Page 89 of The Do-Over

Nate straightened. “I can take care of that now.”

“W-what?”

“A kiss.”

“I—”

But that was all I got out before he was in my space. He wrapped an arm around my waist and tugged gently. With a squeak, I fell against his chest. I barely had half a second to process this before his other hand cupped my cheek and his mouth was on mine. My hands fluttered, unsure where they should go, or perhaps what they should touch first, before they curled into the fabric of his shirt.

His fingers slid from my cheek to tangle in my hair. My body melted until it was impossible to tell where he stopped, and I started. He deepened the kiss, nudging my mouth open. A bolt of something hot and wild shot through me. My toes curled, my knees shook, my mind jumbled into flashes of bright pinks, fiery reds, blinding white.

Unlike the last time, this kiss wasn’t for an audience. It was just for us and that left no wiggle room for confusion.

Holy crap. I’d just gone on a date with Nate Russo.

THIRTY-FIVE

“A Southern mama is no different than any other mama.

She’s just more polite when she lays on the guilt.”

—MIMI

On my list of Most Unexpected, Wonderful Surprises in Life, dating Nate was numbers one through a hundred.

We had gone on a second date. After which, there’d been hand-holding and long kisses while sitting on my couch. At least, until the sitter called and reminded Nate that she had to be home by eleven. The third and fourth dates only got better, and by the fifth, I was all in—the dreamy-eyed, floating-on-a-cloud kind of smitten that annoyed other people. I didn’t care.

He was so sweet. Flowers just because, a note found hanging on my door in the morning to wish me a good day, a text message just to say he was thinking about me. And the touching. He couldn’t pass me without brushing his fingers along my cheek or smoothing my hair or kissing the top of my head. Every time he did it, my heart flipped, and my cheeks warmed, and I wanted to throw open a window and shout, “Nate Russo is my boyfriend.”

I didn’t. But I was tempted to.

Maybe it was because we lived next door to each other, but we slipped into each other’s lives easily, like it was meant to be. We ate most of our meals crowded around his table or mine, Lilah chattering on about some new animal fact she’d learned. We spent hot summer afternoons at the park with Lilah or swimming at the community center.

We’d go to the movies on a Saturday night when Nate could get a sitter and make out in the back row like teenagers. (My mother would have been scandalized.) We even grocery-shopped together. I pushed the cart while Lilah’s pleas for candy and Pop-Tarts went largely ignored, and Nate tossed in ingredients for lasagna. With his famous homemade sauce. And oh, yes, it was real good.

Although it might have been the hot guy cooking it for me that made it better. Or that he was my hot guy.

Together we decided to not let Lilah know, at least for now. It was Nate’s idea, but I agreed. It was all so new, and we didn’t know where it was headed. Neither of us wanted Lilah to be a casualty if it didn’t work out. Plus, I’m not going to lie, the sneaking around added an extra layer of excitement.

Sometimes I wanted to pinch myself, to make sure I wasn’t living in some fantasy world. And although things seemed to be going well, a small part of me waited for the other shoe to drop. I couldn’t stop the nagging feeling it would all be over as quickly as it had started. I told him that one night after Lilah had gone to bed and we were snuggled together on the couch to watch a movie. Although, I was watching him more than the movie.

I sighed. He was just so… perfect.

He glanced down at me. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Everything is perfect.”

The corner of his mouth hinted upward. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, you’re perfect.” I dropped my eyes and picked at a ball of fuzz on the blanket we were under. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re going to figure out that I’m not.”

He frowned. “Not what?”

“Not perfect. I just keep waiting for you to get that and then you’re outta here. I make mistakes, I screw things up. Plus, there’s your classes and Lilah. What if I’m making things harder for you? What if I am a distraction?”

He kissed me, a soft press of his lips, but it did the job of quieting me and led to a much deeper kiss that had me a little starry-eyed and a lot disappointed when he finished.

“Everything is fine,” he said, stroking my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I’m not perfect and I don’t think you are. We’re not-perfect together.”