Page 13 of The Do-Over
“Why is it so hard for you to believe that I might actually like you?” he asked her.
“It’s just surprising,” she said. “A week ago, we didn’t know each other.”
“But we do now,” he said. “And I like that I know you, Thea. I’d like to know you better.”
“And so you want to go out with me.”
“One date,” he said. “If you don’t have a good time, I’ll drop it.”
She laughed.
“What?” he asked. “What’s funny?”
“It’s just that you keep bartering your way farther into my life,” she explained. “You said you’d walk me home, and once we arrived you’d be done talking to me. Somehow, I convinced myself to take a longer walk with you, and now you’re telling me that if I go out on one date with you, then you’ll quit trying to see me. What’s going to happen on this date? Are you going to ask me to the prom or something?”
Rob frowned. He hadn’t realized that she might be seeing his requests for her company as such an imposition. “Do you really want me to leave you alone?” he asked. “I will. If that’s what you want, I’ll take you home right now, and this can be the end of it. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”
He felt a knot in his stomach as he said it, though. He didn’t want to make her unhappy—but what if she took him up on his offer? What if she went home right now, and this was the last time the two of them had together. That would be devastating.
Oh, man. I really am into her.How had this happened to him so suddenly? How had he fallen for this girl he hardly knew?
She turned to face him. The wind blew her hair back from her face, and he felt the strangest desire to reach out and tuck a lock behind her ear, to graze her cheek with his fingers.
He resisted.
“I don’t want to go home,” she said quietly.
“You’re sure? Because it is getting late.”
“I’m having a nice time,” she said. “I—I always seem to have a nice time when I’m with you.” She flushed.
“I do too,” he said. “That’s why I’d like to see more of you. You can believe that, can’t you?”
“I guess I can,” she said.
“So you’ll go out with me?”
She grinned. “One date,” she said. “We’ll see how that goes.”
“That’s all I’m asking.” A giddy sort of relief filled him. He had really been afraid that she was going to say no.
“Where are we going?” she asked him.
He thought for a moment. “There’s another basketball game on Saturday,” he suggested.
Thea laughed. “It’s all a ploy to get more fans in the seats!” she joked. “I bet this is what you say to all the girls.”
“You really think I’m some kind of playboy, don’t you?”
“I’m not criticizing you. But everyone knows that you date a lot of girls.”
“Everyone knows that?” Like he was some kind of celebrity or something?
Thea looked away awkwardly. “Girls talk,” she explained. “I’ve heard things. In the locker room, or in class before lectures start.”
“What do they say?”
She grinned through the curtain of her thick hair. “Nothing you’d mind, I don’t think. They just say things like who’s going out with who on any given weekend. Enough so I can tell that you’re always taking out different girls. You don’t seem like you take any of them seriously.”
