Bookishly Ever After (Ever After #1)(38)

I tried to give him a quirky-but-cute grin. “Not like we have any other choice, right?”

“Right.” He started walking away, then turned to look at me with a teasing expression on his face. “You’re making those socks for me, aren’t you?”

“Ugh, you’re still not knitworthy,” I said, but my face actually hurt from how wide I smiled.

“You two are so cheesy, it’s disgusting. Get together already,” Em said to me, tugging on her coat. She headed for the door and I had to rush to keep up with her.

“Like it’s that easy,” I said. One sleeve of my winter coat trailed on the floor as I tried to wiggle into it while hurrying through the hall behind her. “Do you think they’ll hold the bus for us?”

Em ran through the front doors of the school and cursed at the empty parking lot. “I swear, this lack of transportation thing has to be illegal.” She dug in her bookbag for her phone and searched though her contacts. “Dad can’t leave early on Wednesdays and Mom’s teaching tonight. Your parents are still at work, right?”

“Mmmhmm,” I mumbled around the one glove I tried to hold in place with my teeth while buttoning it with my free hand. It was an awesome design, but a pain to put on.

Em looked at me and shook her head. She went back to her phone. “Wanna wait here and see if we can bum a ride?”

I’d managed to get both gloves on and wiggled my fingers happily before shoving them into a pair of mittens. Double cozy warmth. “There’s always Alec and his Cinderella license if we can’t find anyone else. You know he’s always dying for excuses to drive.”

“Right.” She shoved her phone and hands in her pockets and sat down at the base of the pillar she had been leaning against. “God, I hate waiting.” After a barely a second’s pause, she looked around the parking lot and added, “These people are taking forever. Don’t they know that some of us need to bum rides off of them? It’s starting to get Arctic out here.”

I laughed. “It’s only been a few minutes. Isn’t there a saying about beggars and choosers?”

“Impatience is a virtue and I’m cold.” She pushed to standing. “Y’know what? Let’s walk to Marrano’s, split a water ice, and bum a ride from there. At least we’re not just sitting around.” Her eyes swept the parking lot again. “And if no one else shows up, which I totally doubt, we can bribe Alec with a cheesesteak.”

“Or hang out until Mom gets out of work.” Marrano’s was never crowded on Wednesdays, so no one was bound to complain.

“Or that.” Em said over her shoulder. “We can plan what you’re going to do about Dev. Maybe there’s actually something in your notebook we can use.”

I dragged my messenger bag back onto my shoulder and followed Em as she cut across the school lawn, the tail of the goldenrod yellow scarf I’d knit for her blowing behind her in the wind like a ribbon. I froze, a flash of inspiration hitting me, and Em nearly tripped because of my sudden stop. “I have an idea. I’m making Dev socks.”

“What, like ‘I like you, here’s my declaration of love’ socks? Don’t you have, like, a gajillion charity hats still to finish?”

I ignored her. “It’ll be just like when Maeve gave Aedan the clover.” That was one of my favorite swoonworthy book scenes. “Or when Sara gave Mikhail that brownie pizza in Zero to Forty.”

“Oh God, let’s get you somewhere warm. Maybe you’ll get some sense when your brain isn’t frozen.”

I already knew the exact yarn and pattern. “No, this is going to be super cute. He knows I don’t just knit for anyone.”

She tugged on my arm. “Walk.” Em dragged us out the front gates. “Sometimes you really scare me.”

“Says the girl who just starts randomly making out with foreign exchange students.”

“No crazier than the girl who’s planning to knit a weirdass sock thing for a guy or who crushes on people who aren’t real.” She hooked her arm in mine. “Why are we friends, again?”

“’Cause Osoba sat us next to each other freshman year?”

“True. Forgot that.”

We walked on the side of the street towards Marrano’s Deli in silence for a minute before I said, softly, “I’m glad she did.”

Em squeezed my arm and nodded.





23


Night one in Winter Concert hell.

Em and I propped ourselves onto the windowsill of the art room where they had herded us orchestra people to wait for our turn on stage. The millionth choral song piped into the room on the loudspeaker and half of us cringed as a soprano hit a sour note. “One night of this crap is bad enough. But I swear, if they’re still singing ‘Carol of the Bells’ tomorrow, I’m running in and stabbing them with…” Em reached for one of the woodcarving gouge-y things on the file cabinet next to her, “whatever this is.”

I resisted the urge to tug at the barrel curls Grace had worked into my hair. She was out in the audience and would definitely notice if I had messed up her work. Instead, I tried to keep my mind off of the concert and how I’d soon be on a stage where people would be looking at me. My nerves also weren’t helped by the knit gift sitting in my flute case.