Page 96 of Handsome Devil
I clenched my teeth. She was pushing too far. I was admitting to her that I needed her for something right now. I was asking nicely. Wasn’t that enough?
“The thing is,” I told her, “clearly, they like you.”
“They just met me.”
“They’re impressed by you,” I amended. “I’ve been trying to impress them my whole life, and you just did it in five minutes flat. Five seconds, actually.”
“Uh-huh. And this benefits you, how?” She stared at me, unmoved.
She really wanted to make this about me being a selfish dick? Instead of what this was?
This was about business.
Perceived value.
I had something she wanted. And right now, she had something I needed.
I stared at her. “You’re going to make me say it?”
“Say what?”
I physically forced the words out of my mouth, like I was shoving them through a garburator. “You have… an aura, Devi. It makes people listen. When you said that stuff about me, they believed you.”
“Excuse me?” She leaned in like she hadn’t heard me, but she fucking heard. “Anaura?”
“A sparkle,” I practically coughed.
“What?” She laughed. She was fucking loving seeing me struggle.
“You exude a radiance,” I grit out. “A confidence. You can’t fault them for noticing. People see it across a room.”
“Oh, you mean like across a cafeteria? A gym? A classroom? Is that why you never looked at me in school? And all this time I thought you were casually plotting my demise. And failing.”
I took a deep breath. “Whatever it was, it happened in five seconds. My grandmother wouldn’t give you any more than that. She always says, that’s how much time you have to make a first impression.”
“Hmm.” She kinda looked me up and down. “Five seconds, huh?”
“What?”
“I was just thinking about the first time we met. That first five seconds. Maybe your grandmother’s right.”
It was so fucking lame how much I liked it that she remembered that moment in the high school parking lot. Even though she was an utter bitch to me in that moment.
Because I remembered every-fucking-thing about that moment. Including how she made me feel.
Disdained. Dismissed.
Fucking weirdly entranced.
“That’s all the time it took for you to hate me, huh?” I said flatly.
“Yeah. I can’t say it was love at first sight.”
Maybe it was for me.
The thought was there, in my mind, but I rejected it outright. It bugged me that she never liked me in school. It irritated and aggravated me. But it wasn’t that I liked herbecauseof it.
I didn’t like her.
