship material, Donnelly.”

I touch my heart. “I’m not relationship material. I like having sex, but I might not be any good at the stuff beyond that.”

Again, his eyes descend to my thighs, and with the mention of sex, I’m tempted to crawl on top of Donnelly. To stay planted here, I imagine I’m buckled into a pilot seat in our spacecraft.

He’s beside me, and our voyage is unknown.

I frown at my outstretched feet, toenails painted neon green. “I could suck as a girlfriend.”

“I think you’ll be alright,” he murmurs, which nudges my eyes up to his. “I don’t have any good experience being a boyfriend, but it can’t be that hard.” He starts to smile. “Farrow makes that shit look easy.”

I try to channel his confidence. “Has anyone made you feel like you aren’t cut out for it?”

“I used to ask myself why girls only wanted sex.” Donnelly bends his knee, resting his elbow on top. “Then, I realized it’s probably a combination of how I look.” He motions to his ripped jeans, a carabiner of keys hooked on his beltloop, the black Journey tee that hugs his lean muscles, the piercing on his ear, and his sleeve of tattoos, some so old and poorly done that they bleed into black indistinguishable blobs. “And how I act. In my experience, girls aren’t usually looking to date the guy who does the keg stand at the party or lets them take a Jell-O shot near his dick.”

I imagine putting my mouth on a shot glass tucked in his boxer-briefs, and I can’t help but smile. But I get what he’s saying. Donnelly is a good time, but that’s all he’d be to most people.

“It never made you want to try to be different?” I wonder, popping off the pudding cup top.

“No,” he shakes his head, watching me lick the pudding out of the cup. “Most people just judge the pieces of you that are easy to see at first sight, without really getting to know you. It never felt like people cut me down. They were always walking away from the surface of me.” He swallows a gulp of beer. “And honestly, not that many girls have given me a chance to date them. I’ve basically had one serious girlfriend, and that was in sixth grade. Lasted two weeks.”

I smile a little, imagining him with a girlfriend in sixth grade. “Was she a cute bean?”