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“But we’re not. He’s teaching me, not actually dating me. They’re two very different things.”

“Well, they look a whole lot alike from the outside,” Katherine said flatly. “Dating seems vacuous. I think I’d rather not do it. Ever.”

“No one uses vacuous in casual conversation,” Amelia told her with a comforting pat of her hand.

“I do,” Katherine answered with a shrug. “Anyway, have you considered asking him how he feels?”

“Nope, not once.” I took a sip of my drink to punctuate my definitive certainty that I never would.

“I know it’s scary,” Rin started, “but you have to be brave. We made a pact.” She straightened up, reaching into her purse and returning with her tube of Boss Bitch. She set it on the table with the snap of a gavel in a courtroom. “I hereby call a meeting of the Red Lipstick Coalition to order.”

Amelia and Katherine straightened up in their seats like traitors.

Rin picked up the lipstick and held it like a beacon. “We do so solemnly swear to use this shiny little tube of power to inspire braveness, boldness, and courage. We promise to jump when it’s scary, to stand tall when we want to hide, to scream our truth instead of whisper our fears. May we be mistresses of our destinies and to hell with anyone who tries to tell us otherwise.”

“Hear, hear,” we cheered.

Well, they cheered. I grumbled.

Rin smiled, looking mightily pleased. “You’re the one who said it first, Val. You’re the one who inspired us to get this red lipstick in the first place. You’re our fearless leader, the girl who isn’t afraid of anything.”

“The girl who started all this hadn’t yet met Sam.”

Rin rolled her eyes. “Val, you solemnly swore to be brave and bold. You promised to jump when it’s scary. So put on your red lipstick and jump. Tell him how you feel. Or, at the very least, ask him how he feels.”

“Do you guys honestly think he has real feelings for me?”

“What happened after the oral?” Katherine asked. I could almost see her mentally lick the tip of her pencil to take notes.

“Well…we talked for a minute, and he showed me to the shower. We got into a little…argument, I guess you could call it.”

“About what?” Amelia asked with a frown.

My nose wrinkled, and I felt myself shrink in my seat just a little. “I was feeling self-conscious, and when he told me all these wonderful things, I…well, I didn’t believe him. And that made him mad. I might have accused him of bullshitting me just to be nice.”

Rin flinched. “Ouch.”

I sighed. “Yeah. He stormed out, and the whole time I was in the shower, I just felt like scum. When I came out, he was gone. I found him in his music room and listened to him play piano for a while. And then he apologized.”

“He apologized to you?” Katherine asked. “After you called him a liar? Val, he likes you.”

I flushed, flustered. “I just…he couldn’t. He can’t. It’s not possible. Besides, if I let myself even think it only to find out he still just sees me as a friend…”

“I don’t think a guy would go down on you like a porn star if he didn’t like you as more than a friend,” Katherine said with authority. “Back me up, Rin.”

Rin shrugged apologetically. “She’s not wrong, Val.”

Fluttering surprise lit through me. “But he said…”

Katherine’s face flattened. “People don’t always say what they think or what they want. Case in point—you have withheld your feelings from Sam since the very beginning. The idea that he has indisputably said exactly what he means is ludicrous on its own merit.”

Rin reached for my hand, and my panic eased marginally when I met her eyes. “You don’t have to talk to him right away. But it might be time you considered your feelings and his. Maybe he likes you.”

“Maybe he doesn’t,” I volleyed.

She nodded. “Maybe he doesn’t. But can you honestly say that things are the same as they were before last night?”

When I really considered it, my heart sank and filled up all at the same time, the feeling of stretching and falling almost too much to withstand. I clutched my drink in my clammy palm. “No,” I answered quietly. “It’s not the same.”

“Things change,” she said. “That’s life. We change. The people we love change. Everything changes, which is a blessing as much as it is a curse. There’s a chance that the man of your dreams could have feelings for you. I think you just have to be open to the possibility.”

“But then I’ll have hope. And hope, as sweet as it is, has the power to break my heart.”

“And it has the power to inspire you, Val. You just have to let it in.”

I looked around at the faces of my friends and did just that. And even though that hope was held inside a heart with a false bottom, I wished for its truth all the same.





22





Because, Of Course.





Sam

I shouldn’t have been thinking about Val in the shower, but there I was in a full lather, standing with my face in the shower stream and her on my mind.